It is a fast-growing hobby with a new veneer of respectability for some, and a dog-eat-dog profession for others. Philip Watson delves into the burgeoning world of Irish poker.
It's 9 p.m. on a Friday night in Dublin and a steady trickle of people are striding up the granite steps of a gracious Georgian townhouse on Merrion Square. A buzzer is pressed, the elegant black wooden door is swung half-open by a man in a dinner jacket, and guests are ushered in. There's a brass plate by the entrance and a logo on the window, but it's dark in the square and difficult to make out exactly what is going on. The visitors themselves give away few clues - they are predominantly male, but of all ages, dress styles and body shapes.
This is not, however, a gathering of some religious sect, ruthless timeshare property promoters, or revived Roy Keane Appreciation Society. The casual appearance of most of the guests would also indicate that this is not a party. What is happening is that 60 or so punters are getting together to play the hottest, coolest, most devilishly demanding and exciting game in Ireland at present - poker.
The archetypal American pastime, and the staple of many an Irish pub game, hotel competition and St Stephen's Day family feud, has gone through a radical transformation in recent years. Long associated with cowboys, outlaws, cheats and chancers, poker has moved away from the saloon and the speakeasy and onto television, the Internet, glossy magazines, national radio, and the professional card tables of such well-appointed city centre establishments as The Merrion Casino Club in Merrion Square.
In turn, its audience has exploded. A recent ICM poll for British bookmaker Ladbrokes suggests that a quarter of all British adults have played poker; in the US it has been estimated that more than 50 million are regular players, making poker a more popular pastime than golf or tennis. Channel 4's pioneering poker series, Late Night Poker, broadcast after midnight, has attracted a staggering audience of 1.3 million. And Ireland's three poker clubs - The Merrion and Fitzwilliam in Dublin and the Macau in Cork - have all seen their memberships double in the past year; total membership figures now approach 20,000.
With the amount being gambled daily on poker websites worldwide having grown in 2003 from €9 million to almost €60 million, and an Irish Open tournament at The Merrion at Easter generating a prize fund of €350,000, with the winner - Ivan Donaghy from Co Down - taking home a cool €68,500, more and more companies are also realising that poker is big business. Irish bookmaker Paddy Power has sponsored a tournament, and US cable and satellite networks such as ESPN, Bravo and the Travel Channel have benefited from large increases in viewing figures by broadcasting poker events. A new magazine, Inside Edge, was launched in Britain in March, aimed partly at the growing army of poker players.
The game even has celebrity endorsement. John Rocha, Tony Cascarino and Ken Doherty are regular players, and Martin Amis, Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, Rory McGrath and Steven Hendry have all appeared on television playing poker. In the US, Ben Affleck, Martin Sheen, David Schwimmer (Ross in Friends) and Matt Damon have been closely associated with the game, Damon even starring in the Hollywood high-stakes poker film Rounders. In short, poker has gone mainstream.
"The massive increase of interest in poker has made people realise that the game doesn't have to be played in dark, dingy rooms hidden down back alleys," says David Hickson, manager of the new Fitzwilliam Card Club in Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin, which is housed in the former chapel of an Irish missionary order.
"There is no reason poker can't be a respectable pastime - look at Las Vegas - and our idea with the club was to present the game as a recreation to be enjoyed in an upfront and open atmosphere."
The number of new members the club has attracted in just one year - almost 6,000 - suggests it is succeeding. The Fitzwilliam offers tournament and cash game poker every night, organises poker business leagues, in which company teams compete against each other, and even runs regular poker classes, one of which was featured on Marian Finucane's radio programme earlier this year.
"Over the past two years, poker has exploded in Ireland," says Charles Harbourne, managing director of The Merrion, which opened in 2000, growing out of the long-standing Jackpot Club on Montague Street. "Cards and poker have always been popular in Ireland, and there's a gambling streak in the Irish mentality, but all the TV exposure has shown people how exciting and social the game can be."
This demystifying of the game, and its new accessibility, partly explain the huge growth of interest in poker. There are also the inherent attractions of the game itself. Poker is a great leveller. In tournament poker, every player, regardless of income, education, nationality or race, starts with the same number of chips. Regardless of sex or age also - there is always a handful or more women playing in the tournaments at the Merrion and Fitzwilliam clubs, and one of the most successful players in Dublin in the past year is 73-year-old retired maintenance officer Paddy Hicks.
