Couple of weeks ago we travelled to one of my favourite poker venues, The Gleneagles Hotel in Killarney. Killarney is Ireland’s answer to Brigadoon. Cynics might say the locals are trained from an early age to extract the maximum from tourists by acting friendly. They are wrong. It’s no act. What you see is what you get.

Ladbrokes first brought bigtime poker to Killarney. Lots of English players qualified online, fell in love with Killarney and Irish poker, kept coming back and it took us forever to get rid of them! Joking apart, English players have played a major part in the history and growth of Irish poker and Irish poker is all the richer for having them.

The sponsors did a great job and won many Irish hearts when they donated 5,000 euro to our Poker For The Homeless charity. My favourite memory of those days was the three day party that ran in the bar the week after Fintan won the EPT Barcelona. It was hilarious to see poker players not known for their prowess on the dance floor giving it everything as they bought into the Joe Dolan tribute act. The poker wasn’t too shabby either! There was a buzz around the poker room that matched the atmosphere you get at venues like Galway and Dublin when something special is going on. Sadly for whatever reason Ladbrokes cancelled their Killarney event eventually. That’s what corporations do.

Several years later Rob Young was running the show at Partypoker. He loves Irish poker and asked me where Party should put on a spectacular event to get the Irish market kick started. I suggested Killarney so Rob, our friend Kev and Fintan flew there by helicopter. Never again! The lads didn’t take long to decide the venue was perfect. We somehow talked ourselves into saying we could make a 250k guarantee for a 100 buyin. And no. There wasn’t drink involved. A few online day 1s would certainly help. And remote day 1s around the country was a must. Even so 250k for 100 buyin? Jesus!

Fintan set about getting operators to run remote day 1s in their areas. I had the fun job of travelling all over the country telling the smaller Irish players that they owned the game, not the Andy Black’s (sorry Andy. We were desperate).  I have to say it was great fun.Fitzy and Eamonn drove me around just for the hell of it. I could write a book about the things that happened on that never-ending tour and maybe I will. The grassroots Irish players are in a class of their own when it comes to friendliness, hospitality and love of the craic. The highlight was a visit to Dingle with Connie O’Sullivan. The poker game was in a pub of course where we played a 30 euro tournament in the pub. Average age of the players was close to seventy. They all seemed aware the clock was ticking and played accordingly! One lady in her seventies lowered six or seven pints while successfully hiding at least four of them from her husband. A joy to watch. I wandered over to see what was going on in the cash game. I was shocked to see senior citizens playing No Limit Omaha! They eventually explained to me they had tried pot limit but nobody ever knew what was in the pot so they solved the problem by playing No Limit. Fair enough.

Miraculously we made the guarantee. Now that was impressive. Though to be fair the magic of Killarney certainly helped!

I was delighted when several years later when Fintan set up The Irish Poker Tour Killarney was, alongside Galway, one of the must visit venues. Of course times have changed. Players now want to go from tournament to tournament rather than from tournament to cash game. If that’s what they want, that’s what they’re getting . It’s not for me or anyone else to tell them they should be pissed in the bar at seven in the morning rather than in bed dreaming of a perfect GTO day. Good news is Killarney might be even better if you can remember what happened!!!