Newspaper front pages last week carried the extraordinary story of Niall Smyth, a 26-year-old hospital attendant from Ennis, who managed to turn a €10 bet on Grand National winner Ballabriggs into a €550,000 win in the Paddy Power Poker Irish Open.

Smyth used his winnings from the bet on Ballabriggs (“I know nothing about horses”) to fund entry into an online Irish Open feeder tournament, and having won that – the prize being a ticket into the competition valued at €3,500 – he managed to see off 615 competitors in the main tournament itself, including former footballers Tony Cascarino and Teddy Sheringham, and professional player Surinder Sunar, whom he overcame in a dramatic finale.
“It’s been pretty crazy, to be honest,” says Smyth, speaking a week after his Irish Open win. “I’m not even nearly getting used to it. I’m only home in the last couple of days, and I’ve had a bit of time to spend with my family and friends. I was in Ennis yesterday and it was so weird; people coming up to you in street and pulling you over for a chat, and generally offering congratulations. It was probably the weirdest thing of the whole lot... Back in Clare I thought I was in for a bit of normality. But I wasn’t!”
The fact that Smyth played his way into the last two standing in the Open from such unlikely beginnings – he has only started playing poker regularly in the past four years – was incredible, but the conclusion to his head-to-head with Sunar took the story into Hollywood screenplay territory. Smyth moved his chips in with a queen and a five, only to be called on by Sunar who had an ace and a nine. The dealer then drew a 10, a pair of threes and a two from the deck, leaving the Clare man needing a queen or a five to win.
Smyth duly looked on in astonishment as the dealer drew a five, giving him the half-a-million jackpot.
“I remember I was just staring at the card,” he recalls. “It did seem like ages that I was just staring. I knew it was the card I wanted, but I still wasn’t sure if I’d won. Then this massive roar went up from behind me, and I got up and kind of held my head. It was an amazing moment. When I came off, I asked someone, ‘Is it around half-twelve’ and they said, ‘No – it’s quarter past four’. There was a big crowd there, including my family and friends, and my girlfriend Kim.
“There was about 25 people that I knew, and then a big crowd who were there just to see the finale. But it seemed like everyone had jumped on my bandwagon because my story was so amazing.”
As they say, when your luck is in, it’s in. Smyth hasn’t considered buying a lottery ticket since winning the tournament (“I think that’s all the gambling excitement I need for this year”), but a day later he did see his favourite football team, Man Utd, beat Schalke 2-0 in their best Champions League performance in years. As for the future, he’s not giving up the day job just yet.
“For this year, I’m going to try and mix work with a bit of poker,” Smyth explains. “I’ll be doing a bit of travelling around the world, and I’m meeting Paddy Power in a week or two to get a schedule together, so that way I’ll know what I’m doing and I can make a bit of a plan. But, no, I’m not giving up the day job just yet – at the moment, all I’ve been given is a good start in life.”