Irish Poker Championship begins

Padraig Parkinson was one of many being dealt into the Irish Poker Championships today.

It's been a countdown to the first poker event of 2008 and the first to shuffle up and deal is the PartyPoker Irish Poker Championship which started play at 7 p.m. (GMT) today in Galway, Ireland.

The Irish Poker Championship is the first major sponsorship in Ireland by PartyPoker.com. With its €2,000 buy-in, 298 players were attracted to the event, which will have a prize pool of €542,380.

Some familiar faces who've anted up to play in the three-day event are:

• Mike Sexton
• Noel Furlong, 1999 World Series of Poker Main Event winner
• Marcel Luske
• Ciaran O'Leary
• Michael Keiner
• Robert Williamson III
• Padraig Parkinson
• Jon Kalmar
• Scott Gray
• Bruno Fitoussi
• Jan Sorensen
• Roy Brindly
• Steve Wong

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The playing field also includes online qualifiers, many of whom qualified on PartyPoker for as little as $3. On top of that there are plenty of Irish players from across the Emerald Isle who've headed to Galway to take their seats at the felt in the Radisson Hotel and Spa.

More than 500 qualifying satellites were held in pubs and clubs across Ireland for the event.

Two wild-card entries in the event include Dutch pop star and PartyPoker Dutch Open winner Maud Mulder and Polish television star and boxing champion Agnieszka Rylik, who recently knocked out David "Devilfish" Ulliott and Joe Beevers in Late Night Poker.

"Snow has fallen in Galway in the last 24 hours, but it has melted under the stampede of players heading for Europe's first major tournament of 2008," said a PartyPoker.com spokesman. "The stampede was nearly as ferocious as that to the bar."

The tournament will be recorded for six, one-hour long broadcasts in Ireland as well as for international distribution.

Related Articles:

• Odds on Pro to Win Irish Poker Championship
• Last Week for Irish Tournament Seats at PartyPoker