Dublin Was Cool, but Commerce Casino May Have Been More Exciting

These days, there are so many $10,000 buy-in tournaments that professionals have to choose where to play due to some overlap. Even Europe is hosting large buy-in events at the same time. Faced with this dilemma, I decided to go to Dublin, Ireland, to compete in the €6,000 pot-limit hold'em event at the Merrion Casino; it was called the World Poker Championship. This is the largest pot-limit hold'em buy-in event to date. It was a videotaped event that will be televised on Sky Sports in Europe, and eventually picked up in the United States.

The format was different from a typical event. There were eight heats of 16 players each. Each heat was a two-table satellite in which all of the winners advanced to the final table. All of the second-place finishers competed in a one-table satellite in which the winner advanced to the final table with all of the other winners. Thus, it was pretty much a winner-take-all event until you qualified for the final table. I especially liked the fact that there was so much shorthanded play.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to play in a tournament in a city that I have always wanted to visit. The highlight of my trip was going on a train ride to Kilkenny to check out the Kilkenny Castle. It wasn't so much the castle that I enjoyed, but learning how to play Chinese poker on the train ride. I was playing against Paul Phillips and Carlos Mortensen. Paul tried to convince me to play for high stakes, but I had never played the game and assumed he was good (he is virtually a walking computer). That was reason enough for me to keep the stakes small. Of course, Paul ended up with all of the money, but at least I got a thrill out of watching Carlos tilt over losing $20.

Back here in the States, Ben Affleck was busy winning a poker tournament at Commerce Casino. Not only was it a tournament, it was the $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em championship at the California State Poker Championship. Ben ended up winning $356,400, which included a $25,000 seat in the World Poker Tour Championship. Others who made the final table were Stan Goldstein, Charles Pacheco, Jimmy Tran, John Esposito, Ty Nguyen, Raymond Davis, Pogos Simityan, and Amir Vahedi. Ben is the first movie star to take down a big poker tournament. I know lots of great poker players who have never cashed that much in a single tournament. Thanks for playing, Ben, and congratulations!