Thousands of insomniac players, fans, and punters keen to bet live on poker went into the wee hours hooked on the interactive feed from the $10,000 entry sit’n'go iSeries Live premier. The line-up was more than credible (for interest’s sake players posted with their pre-start odds of being the Winner, therefore Taking All):
Daniel Negreanu 11/2
Phil Hellmuth 13/2
Maria Ho 10/1
Marvin Rettenmaier 8/1
James Dempsey 8/1
Faraz Jaka 8/1
Eoghan O’Dea 7/1
Dave Ulliott 8/1
Carlos Mortensen 7/1
Tobias Reinkemaier 15/2
It was an all-UK heads-up, as it turned out, with the old-school Devilfish up against the recent WPT and bracelet-winning Flushy. The latter had taken out one of the most hotly-supported imported players, Daniel Negreanu, holding with top pair (K-J) on a K-6s-3s board vs KidPoker’s 4s-5s megadraw. This had started his reign of the stacks (and some of the most colourful chat seen in a live box in many a year) which only came to an end when there was just the one stack remaining – his, worth $100,000.
Hand by hand, paddypower.com provided the platform to bet on such classics as pairs being dealt, who would be the next out/outright winner, whether the flop would be red or black – a level of interactivity rarer than a Hellmuth commentary session without the word ‘eleven’ in it. Thousands of viewers stuck with it from 5pm all the way until 3am when the first iSeries crown was passed to Dempsey.
Live betting will return for the Irish Open’s own final table in three days’ time; meanwhile the dealers are in position ready to Shuffle up and Deal Day 1 at the Burlington Hotel, Dublin.
