Lakes of Killarney Holdem Festival

A hugely successful event, we were delighted with this first attempt at a major festival. The main event had 183 entries, creating a prizepool of €81,500. The players came from all over Ireland and some players travelled from the UK for the event. Play started off very tight and we didn’t lose our first player until level 2. The general consensus was that the structure, 1 hour blinds with a 15k stack and our own innovation of not introducing antes until the repeat of the 500/1000 level, is close to optimum for tournament play.

When the final table convened on Sunday afternoon, the cream had been shown to rise to the top. John O’Sullivan and Sandro Taddei are two of the best local players, each with several good results to their name. Pat Storan is widely recognised as one of the best tournament players in Ireland with a string of serious cashes in big tournaments. Adam Fallon, Paul Harraghy, Steven Carroll and Mark O’Neill are all well known and respected on the Dublin scene. Our Cork neighbours Noel Magnier and Eoin Dixon are both stalwarts of the Macau and no strangers to the winners cicle.

The quality of play was very high with very few mistakes being made, plenty of banter and a variety of styles being shown.

When we got to heads-up at about 7pm, Noel and Adam decided they had played enough and a deal was brokered, with Noel taking the high side of the split and the title.

Full results for the weekend are below.

Matt and Connie want to take this opportunity to extend our thanks to the players who turned up in such great numbers, our staff and dealers who put in a tremendous weekend of sterling work and the Killarney Avenue Hotel which proved to be a superb poker venue.

Results

MAIN EVENT €500 FREEZEOUT

1st    Noel Magnier, Cork     €19,000
2nd    Adam Fallon, Dublin     €17,000
3rd    Eoin Dixon, Cork    €10,000
4th    Paul Harraghy, Dublin    € 6,500
5th    Steven Carroll, Dublin    € 5,000
6th    Pat Storan, Waterford    € 4,000
7th   Mark O’Neill, Dublin     € 3,500
8th    Sandro Taddei, Kerry    € 3,000
9th    John O’Sullivan, Kerry     € 2,000
10th    Roger Casey, Cork     € 1,500
11th    Pat Moriarty, Kerry    € 1,500
12th    Terry O’Sullivan, Kerry     € 1,500
13th     Darren Synott, Kerry     € 1,500
14th    Steve Wilsden, UK     € 1,500
15th    Joe Cahill, Galway     € 1,000
16th    James Lee, Kerry     € 1,000
17th    Peter Lee, Kerry     € 1,000
18th    Pat O’Shea, Kerry     € 1,000

SUPPORT EVENT €200 FREEZEOUT

1st    Michael “Sideshow Bob” O’Brien, Cork    €6,000
2nd    Jay Danter, Kerry    €3,500
3rd    Paul Magnier, Cork    €2,300
4th    James Kenny, Kilkenny    €1,700
5th    Barry Leen, Kerry    €1,300
6th    Brendan Cremin, Kerry    € 800
7th    John O’Shea, Dublin    € 500
8th   Karen Muir, Dublin    € 400
9th    John O’Donoghue, Kerry    € 300

GETTING OUT STAKES €150 FREEZEOUT

1st    Mark McKenna, Dublin    €2,000
2nd    Cathal O’Shea, Kerry    €1,400
2nd    John O’Sullivan, Cork    €1,400
4th    Joe Sheehy, Kerry    € 650
5th    Joe O’Sullivan, Cork    € 400

Click here to see photos taken at the festival