April 15, 2009 by razorsharppro

Well the dust has settled, I’m back in sunny Wales and we have our 2009 Irish Open champion.

Congratulations to Christer Johansson who bagged himself a bankroll
boosting €600,000 for his four days of hard play. The 39-year old Swede
is a well-known online cash game specialist who plays under the handle
‘sendmemore’. Johansson triumphed over a professional-heavy field of
700 players, including such stars as Dan Harrington, Jamie Gold, Phil
Laak, Marty Smyth, Ciaran O’Leary and Neil Channing.

TV presenter and former model Kara Scott finished in second place,
taking home €312,600, with Andrew Pantling receiving €205,200 for third
– which just goes to show that a monster chip lead will get you far,
but won’t guarantee you the win. Such is the fickle nature of
tournament poker.

It was a great weekend’s poker and the atmosphere surrounding the
final table and the tournament was great. The Irish are always
ultra-friendly and certainly know how to have fun.

As Phil Laak also pointed out to me over the weekend, the creamy
froth on the head of a pint of Guinness is a miraculous invention and
it is in fact true that Guinness tastes better in Ireland.

While my own time spent at the tables over the weekend (after I’d
done all my work obviously…) may not have won me €600,000 I did
actually manage to finish up.

Granted it was only €50 up for the whole weekend but a win’s a win as they say.

It was all going so well but a disastrous session at the tables on the
Friday night saw myself and GCBPT Liverpool champ Zach Ford get
crunched by some crazy Asian woman who was hitting every flop in sight;
call a re-re-raise with King Jack, flop the nuts, call a raise with Ace
Jack make quads… and it went downhill from there. In fact, the
highlight of the evening’s play was retiring to the bar. Still, I was
getting paid to be there as well so life’s not all bad

And on a positive note, I think I managed to drink my body-weight in Guinness.

Back To The Grind

Work-wise I have features and interviews coming out of my ears, but as any freelancer will tell you – this is a good thing

I’m currently working on the interview I did with Albert Iversen and
it looks like I’ve got that one sold so will let you know when it’s
coming out.

I’ve also sold the Phil Laak feature and that’ll be published around summer time, probably towards the middle of June.

My website goes live at some point tomorrow (fingers crossed) though
this is obviously based on no technical issues which always have a
nasty habit of arising just when you least expect it.

Check it out:  www.RazorSharpProse.com

I’ll stick a link up to it in the side bar of my blog when it goes live.

Off to the big smoke (that’ll be London) on Friday for some more
work and a meeting with the editor of a new poker title – I’ll let you
know more closer to the launch date.

I may or may not be going to the GUKPT Manchester, it’s all work
dependent so I will be grinding hard for the next couple of weeks.

On a poker playing related note, I might even find time to play in
my local deep-stack event on Thursday – the £60+5.50 10,000 starting
stack at the Grosvenor, Cardiff Bay.

Being as I won this when I played in it two weeks ago, I’ll certainly be looking to repeat chance – fingers crossed…

Keep it real folks, and if all else fails, try Wales:)