This Irish Poker bingo casino slotsLegend Was Slowrolled 10 Years Go

Table Of Contents

• It Wasn't Gann's Intention to Disrespect Anyone
• 2025 Irish Open Main Event Has €2.5 Million Guaranteed

Imagine navigating to the final table of the Irish Open Main Event, finding yourself short-stacked, flopping the nuts, and having an opponent set you all-in. You'd snap-call, right? Right? Surely you would not be inclined to go into the tank and slowroll your opponent, especially when your opponent is Donnacha O'Dea, an Irish poker legend and arguably the most respected and loved man in the tournament room.

You can probably tell that this is not a hypothetical scenario but one that actually happened. Ten years ago, the 2015 Irish Open Main Event had reached its final table when one of the most (in)famous hands in the tournament's history went down.

David Lappin dug the video footage from the archives and posted it on his X account, which you can see below.

https://twitter.com/dklappin/status/1911415394889245065

Donnacha O'Dea, affectionately known as "The Don," rightly holds legendary status within the Irish poker community and further afield. O'Dea opened the betting with a min-raise to 100,000 with ace-six of clubs. Andreas Gann, a German player with no previous cashes on his Hendon Mobprofile at the time, called with king-queen of diamonds in the small blind, leaving himself around 3.5 big blinds behind. The big blind folded, and the dealer fanned a six-ace-eight all-diamond flop, gifting Gann the nuts and O'Dea two pair.

Gann checked, and O'Dea moved a stack of chips over the betting line, enough to put Gann all in if he called, which you'd expect him to do in a heartbeat. But Gann had other plans. Those plans mainly revolved around going into the tank for more than a minute.

Slow-rolling is frowned upon at the best of times, never mind at the final table of a major tournament and against a poker icon playing in his own backyard. Once Gann called and flipped over the stone cold nuts, you can imagine the reactions of his tablemates; they looked on in disbelief. Kevin Killeen, who went on to finish second, gave Gann a piece of his mind, while the commentary team of Emmet Kennedy, David Lappin, and Fergal Nealon couldn't believe their eyes.

"Horrific," "horrendous," and "disgraceful" were just three of the words the commentators used while describing what was unfolding at the table.

O'Dea remained silent and motionless throughout the drama, like the gentleman he is.

Everyone except Gann hoped the Poker Gods would serve some justice by improving O'Dea to a full house, but only having four outs made that unlikely at best. After burning a card, the dealer put in seven on the turn, which was no help to O'Dea. A burn card later, and a six landed on the river, improving O'Dea to a full house and, much to the delight of the baying crowd, eliminating Gann in eighth place. Justice was served, or was it?

It Wasn't Gann's Intention to Disrespect Anyone

According to former PokerNews Editor Rich Ryan, after the boos had quietened and the furore had dissipated, Nealon of the commentary team spoke with Gann and asked why he thought it was a good idea to run a slowroll on O'Dea.

To Nealon's surprise, Gann didn't know he'd done anything wrong and was perplexed by the crowd's reaction. As previously mentioned, Gann had no prior live results, so it is fair to assume he lacked experience and genuinely thought he was not doing anything untoward.

Gann revealed to Nealon that he knew his family and friends were watching at home and he wanted to increase the drama and tension for them, but it wasn't his intention to disrespect others. Nealon told Gann it would be a good idea to apologize to O'Dea, which, to his credit, he did, returning to the stage where he'd been booed off earlier to shake O'Dea's hand.

O'Dea ultimately finished sixth for €61,850, with Greece's Ioannis Triantafyllakis emerging victorious for €209,500 after a heads-up deal with the aforementioned Killeen.

2025 Irish Open Main Event Has €2.5 Million Guaranteed

The 2025 edition of the Irish Open Main Event is underway, with Day 1a in the books. The €1,150 buy-in, €2.5 million guaranteed spectacular saw 114 of the 463 Day 1a entrants progress to Day 2 at the first attempt.

Slovakia's Martin Ilavsky (529,000 chips) claimed an early lead, although Andrii Nikitin (526,000), Philip Carroll (523,500), and Michael Prendergast (520,000) are hot on the leader's heels.

Others safely through include Stuart Taylor (270,500), Jack Hardcastle (252,000), Matthew Davenport (222,000), Irish legend Andy Black (219,500), Cathal Shine (114,000), and Team PokerStars' Caitlin Comeskey (107,000), Marle Spragg (95,000) and Alejandro Romero (46,000).

Day 1b shuffles up and deals at 12:00 p.m. BST on April 16, and you can follow all of the updates via the PokerNewsLive Reporting pages. Here's hoping there's plenty of drama minus slowrolls!