| Online Qualifier Niall Smyth Wins paddypowerpoker.com Irish Open |
| Tuesday, 26 April 2011 09:27 |
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Niall Smyth has won the 2011 paddypowerpoker.com Irish Open. He topped the field of 615 players at the €3,200 + €300 buy in event at the Burlington Hotel, Dublin to take down the €550,000 first prize in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Smyth was a double winner as he also scooped €100,000 in tournament buy ins and cash for being the paddypowerpoker.com Sole Survivor, outlasting 160 online qualifiers including two at the final table. The young Irishman qualified for the event after winning a Grand National bet at PaddyPower.com, transferring the winnings to his poker account and winning a satellite.
He beat Irish Open stalwart and former World Poker Tour champion Surinder Sunar from England heads up. He held a commanding chip lead at the start of the heads up dual but Sunar fought back to take the lead before losing it again and much of his momentum. In the end Smyth had to river a 5 to make a pair and overturn Sunar’s ace-high. “Unbelievable. I just can’t believe it,” said an exhausted but elated Smyth after the 3 hour 30 minute heads up slog. “It started when I put €10 each way on the winner of the English Grand National, I won €200 euro and now I have €650,000. Surinder is such a great player, my support has been fantastic, and here I am!” The final table payouts were: 1: Niall Smyth (Ireland) - €550,000 2: Surinder Sunar (England) - €290,000 3: Martin Petri (Denmark) - €180,000 4: Seamus Cahill (Ireland) - €145,000 5: Aleksi Savela (Finand) - €115,000 6: Karl Rudwall (Sweden) - €85,000 7: Rob Taylor (Ireland) - €63,000 8: John Eames (UK) - €45,000 9: Niall McCann (Ireland) - €30,000 The chips counts going into the final day’s play were: Niall Smyth - 2,038,000 John Eames -1,783,000 Aleksi Savela - 1,594,000 Martin Petri - 1,530,000 Surinder Sunar -1,366,000 Karl Rudwall - 1,329,000 Seamus Cahill - 1,310,000 Robert Taylor - 915,000 Niall McCann - 434,000 The total prize pool created was €1,968,000 and 64 players got paid with the bubble, Oliver Lynch, receiving a buy in to next year’s Irish Open from sponsor paddypowerpoker.com.  |
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