Ireland win APAT European Team Championship 2008

Ireland win APAT European Team Championship 2008

Friday, 7 November 2008

The APAT Poker Association & Tour concluded it's highly successful second season with the European Team Championship, held in Brighton. The event featured eight national teams of four players from England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Netherlands, France, Germany and Hungary with players paying £100 each to compete.

The teams were selected by non-playing captains and contained many leading players from the APAT national rankings. APAT sponsor Blue Square added £2,000 to the prize pool meaning the teams were playing for over £5,000 in prize money in addition to medals to the top three teams and the Championship Cup and title to the winning country.

The format of the event itself was for single table and heads-up tournaments to be played on day one, with a thirty two player multi-table tournament concluding the event on day two. In each single table tournament points were awarded for first to fifth place finishers with one participant from each team on each table. Points were also awarded for the victors of each heads-up match. On day two, the top sixteen finishers were awarded points in the multi-table tournament.

In the single table tournaments, the most successful teams were France and Hungary, and this continued through the heads-up phase, although Ireland had begun to make up ground. Day Two was disastrous for the Hungarian team though, with all four of their players being eliminated from the MTT before the points scoring positions were reached. With the French also losing a couple of players early on, the door was open for the Irish team to sneak up on the Day 1 leaders, and when three of the Irish players made it to the final table, the victory was guaranteed.

The final result of the APAT European Team Championships was as follows:

1st Ireland 67 points : £2,600, Championship Cup and Gold Medals
2nd Scotland 51 points : £1,600 and Silver medals
3rd Germany 44 points: £1,000 and Bronze medals

The winning Ireland team comprised Pat O'Callaghan (Galway), John Murray (Portsmouth), Colin O'Prey (Belfast), Brendan Byrne (Dublin) and was led by non playing captain Len Collin (Westport).



Tags: Poker News, Ireland, win, APAT, European, Team, Championship, 2008