/ Matthew Pitt / 26 April 2011 / Leave a Comment 
Smyth (green) celebrate with his friends and family (Photo credit to the PaddyPowerPoker blog)
Until yesterday Irish poker player Niall Smyth only had around $41,000 in live tournament winnings but this morning he will be grinning from ear to ear after beating Surinder Sunar heads up in the 2011 Irish Poker Open for a cool €550,000. In addition to the huge first prize Smyth also received €100,000 for being the "Sole Survivor" in the tournament, the last satellite qualifier from the sponsors online poker site.
A total of 615 hopefuls parted ways with €3,400 over the weekend to be in with a chance of winning Europe's longest-running tournament and the World's second longest-running tournament behind the World Series of Poker. Over the course of three days they were whittled down to the final table of nine, which was played out to completion on Monday.
Each of the nine players were guaranteed to walk away with no less than €30,000 but all would have had eyes on the Terry Rogers memorial trophy and the first place prize of more than half a million Euros. The first player to pick up this amount was Niall McCann, nine big blind shove with king-jack being called by the pocket jacks of Smyth and when the board ran out 5s-4d-3d-2h-4s it was game over for McCann and he became the ninth place finisher.
Next to go was John Eames, who actually started the day second in chips. He found himself down to 423,000 and with blinds of 20,000/40,000/4,000a he moved all in with king-queen and found a caller in the shape of Seamus Cahill holding ace-jack. Both players caught a pair on the flop but Cahill's aces were by far the best and for good measure he hit trips on the river to send Eames to the cashier to pick up €45,000. Although obviously disappointed, Eames wrote on his Twitter account that he was disappointed more with how he played over the last two days and admitted he did not deserve to be on the final table.
Rob Taylor was next to go and he was followed by Sweden's Karl Rudwall and then the 18-year old Aleksi Savela. Another four hours passed after Savela's elimination before the table lost another player. Cahill had been making a real nuisance of himself all afternoon and looked set to take a commanding chip lead when he got his stack in the middle having made two pair on a board reading 4c-7x-9c-5x with his seven-four and was up against Smyth's Tc7c. The river was the 3c, completing Smyth's flush and Cahill was eliminated in fourth place, a finish worth €145,000.
Martin Petri joined him soon after, which left Smyth to take an 8,800,000 to 3,400,000 chip lead into the heads up battle against British veteran Sunar. Despite drawing level at one point Sunar just could not seem to get any momentum going and found himself back down to 1,300,000 with the blinds now biting into his stack. He must have been quite happy to call off his remaining stack with ace-nine when Smyth moved all. Smyth turned over queen-five and a double-up for the Brit looked on the cards. The flop of Th-3c-3d kept Sunar in front and the 2d on the turn put extra distance between the two hands. However, the 5h on the river paired Smyth's five and that was enough to bust Sunar, who picked up €290,000 for his four day's of poker playing. Not bad work if you can get it.
Final table payouts
1st: Niall Smyth - €550,000
2nd: Surinder Sunar - €290,000
3rd: Martin Petri - €180,000
4th: Seamus Cahill - €145,000
5th: Aleksi Savela - €115,000
6th: Karl Rudwall - €85,000
7th: Rob Taylor - €63,000
8th: John Eames - €45,000
9th: Niall McCann - €30,000
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