InShort

More news in brief

More news in brief

Irish professional poker player Andrew Black has won €238,910 at the European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo, writes Shane Hegarty.

Having reached the final table at the richest tournament ever held outside America, Mr Black was eliminated in seventh place.

"I should have done better," he said after leaving the table.

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"I made a mistake on the final hand, and I got a bit ragged by my own standards. It's not a very forgiving game."

Mr Black (41), had previously won over €2 million in his poker career. Earlier this year, he won €500,000 at a tournament in Australia.

His biggest win came in 2005, when he took €1.4 million for finishing fifth at the World Series of Poker.

However, he said he had no plans for his latest winnings. "I'm not a money kind of guy. I might give some away and spend some of it. But my plan is really to take the poker world by storm, to reinvent the standards of poker.

"No one has really dominated year after year and I want to do that."

An early leader at the 706-strong tournament, he was in fourth place going into yesterday's final table of eight players.

His opponents included players from Canada, Norway, Britain, the US and Denmark.

On Sunday, another Irish player, Shane Reihill, won €33,180 by finishing 22nd.

Tidy Towns sponsorship

The SuperValu chain of supermarkets is to continue its sponsorship of the annual Tidy Towns Competition for another five years.

Minister for the Environment Dick Roche announced the "award" of the sponsorship, which he said followed an open tendering completion.

Neither Mr Roche nor SuperValu would disclose the value of the sponsorship, although it is known that the company spent €5.45 million on direct sponsorship of the competition over the last 15 years.

In addition to the corporate sponsorship, individual SuperValu supermarkets provide assistance for groups locally, further increasing the overall support.

Set up by Bord Fáilte, the Tidy Towns Competition was taken over by the Department of the Environment in 1995.

The town that is judged the overall winner in the competition is named Ireland's Tidiest Town and wins €15,000, together with a perpetual trophy and plaque.

Girl robbed elderly woman

A then 13-year-old girl, who took advantage of a 75-year-old woman and stole from her, has been remanded on bail pending a probation report, by Judge Conall Gibbons at the Dublin Children's Court.

The Romanian girl and an accomplice had called to the woman's home in Foxrock, Dublin, and asked for a glass of water.

The woman agreed to get the water for them and told them to wait at her door as she went to her kitchen.

"I turned around from my kitchen sink and they were standing there behind me, but they had not been invited into my home," she said in evidence.

The woman then became nervous as one of the girls acted as a "decoy" and ran upstairs. She threatened to call the gardaí and they left.

However, she noticed her purse containing her bus pass, cash and her bank cards was missing from the kitchen.

Judge Gibbons convicted the now 14-year-old girl of trespassing with intent to commit an offence on April 13th last year.

"I blame you that this child was wandering around streets like this," he said to the girl's mother.

He told her mother that her daughter had a right to education and should be in school and "not wandering the streets".

The girl was remanded on bail until May pending a probation report.