Record Win on Poker Site

October 22, 2008

Jimmy McSweeney probably has a few more friends today than he had yesterday. McSweeney won the Ladbrokes.com Irish Poker Festival and is rolling in the dough! Beating out more than 830 contestants for the top prize was his goal, and McSweeney played his poker just right to be able to do that.

McSweeney was playing the poker tournament which had a €500 + €50 buy-in for their main event. The record number of participants created a prize pool of €416,000 at the Killarney, Ireland poker tournament. This was the largest European ranking event ever.

McSweeney is from Cork, Ireland, and he took home a nice share of that prize pool – to the tune of €100,000 for coming in first place. The number of people who showed up amazed officials, as they had been originally expecting somewhere around 625 people at the main poker event.

However, a week before the event, they increased the capacity to 750, and then ultimately had 832 players in the poker event. The event used the alternates system, and by bringing in such a large price pool they “smashed” the Ladbrokes.com guarantee of €250,000 for the poker event.

The organizers said that they were “absolutely delighted” with the number of people who came to play and they wanted to “thank all of the players” who made the poker tournament what it ultimately ended up being – a huge success. They also wanted to congratulate McSweeney and said that they were sure he would end up being a huge name later on.