At the time of writing the United Kingdom & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) stop at Galway in Ireland – recently christened the Full Tilt Poker (FTP) Galway Festival – has raced through 12-events and a resident from Ireland has won every single one of them. Except, if you look closely enough there is one rather suspicious looking Irish name…Gus Hansen?
If Vinny Jones can captain the Welsh football team then why can’t Gus Hansen represent the Emerald Isle? That’s exactly what he did in Event #8: €1,000+€100 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) UK v Ireland Heads Up Championship; an event that the Great Dane…ahem…Great Irishman duly won.
The overall standings show a complete mauling by the English with only Paddy O’Connor (now that’s more like it) finding his way into the top ten. Recent World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event deep runner Kevin Williams, and former World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) final tablist Max Silver both took €4,486 for making the semi finals, and former UKIPT winner Jamie Burland, Surinder Sunar, PokerStars Team Pro Jake Cody and most recent FTP Ambassador Sinem Melin all made it into the top ten.
The heads-up action fell between that well-known Irishman Gus Hansen and the much-loved Lil Dave Nicholson. Hansen won the match, and €16,151 in prize money, but graciously acknowledged that Lil Dave was probably the more deserving winner – the story of Lil Dave’s life.
“I need to give a lot of credit to my opponent, he played great. If I had to guess, he played better than me.” Hansen told the FTP blog.
Nicholson took €10,767 for his runner-up spot and his good friend Jamie Sykes decided to celebrate the only way Brits know how. By sinking a shoe bomb in the Galway High Street.
Craig McCorkell Wins the Super Tuesday
Well that was a pretty super duper Tuesday! #exhausted #HolyMackerel
— Craig McCorkell (@CraigMcCorkell) July 31, 2013
Craig ‘mcc3991’ McCorkell is $104,690 the richer this morning after outlasting 551 of the best online tournament players in the world in the Super Tuesday $1,050 NLHE weekly marquee event on PokerStars.
The WSOP bracelet holder and winner of $2m in online tournament earnings ousted JasonX85 from the Netherlands, in heads-up action, after the following hand.
JasonX85 opened to 32k and McCorkell called. The flop was [8h] [7c] [6h] and McCorkell bet 43.8k; his opponent called. The turn was the [Ts], and it slowed McCorkell down. The UK star check-calling a 73k bet from his opponent. The [Jh], was the final card; JasonX85 bet 139,990, McCorkell moved all-in for over 2m and received the call. It was [Jc] [9h] for the man from the Netherlands for the straight, but McCorkell showed [5h] [4h] for the flush.
