Irish Winter Festival of Poker

The Paddy Power Poker Irish Winter Festival of Poker is an annual poker festival that takes place in Dublin, Ireland. First organised in 2001, the festival is headlined by the Irish Masters main event, a Texas hold'em tournament, and typically takes place over the three days of the October bank holiday weekend.

It was run as a stand-alone festival in Dublin’s famous Merrion Club from 2001 to 2003 and as the Dublin leg of the European Poker Tour (EPT) from 2004 to 2007. Some of the most famous poker players in the world have recorded impressive results at the Irish Winter Festival in previous years, particularly in the Irish Masters main event.

Won by Irishman David Cleary in the inaugural year of 2001, the title of Irish Masters’ champion was then passed to Lucy Rokach, one of the world’s top females players, who recorded back-to-back victories in 2002 and 2003. This was made more impressive considering she also won one of the side events outright in 2001.

In 2004 the Irish Winter Festival became the Dublin leg of the European Poker Tour (EPT) and began to attract significant numbers of players from beyond the Ireland and Britain catchment area, including the top European and American tournament specialists. Ram Vaswani, a member of the successful Hendon Mob, captured that year’s Irish Masters and his only EPT title to date, finishing ahead of a final table that included Irish great Rory Liffey, ‘Bad Girl’ Pham and Julian Thew.

The following year the Irish Masters was won by Swede Mats Gavatin after a heads-up battle with compatriot Henrik Olander; the two Swedes had outlasted a field of 248, each of whom had paid €4,200 to compete. In 2006, Roland De Wolfe emerged victorious after battling through a field of 389 and triumphing over an experienced final table that included David Tavernier, William Thorson, George McKeever and Willie Tann.

In 2007 the Irish Masters main event was dominated by one of the most-talked about young players ever, Annette Obrestad, who held a massive chip lead on the final table, only to be beaten heads-up by the then-unknown American, Rueben Peters.

Obrestad busted local favourite Andy Black in 10th spot on the way to her 2nd place, much to the dismay of the Dublin crowd. A higher buy-in of €8,000 (similar to many EPT buy-ins that year) discouraged many of the local players who usually would have played in the event, and the organisers were somewhat disappointed with a field of only 221, top heavy with sponsored professionals.