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Linus Lomu
Thursday, September 29, 2022. I’m in Malta for the first Unibet Open after the pandemic. I press the button for the elevator and get in when it comes. It stops before my floor and someone else gets in. I’m looking at my phone (as I so often am) but I glance up to see a young guy smiling awkwardly and moving from foot to foot. When I make eye contact he says:
“You…..you’re Dara O’Kearney, right?” After I confirm my identity he continues. “I’m Linus Lomu on Unibet”
I smile. “I know that name. I wondered who it was”
I wasn’t lying. Linus Lomu was one of the most creative and tricky Unibet regs I battled against on a nightly basis, and the one I got the most “who is that guy?” enquiries from other regs. I didn’t know the answer until that moment.
We parted ways without me asking his real name or him volunteering it (not unusual: online players tend to go by their screen names rather their actual names. Tom Hall is Jabracada in my mind, not the other way around). The next person I saw was David Lappin and I told him: “I just met Linus Lomu. Some young Irish guy.”
I didn’t know it then, but I’d just met Simon Wilson for the first time.
I meet hundreds if not thousands of people through poker every year. It embarrasses and ashames me that I don’t remember the vast majority from meeting to meeting, and the “we met before in….” from them draws a “no record found” from my memory bank. But there are some people you just know are special, or are going to be special, and Simon was one of those, to the point I remember where and when we first met.
Simon Wilson
Simon bricked what I believe was his first ever live festival, which he’d qualified for on Unibet. A few weeks later he went to his second one, the Festival in Bratislava, and fared much better, notching up his first Hendon mob when he came 2nd in the warmup event. He followed that a few days later with another cash, and the following day notched up his first win.
A short while later, he dogged Lappin for chip lead
A couple of weeks later I saw him at another Unibet event he had qualified for, the IPO in Dublin. After cashing the Main Event he jumped into the 1K Super High Roller. As the bubble loomed I went over to check how David Lappin was doing (he had heaps). Spotting Simon smiling awkwardly at me, I congratulated him on his results in Bratislava. A short while later, he dogged Lappin for chip lead. At the time I wrote:
“Near the final table and actual money bubble of the super high roller he got Tens in against the Sixes of rising young star Simon Wilson for the chiplead and couldn’t hold. The fact that Simon went on to win the event underlines just how big that pot was.
…
When I heard of Lappin’s sickening exit from the Super High Roller, I decided it was prudent to take a break from comms and go for dinner with the dispirited loser to a place of his choosing. It was the most downcast I’d ever seen him, understandable given he’d just lost an 80/20 for five figures of equity.
Over dinner he’d expressed no enthusiasm for the idea of getting into the turbo Day 1D of the Main that was kicking off, but the chicken wings seemed to replenish him and he ended up hopping in and bagging up. From there, he never looked back and had he won the final flip four handed he would have been a strong favorite to take down the title.”
What I tactfully left out at the time was that in between gorging on chicken wings, Lappin spent a lot of time berating what a donkey this young guy Simon was, getting sixes in for all the chips near the bubble, and that for several months after, whenever I brought Simon’s name up, as I often did as his star continued to rise, all Lappin would say, or mutter, was: “Sixes. Sixes!!!!”
My Irish Open 2025
I went into this year’s Irish Open in an optimistic mood. After having to wait until 2019 to even cash the event, I’d cashed every one since, and last year had my deepest ever run. I went into the event as one of the bookie’s favourites after my deepest run ever in an anniversary Sunday Million, but while I notched up four (small) cashes, my main memories of this Irish Open will not be my own performances, but rather the event itself, Simon’s win, and the results of my students overall, with several final tabled and new high scores.
This was the biggest Irish Open ever. Paul O’Reilly and JP McCann have done an incredible job rebuilding the event from the low point it hit a decade ago, first teaming it with the Norwegians, and more recently turning it into Europe’s GPI Award winning premier poker event in its own right. The whole team including registration staff, dealers and floor staff were tremendous. While there will always be some problems when an event grows as fast as the Open has, the whole team showed great flexibility and enthusiasm and commitment to customer experience, and many of the problems are not just a result of that explosive growth but outside the control of the organizers and within the remit of the venue itself. Paul and JP have always shown a willingness to take on board constructive criticism, including some by yours truly on structures and scheduling, and this year’s schedule and structures were the best ever. As the event wound down, JP sent me a message predicting they could hit more than 6000 runners in the main next year, and I for one wouldn’t bet against him.
Students outshine the teacher
On the subject of my students outshining me, I won’t mention them all because that would turn this into a very long brag for SimplifyPoker (my new training site which just announced a monthly subscription Academy), so apologies to those I omit. Siddharth Sudunagunta got things started with a second in a side event, then it was the turn of Lydia Cugudda who was second in the Ladies. My Turkish student Baris Topuz continued his recent amazing form in Cyprus going when he took fourth (and a couple of big bounties) in the 1k Mystery Bounty (he also went 5/5 in satellites at the festival).
