Somehow a routine split pot got very aggressive and fiesty over on Table 1 just a minute ago. The ‘Supernova’ Dario Minieri (minus his Roma scarf, what’s up with that!?) was all-in vs another guy and both held AQ. The big stack of the table, Londoner Dave Gregory, said they should just sort the chips out afterwards as it was a likely split pot. The dealer followed protocol though and divided both players’ chips up and put them in the middle….when the inevitable split pot arrived Gregory kept on at the dealer for wasting time.

To his credit Minieri told him to give the guy a break and eventually everything was sorted out fine. Both Gregory and Mineri had a point and I’m sure that play will continue as normal from now on. By the way, Minieri has around 20k at this point and will be a dark horse for the title if he can get through the day with a playable chip count.

Ram Vaswani is the latest casualty from the Irish Open.

The Q 9 8 flop was checked to Ram who bet out. His opponent had Ram covered and shoved all-in. Vaswani made the call with Ah 9h but was way behind to his opponent’s KQ. No help came for ‘Crazy Horse’ and the Hendon Mob is now completely absent from this tournament sadly.  

It was always going to happen. Any table that features Sorel Mizzi, Todd Brunson, and Thomas Fougeron was gonna have fireworks go off at some stage.

Before the flop, Fougeron opens for 1200 in MP, and is called by Mizzi. American Tim Barany re-raises in the cut-off to 4600. Action comes back around to Fougeron, who reraises to 12000, putting Barany all in. Barany calls for 9275 total, and the cards are turned.

Fougeron: Qs Qd

Barany: As Qh

Board: 2c 6s 3h 4h 5h

A roar comes from the spectators, and Barany comes from behind to make a straight on the board, and chops the 20k+ pot, much to the chagrin for EPT stalwart Thomas Fougeron

Looking ahead to tomorrows action, it seems we have another crop of exciting players to look out for. They include Roy Brindley, Lloyd O Farrell, Collette Murphy, Danny McHugh, Ben Grundy, Bruno Fitoussi, Adam Fallon, Fran Egan, Paul Lecky and defending champion Marty Smyth

Isaac ‘Mr. Menlo’ Baron is out. I’d been highly touting him all day to anyone that would listen but he was card-dead all day and finally had to push his last 10BBs with Q 10 offsuit only to run into a dastardly pair of Kings held by Kyle Johnson. It’s a good job for Isaac that the Citywest Hotel has wireless access as that’s the only poker he’ll be playing tonight.

I told you that this table would be exciting!

Tony Cooney just took a massive hit in a 35k pot. Getting it all-in preflop with QQ vs John Keown’s JJ he was in great shape until a J fell on the flop. The turn and river failed to produce a lovely Lady and Keown sucked out. Cooney is now in a bit of trouble with the blinds now at 200/400 (ante 25).

Brian O Keeffe has now informed us that he said the Greeks were actually a ”quiet race”, while also informing us that  Greekfish was indeed playing like a “fishmonger”.

This is getting ridiculous.

I just had a chance to get a quick word with Oliver Boyce (he of the infamous bad beat from earlier) during the break. Remarkably he’s back up to 8k even though that hand had him hanging on with just 1500 left. He told me that “what hurts isn’t losing the hand as a bad beat but that I have lost so much more because it would have made me one of the chip leaders, and I would have cruised into Saturday”.

Good luck to Oliver in the future and hopefully he can keep turning it around anyway as he seems like a top bloke.

One interesting hand developed just before the break on John Duthie’s table. Duthie raised to 850 UTG, and was called by the player immediately to his left, a late position player, and the big blind. The flop came a scary Ah9h7h, and the action checked around. The Ks fell on the turn, and Duthie leads out for 2300. One fold, and the LP player moves in for 5425 total. After a lengthy dwell-up, Duthie folds, having invested around 20% of his stack in the pot.

Two exciting tables have formed on the far side of the room. First, we have one for the international poker fans;

Last year’s bronze medallist Sorel Mizzi is next to Todd ‘Mini’ Brunson and rounding off the table is Irish favourite Daniel Bolton. Bolton has made an amazing recovery from a 3k stack early on to now have a healthy stack that must put him in the top 20.

The other table is full of Irish interest with Tony Cooney, Kieran Small and Neil O’Reilly all battling it out. Cooney is the big stack of the three with 40k to his name.

We’re just on a quick break from the action now but I’ll make sure to keep you all updated on these two potentially warring tables. As always, if there is anyone you would like an update on or basically anything (within reason guys please!) you’d like to know just drop it in the comments and I’ll do my best!