It is Channel 4's Late Night Poker programmes, however, that provided the poker boom's original spark. Running over six series since 1999, the programmes were devised as a way of keeping post-pub weekend television audiences glued to the screen between early hours' documentaries on schlock-horror movies and Japanese nudist game shows. It quickly became Britain and Ireland's hippest cult series.
As well as the thrill of seeing some of the best poker players in the world pit their wits against each other for a first prize of up to £50,000, often with single bets of many thousands, Late Night Poker offered one simple and crucial insight: the nature of the two cards each player was dealt. By using glass screens and under-the-table cameras, the programme allowed viewers to observe the subtle intricacies of betting and bluffing. In addition, as the cameras panned around the table, audiences were treated to fascinating studies in intimidation and sang-froid.
Players advertised their poker reputations by employing such sobriquets as Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott and Peter "The Bandit" Evans. Ireland was represented by "Gentleman" Liam Flood, so called because of his impeccable manners and wardrobe, and Mike "the Man" Magee. Another renowned Irish poker professional, Padraig Parkinson from Dublin, won the fifth series.
It spawned many imitators, from Sky Sports's Poker Million, a tournament that guarantees a first prize of £1 million and at one stage proposed the use of heart-rate monitors to gauge the reactions of players, to the World Poker Tour (WPT), a travelling circuit of global tournament play created specifically for cable television that has an entrance fee of $25,000, the world's best players, high production values and jokey commentary.
Like Late Night Poker, WPT has created a poker craze - and each week up to five million Americans tuned into the programmes. In the US, many are now talking about poker as a "fully-fledged cultural phenomenon".
The Internet has been another major factor in poker's newfound popularity, with gambling sites representing the fastest growing sector of the web. More than 150 poker rooms are thought to be operating on the Internet today, compared to 30 in 2002; the British-based Ladbrokespoker.com site alone claims to have 50,000 registered users. Players simply have to download the software and enter their credit card number to compete in real-time against players from around the world.
The type of poker featured on all these television programmes and Internet sites is a long way from the traditional draw poker found in Irish pubs and homes.
In draw, players are dealt five cards face down and allowed to exchange (or "draw") cards from the dealer's deck; a pair of Jacks or better is usually required as a starting hand. In the variation of poker that has been popular in Las Vegas for almost 40 years, and that has come to dominate the poker world - Texas Hold 'em - each player is dealt just two cards, but five subsequent cards are placed face up in the middle of the table and are communal. It leads to close hands, fast action, tricky decisions, improbable bluffs and lively banter. It also maximises poker's ruthless individualism and social interaction.
"Hold 'em is a great advertisement for poker because it's very easy to learn but near impossible to master," says Charles Harbourne of The Merrion Club.
Unlike the rest of Europe, which has largely taken to playing Hold 'em only over the past few years, the game, curiously, has a long history in Irish poker circles. Introduced to Dublin in 1981 by the late, winningly flamboyant bookmaker Terry Rogers after he had seen it being played in Las Vegas, Hold 'em was played in charity tournaments organised by Rogers and "Gentleman" Liam Flood in hotels throughout the country in the 1980s and 1990s. It was also played in Ireland's first poker card club, The Eccentric, in Phibsboro, which Rogers founded in 1980.
In the 1980s, Rogers organised trips for dozens of Irish players to compete in poker's biggest and most prestigious event, the annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It is a tournament that required, and still requires, a buy-in of an impressive $10,000, but promised, at that time, a first prize of perhaps 40 times that amount. Rogers's Irish contingent was the first group from outside the US to take part.
It was a golden era of such fabled and imposing characters as Amarillo Slim Preston, a slender, wise-cracking world champion from Texas who wore a Stetson adorned with the remains of a rattlesnake, and Walter Clyde "Puggy" Pearson, a brash, stogie-smoking hustler." Yet Irish players invariably finished the world championships in significant profit.
By the 1990s up to 400 international players were entering the World Series and the guaranteed first prize had risen to $1 million. In 1999, Ireland secured three of the top seven places: George McKeever finished seventh, Padraig Parkinson came third, and Noel "JJ" Furlong, a reclusive and only occasional player from Dún Laoghaire who runs a large carpet manufacturing and distribution business, was crowned world champion.
