Dara O’Kearney Looking Forward To The Second Irish Poker Festival
At the start of my poker career 15 years ago, the Irish Open was the centrepiece of the Irish calendar, as it still is. Back then it was a €4,000 buyin and the first one I played had a €3m guarantee. As I walked up the Citywest drive prior to my Irish Open debut a passing golfer asked me what was happening. When I told him, he asked whether you had to qualify to play. After I informed him that the €4k buyin was the only prerequisite, he perked up and asked if poker was like whist. I shrugged and said a little. Later, as I took my seat in the tournament, I saw the same guy in the registration queue no longer wearing his golf clothes.
At the time, the Irish poker calendar was mostly filled out with a good spread of events with a buyin around the €1,000 level. The year generally kicked off with the Irish Poker Championship (IPC) in Galway, my first-ever big multi-day event. I remember feeling a little overwhelmed to have top pros Neil Channing and Roy Brindley at my table, as well as a female Dutch hockey international. Next up was the European Deepstack in Drogheda (a €1,500 buyin back then), which gave me my first live win. The Irish Open was in April, and then came the JP Masters. In July, we’d all head to Killarney for the Ladbrokes classic. Next up was the Macau classic, a €1,000, followed by Paddy’s second big festival of the year, the Winter Festival. The Fitzwilliam festival generally rounded out the year as far as higher buyins went.
Back then, smaller buyins in the €100-€500 range were a rarity, so much so that the International Poker Open (IPO) marketed itself as initially “the people’s festival,” largely on the basis that it was the one festival with a Main Event buyin affordable to normal people. Another key difference to the landscape back was that there were no re-entries. All the tournaments I mentioned were strict freezeouts.
After the financial collapse that signalled the end of the Celtic Tiger, these bigger buyins disappeared one by one until only the Irish Open remained (and it shrunk down to a €1,000 buyin). Live poker didn’t die but transformed into lower buyin events in the €100-€300 range. That’s great for poker at the grassroots level, but there has been a lack of bigger buyin events for players looking to move up stakes to sink their teeth into, exacerbated by the fact that established foreign tours stopped visiting our shores.
Enter Fintan Gavin
If you have ever played poker with Fintan Gavin you will know one thing for sure: he’s not a man who is afraid to put all his chips in the middle. They say that as you are at the poker table so you are in life, and this is certainly true of Fintan. For as long as I’ve been playing poker, Fintan has been a giant, both as a player and a tournament organiser. He applies the skills from one role to the other. This was never more evident than when he came second officially in the 2008 Barcelona European Poker Tour (EPT) but allegedly negotiated a deal that gave him the lion’s share of the money.
He ran the very first UKIPT in Ireland, and a few years later the biggest ever edition in a tent in Galway. Like the country itself, he has had his ups and downs but he has never stopped aiming high and shooting for the stars. His reach extends across all levels: he’s equally adept at running small events in places nobody else would ever dream of as running massive events nobody would ever dream possible. He hit the ground running after the pandemic with the revitalised Irish Poker Tour taking live poker to the masses in Ireland like never before.
The Irish Poker Festival
Fintan’s ambition was never more clear than when he announced the inaugural Irish Poker Festival last year, with a €700k guarantee on the €3k buyin main event, and a total of €1m in total guarantees across the festival. This seemed optimistic to say the least, and by the time the International Poker Open rolled around the week before, almost nobody I spoke to in Irish poker gave Fintan any chance of hitting the guarantee.
“Fintan will do his boll*cks.”
“Just before late registration closes will be a good time to be hanging around the Intercontinental bar.”
The first two flights were ahead of expectations but a big Saturday was still needed. Fintan admitted to me afterwards that when he came in early that day to find only 17 players registered he felt some waves of panic. As the day went on though more players jumped in, and by the end of the day it was clear that the guarantee was safe. In the end, they comfortably exceeded it, and Fintan’s renowned ability to realise his outsized dreams was reaffirmed.
This Year
The Irish Poker Festival returns from Tuesday 29th October to Sunday 3rd November with guarantees of over €1 million. The €700,000 guaranteed Main Event which has a €3,000 buy-in and runs from Wednesday to Sunday with 60 minute blind levels from the start and a three-day structure.
An early highlight will be €70k Mystery Bounty. Several giant bounties will be pulled out by lucky players, and Thomas Murphy has promised not to pull them all this year.
The €1,100 Irish Poker Championship will run from Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd. Previous winners include some of the greats of Irish poker such as Padraig Parkinson, Steve Dwyer, and Jude Ainsworth.
Festival partners Coin Poker have a €2.5k NLH tournament which runs over the closing weekend. Coin Poker are running satellites with multiple packages guaranteed every Sunday and plenty of feeder satellites available to suit every bankroll.
EDGE Expo
Ever the innovator, Fintan announced EDGE, Europe’s Gaming Expo, a unique conference set to merge live & online gaming to create a dynamic space where new ideas flourish and meaningful connections are made. It will run alongside the Irish Poker Festival at the same venue, and will feature numerous industry exhibitors and 20 insightful workshops where the speakers include Alec Torelli, Will Shilibier, ladies’ ambassador Tanya Masters, whistle-blower Jonathan Raab, Alex Scott, Padraig Parkinson and someone called Dara O’Kearney.
See you there!