Neil Channing, a Ginger*, 'Jamie Golds' the Final Table at the 2008 Irish Poker Open

Neil Channing, a ginger, so he has no soul and may kill you in your sleep if he gets the chance, has won the 2008 Irish Poker Open in Dublin, Ireland.

After working his way through a field of 667 players, the 40-year-old from London entered the televised final table with more than a third of the chips in play and steamrolled over his competitors in a manner reminiscent of the way Jamie Gold dominated the final table at the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event.

For the win, "Bad Beat" Channing takes home €801,400. Runner-up Donal Norton, the sole Irishman at the final table, walks with €420,000.

The rest of the final table finished as follows: Thomas Dunwoodie (€275,000), Tim Blake (€220,000), Danilo Paulsen (€175,000) and Edwin Tournier (€135,000).

While we weren't there in Dublin to cover the event as we've been banished from the Emerald Isle ever since the naked leprechaun tossing debacle in Kilkenny ten years ago, our pal Owen Laukannen was there and you can read his full wrap-up here.

Speaking of leprechaun tossing, for a video showing what all Canadians do to celebrate St. Patrick's Day besides freeze their asses off, go here.

Photo above of Neil Channing, a ginger, and last year's Irish Open champ, Marty Smyth, also a ginger.

*UPDATE: There's a good chance based on people who have played against him that Neil isn't an actual ginger although he does show some ginger tendencies. Perhaps it was just the photos Owen took that made him look pretty ginger-y to us. Same goes with Marty, although the dude's pretty much bald so it's hard to tell. Regardless, being labeled a ginger is a serious matter and if we're wrong, our apologies.

2008 Irish Open Underway in Dublin

Sometime between looking at Audrina Patridge's Playboy audition photos for the hundredth time and looking at Audrina Patridge's Playboy audition photos for the two-hundredth time (link), we remembered that Day 1a of the 2008 Irish Open was underway at Dublin's Citywest Hotel in Ireland, the homeland of two thirds of the Entities that comprise Wicked Chops Poker.

Billed as Europe's oldest and largest poker tournament, the €4,200 buy-in event has drawn a pretty decent field of pros from the Emerald Isle, the UK and North America including Doyle Brunson, Barney Boatman, JJ Liu, a woman, Pascal Perrault, Ram Vaswani, Alan Smurfit, Mike "Timex" McDonald, Marc Goodwin and hometurfers Andy Black, Ciaran O'Leary and Padraig Parkinson.

Also present are Roland de Wolfe and Sorel Mizzi, who placed 2nd and 3rd, respectively, at last year's Irish Open, which was won by local Marty Smyth.

Finally, David "El Blondie" Colclough, the Silda Spitzer of poker, is among the field.

For live reports, Owen Laukkanen is once again all over the action like these two friendly lesbians on each other, except nowhere near as hot. Check out his reports here.

PaddyPoker, the host, is also live blogging the tourney, although we're kind of creeped by the one reporter who drank Doyle's beer after he walked away. Check their blog out here.

Photo above of Audrina Patridge, if you didn't guess.