If you have been spending the Easter weekend enjoying chocolate and having some quiet time with friends and family, you may not be alone in that. After all, there is nothing better than having some quiet time to relax and unwind and this maybe explains why the poker action has not been so fast and furious over the past couple of days. Poker players can usually find a good excuse to slip off and enjoy the poker action at times but at big family events like Easter, that may not have been so easy.
However, you know that you can always rely on Dublin to host a party and the Irish Open has been taking place over the past few days. The final is not starting until early afternoon on Easter Monday so there is still some work to be done for the main players but a good few players have already fallen by the wayside. If you have been at a loose end, you may have caught up with the event which has been streamed live and there is still time to watch the final table play out on Monday afternoon and evening if you want to see the top class poker players involved. Given that the Irish Open is one of the oldest poker tournaments in the world, there is no doubt that there is a high level of prestige involved with winning this event.
Kara Scott will have to wait a little while longer to achieve her goals of being a WPT winner as she crashed out in 12th place at the Venice event. Things had been looking good for Scott but in the end, a run of bad luck worked against her and she was leaving the action before things progressed to the final table. There was not a great deal of UK involvement with the WPT Venice event with Scott and Liv Boeree being the only notable UK related players to make any in-roads to the tournament. Perhaps the Easter weekend was a time for many of the UK players to rest and prepare for upcoming events!
History was made in Venice
One player who wasn’t taking things easy over the weekend was Rocco Palumbo who triumphed at the Venice event. The Italian is already a WSOP bracelet winner but this latest triumph ensures that his name is engraved on the WPT Champions Cup too. The Venice event was staged in the Casino di Venezia, the casino which is the oldest in the world and Rocco will be delighted with walking away with $180,097. This is a hefty prize and one that definitely made ignoring the sights of Venice for poker action a very sensible one for the player.
There may not have been the same money on offer at the UK Poker Championship which took place in Coventry last week but the tournament was still as eagerly contested. In the end, student Ben Foxwell was the player that came out on top of the 469 entrants to the event. There will no doubt be plenty of people up and down the country bemoaning the fact that students are playing poker as opposed to studying but if you have a talent for something that you enjoy you may as well use it. For his efforts, Foxwell received £3,450 and entry to the GUKPT Grand Final but the kudos of overcoming the rest of the student poker population will no doubt be of great interest too!
Things will hot up in the next week or two when it comes to poker so if you’re looking for more excitement, there will be plenty to enjoy and look forward to.