McHugh fourth in poker event

NO PRESSURE Danny McHugh (centre) remained cool throughout.

McHugh fourth in poker event

Daniel Carey

DANNY McHugh arrived back on Irish soil last Friday at the end of a week he’s not likely to forget. His holiday in England had been shorter than planned but he wasn’t complaining. Having booked a flight for last Sunday week, his progress in the Paddy Power Irish Poker Open kept him in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin. By the time he caught a flight on Tuesday, he had finished fourth in the prestigious event and had €291,000 spending money!
Yet he almost didn’t make it to the starting line. Fifteen minutes after submitting his entry, McHugh (manager of Supermac’s in Claremorris and Ballinrobe) was called to a fire at his place of work in Ballinrobe. Were it not for the fire brigade’s speedy intervention, there would have been no card-playing. Then he arrived in Dublin the following day to discover that his draft entry had gone AWOL. Thankfully, proof of postage had been secured and four Mayo entrants (McHugh, his cousin Brendan, Eamonn Walsh and Niall Higgins from Kiltimagh) took their places as the action got under way. Legends of the sport were to be seen at every turn.
“It really hit me about three-quarters of the way through the first day,” McHugh recalls. “I was just sitting there and the next thing Padraig Parkinson, one of the top guys in Ireland, comes and sits down beside me. It was unbelievable. Emily, my wife, plays golf and I was saying to her that it would be like playing a fourball with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington!”
Poker is invariably a roller-coaster ride – one minute you’re up, the next you’re down. It’s a game for night owls too – play went on til 3.30am. McHugh survived day one, and fought his way into the top 70, thus guaranteeing himself a cash prize. His companions, eliminated from the competition, stayed on to offer support and advice. By day three, the Garrymore footballer was 36th out of the 46 remaining players, and was drawn at a table featured in RTÉ’s television coverage of the event.
“By then it was nearly all down to professionals. It’s very different to what it looks like on TV – pure psychology and mind games! And what’s shown on TV is only a fraction of the time we spend on the table. It was going on for 12 hours a day, and you’re really like a zombie. Even going to the toilet is an issue!”
On Monday night, McHugh had made it into the last seven and was back on the small screen. He received over 200 text messages that day from all over the county. After three players were eliminated, McHugh and the other three still in contention (professionals all) reached a deal. He eventually walked away, not with the official €175,000 prize for fourth place, but €291,000. Not a bad weekend’s work.
It’s a remarkable story when you consider that McHugh only seriously took up the game a year ago – though he dabbled a little bit when he ‘should have been studying’ in Sligo! Having enjoyed some success in online tournaments, he had his eye on the Irish Open, and would now love a go at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
Lest the success go to his head, however, he got a text from Michael Higgins, who observed: “You’re number 83 in the world, you’re the number two Irish player in the world, you’re number 38 in the European rankings, you’re number 22 on the all-time Irish money list, and you’re number seven in the Claremorris Poker League!” We always did have high standards in Mayo.