The
action’s really starting to heat up here at the Paddy Power Irish Open
2009 – with only 22 players left out of the 701 runners everybody will
get at least €13,400 for their troubles, apart from German online
qualifier Marcel Koch…

As the last remaining Paddy Power qualifier he has bagged himself a
tasty extra €100,000 for winning their Sole Survivor promotion.

My clairvoyant abilities continue to grow in stature – after our
interview yesterday the young Danish player Albert Iversen has been
crunching the tournament and eliminating players left, right and centre.

His stack is now up past the 755,000 mark and he is running pretty hot – remember folks, you read it here first

Canadian born poker player, journalist and TV presenter  Kara Scottis enjoying a deep run, although is looking a tad short sitting on a
stack of around 160k (the average is around 318k). Still she won’t have
done her professional reputation or bank account any harm with her 22nd
place or better guarantee.

The tournament chip leader is another Canadian poker professional –Andrew Pantling  â€“ and he has been pretty much bossing his table all day. So far Mr
Pantling and Mr Iversen have not been at the same table, but if either
player gets moved to the same table we could definitely see some sparks
flying.

Bananaman

Another player who has been causing the sparks to fly is UK based
player Andy Bradshaw, who has been on the televised feature table all
day accompanied by a bunch of bananas (11 in total, one for each level,
although he has managed to sell three of them already for a tidy profit
of €3 – nice work if you can get it )

Mr Bradshaw has already had a few disagreements with another player
at the feature table whose phone rang mid-hand. After kindly telling
the guy not to answer it or his hand would be dead, the gentleman in
question did and his hand ended up dead – the two players both seem to
be doing an excellent job of winding each other up. Check out the live feed.

Neil Channing has just informed me life is good after realising that
all the players he took bets on last night have been eliminated.

He and fellow poker pro Nik Persaud are preparing for the launch of their new Blackbeltpoker website feel free to check it out, it goes live in two weeks I believe.

Pro on Pro

True to my word I managed to track down both Roland De Wolfe and
Juha Helppi for an entertaining ‘Pro on Pro’ interview. Obviously I
don’t want to give too much away but thoroughly enjoyed the banter the
two of them had. Roland admitted he is a sick individual, and that Juha
is 32, dresses like he’s 42 and plays like he’s 72…

Hard at work rubbing shoulders with Juha Helppi and Roland de Wolfe

In true professional style I managed to not puke all over the table
of the Citywest’s Asian restaurant while the two of them enjoyed their
sushi (shudder… I’m not the biggest fan of fish so raw fish didn’t
really appeal ).

Also managed to bump into Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly in the same
restaurant and he promised me an interview a bit later on so I’ll keep
you posted.

Jamie Gold also seemed keen – he’s currently bossing his table in
the €1,500 freeze-out. Interestingly, he revealed to Ireland’s Andy
Black that the new rule changes in the WSOP (no talking during a hand
in the tournaments) are all because of him – he seemed genuinely
disgusted with the fact that he couldn’t use his poker banter to get
additional reads on players, and to be fair – how much fun is poker if
you can’t talk? You might as well just play on the Goddamn internet…

Right, well the tourney has just restarted after the dinner break, so perversely; I’m off to get some dinner.

More updates later…