Moya has not been playing all that long and her game is coming along in leaps and bounds
Last but by no means least, Moya Murphy took fourth in the Mini Irish Open (an event I chopped a decade ago). Moya has not been playing all that long and her game is coming along in leaps and bounds with several big online results, but this was by far her biggest live result. The most striking thing for me was how cool and calm she was under pressure on the final table (she joked to me it was the calmest she felt all weekend). Temperament is crucial in poker and can’t really be taught, you either have it or you don’t, and you don’t know until it’s put to the test. The sad truth is people just buckle in those spots. When you add technical knowledge and work ethic to keep improving to temperament you have pretty much everything you need to succeed in the game. I knew Simon Wilson had it the first time I met him, I knew Stephen Kehoe, Paulina Loeliger, and all the other great players I have coached had it when I worked with them, and Moya definitely has it. Great result and performance.
Built different
Speaking of students or former students, I remember a conversation I overheard between another former student of mine, EPT winner Padraig O’Neill, and Simon Wilson in the Intercontinental. Simon told Padraig that a hand in which he felt Padraig had owned him years earlier tortured him to this day. The hand itself was not the type of hand most players would give more than a few seconds thought to: if I remember correctly, it was blind on blind where Padraig raised from the small and Simon defended the big. I think the flop went small bet call, turn check check and river small bet, Simon tank called ace high and Smidge showed better ace high. Simon told Padraig “You knew exactly what I had and milked me for the maximum.” The fact that the three or four big blinds he lost in this pot to another crusher tells you something about what makes crushers different. Beats don’t bother them, they don’t worry about how they’re running or flips they lose, they focus just on what they can control, their own decisions and mistakes. They hold themselves to ridiculous standards. A female crusher I coached for a while once spent months beating herself up over a flop sizing error she made. While the standard human reaction is to focus on the vicissitudes of variance, these crushers are champions and just built different, or wired differently.
The more things change the more they stay the same
At the start of Day 2, Simon was on the next table to me. We exchanged smiles and a few words as he moved somewhat awkwardly from foot to foot, and I was reminded of our first meeting, and how little he had changed, how innocent and unspoiled he was in spite of his considerable success (mostly online) in those two and a half years. I busted before the first break, and he didn’t seem to have many chips in front of him as I left. I was therefore delighted when I started getting reports that he was building a big stack. He did the same last year, and his appearance on the stream back then was the first time most Irish players became aware of him. I started getting messages from some who had heard me rave about him saying I needed to have a word with him, his table image was wrong, or he was doing mad stuff, or he seemed too emotional. I copied and pasted “he knows what he’s doing” a lot that day until he bust.
Simon had learned his trade in the nightly streets on Unibet
It was the same again this year, although the messages stopped coming when it became clear he was likely to win. The way he carried himself on the final table in front of the biggest rail I’ve ever seen in Ireland showed a maturity beyond his years. One potential trap in these situations is you can be overwhelmed by input from different sources, a sort of poker equivalent of too many cooks spoiling the broth. While he responded to all the good wishes, he relied entirely on his study buddy and close friend, fellow crusher Conor O’Rourke for strategic input and feedback. I chatted with Conor briefly after the win, and he pointed out that Simon had learned his trade in the nightly streets on Unibet. He told me that when Conor advised him he needed to get on other sites too like ACR, he had no idea how to even get money on. Conor transferred him a small amount and he won his first tournament there, the nightly 88. He had similar debuts on GG and Stars, crushing from day one, something Conor said he’d never seen before.
There seemed to be a total inevitability that he would win. I predicted it at the start of the final table to Laura Carroll, and as Conor arrived to rail and advise, he shouted “Have you heard Doke? Simon is going to win the Irish Open” Not a single person on the rail, myself included, doubted it for a minute as he moved seemingly effortlessly into the chip lead with four left, and even as he lost the first few all ins, the shout that went up was
“That’s it! Give them hope.”
An iconic moment
When he finally did seal the deal, both sides of his psyche emerged. Linus, the gracious poker winner who delayed his celebrations until his opponent had offered his congratulations and he his commiserations with a hug, and Lomu, charging at and diving into the rail with an exuberance and athleticism reminiscent of his rugby hero, the late great Jonah Lomu. In doing so, he created one of the greatest, maybe even the greatest, iconic moments in Irish Open history.
In the bar afterwards, he spoke to David Lappin, saying he wanted to come on the Chip Race again to discuss the win.
“I know the show is over but would you please do one more and I’ll come on.”
I can’t think of a more fitting final guest for the Unibet sponsored Chip Race than an Irish kid who grew up on the site on his way to becoming a legend.
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