"That year confirmed what was always known about Irish players ever since they first started coming to Vegas - that they more than any other nationality scared the Americans," says respected poker author and commentator Jesse May. "The Irish style of play is absolutely fearless - it's based on making really big bets that put the decision on other players and blow them out."
This may help to explain why in Las Vegas poker circles there is something called "Irish position", a term used to describe an aggressive player who puts in a big raise when he is first to bet and not, as is more usual, one of the last. "The 1999 World Series also seemed to prove that Irish players are almost impervious to pressure," continues Jesse May. With up to 50 players making the journey each year, Irish poker has continued to finish in the World Series money since 1999 - Scott Gray finished fourth in 2002. It is getting harder, though, as the number and overall standard of players rapidly increases.
At this year's World Series, which finishes on May 28th, it's expected that up to 1,500 players will attend, creating $15 million in prize-money, with the winner taking home more than $2 million.
Yet Irish players' long experience of modern poker only partially explains the nation's conspicuous success at a game described by Poker Million promoter Barry Hearn as "not so much a pastime as an intense sport that should carry a government health warning". Although Ireland has at best an ambiguous attitude toward gambling - while it is not taxed, gambling is largely frowned upon and casinos are illegal (The Merrion and other card rooms are run as private members' clubs) - there are sides to the Irish make-up that give its poker players a competitive edge.
"Irish people can be crafty and cute when they need to be, and poker seems to appeal to the rebellious streak in the Irish psyche," says David Hickson of the Fitzwilliam. "If you look at the country as it was 100 years ago, the Church had quite a grip on people and gambling was obviously a big no-no. Maybe playing poker is some kind of rebellion against all that."
"Poker is not for widows and orphans - it's dog eat dog and the downside of the game can be very rough," says professional poker player and former Ireland Olympic swimmer Donnacha O'Dea, who won $220,000 at the World Series in 1998. "But it's certainly a very real test of character, and I think the Irish like that."
Perhaps there are other traits and tropes, too. The Irish are known for their luck, for keeping their cards close to their chest, and for being natural bluffers - they can say one thing and mean the opposite. They also have a natural talent for good-natured table banter and badinage ("slagging"), which is a strong feature of Irish poker - and often deafeningly absent elsewhere. It is hard to win the verbal war against an Irish player.
"Poker players need this creative madness to succeed at the highest level, and the Irish seem to have that in abundance," says Jesse May. "The Americans can be very measured and mathematical about the game, whereas it seems everyone thinks that the Irish are partially mad. Believe me, in poker that is a very, very dangerous weapon."
THE LANGUAGE OF POKER
The real language of poker is, of course, money. Yet, from its earliest days on the Mississippi steamboats, poker has been replete with slang, lingo, insult and innuendo. Here are 20 of the printable).
American Airlines: a pair of Aces. Also known as the bullets and pocket rockets.
Bad Beat: a hand that is played well and strongly favoured to win, but that loses against the odds.
Baby: a small card, usually a five or less.
Big Slick: a starting hand of an Ace and a King.
Calling Station: a player who calls almost any bet.
Cowboys: Kings.
Dead Man's Hand: A pair of Aces and a pair of eights - the hand Wild Bill Hickok is said to have been holding when he was killed in 1876.
Down and Dirty: the final hole card dealt in seven-card stud.
Fish: a poor player, a sucker.
Gunshot: the card needed to make an inside straight draw. If you're holding 8,9,J,Q, the 10 is the gutshot or the belly-buster.
Kicker: the fifth card that decides a winning hand if the other four are equal.
Kojak: a starting hand of a King and a Jack.
Leather Ass: a tight, patient player.
Muck: to discard or fold a hand without showing your cards.
The Nuts: the best possible hand on the table. Also known as the lock, cinch, boss hand, hammer and the immortal.
On Tilt: playing very poorly or recklessly, usually after losing badly or winning big.
Rabbit: a timid sucker.
Rags: worthless cards.
Snowmen: a pair of eights.
Tell: an unconscious gesture or mannerism that reveals the strength or weakness of a player's hand. Priceless if you spot one.