The final of the Ladbrokes Poker Million VII was broadcast live on Sky Sports on Friday night in London.  The final saw some high quality poker with the event being won by Northern Ireland’s Marty Smyth who captured the $1 million first prize.  It was Smyth’s third year in a row in the final table at the Ladbrokes Poker Million  

The semi-final took place two nights before which was also broadcast live on Sky Sports.  The six players who battled their way through to Friday’s final table were, Allen, Liam Flood, Svein Petter Nielsen, Eoghan O’Dea and Ciaran O’Leary together with Marty Smith.

The first player to be eliminated was Denmark’s Svein Petter Nielsen who went out in sixth place.  He was followed by Kevin Allen who was the highest placed Englishman in the competition, out in fifth place.  This meant the four players left were all Irish.

Liam Flood had played some good poker to reach the last four.  However, he did have a bad period for about an hour and things came to ahead when he had a showdown with Marty Smith on hand number 59 of the final table.  Flood went all-in at 5 high but his hand of a pair of fours was inferior to Marty Smyth’s pair of queens and Liam Flood was sent home in 4th place.
Down to the final three then and Marty Smyth had the chip advantage at this stage.  Ciaran O’Leary is a superstitious player and always looks away from the table when cards are dealt when he is behind in chips.  He lost out in an exchange to Smyth and had to settle for third place.

So then the heads-up final was to be a long drawn out encounter between Marty Smith and Eoghan O’Dea.  At the start of the heads-up Smyth had a clear 3 to 1 chip advantage with 1.2 million chips compared with O’Dea’s 400,000 chips.  
Smyth was considered the hot favourite by Liam Flood and Ciaran O’Leary as well as the Sky Sports commentators.  However, he didn’t have things all his own way as O’Dea began to chip away at Smyth’s lead.  On around about hand number 74 O’Dea took over the lead from Smyth.  O’Dea strengthened his position in the next few hands to hold just over 1 million chips to O’Dea’s 585,00 after the 75th hand.

After this though Smyth came back to win some hands and regain the lead.  It was all over on hand number 112 of the final table as Smyth added the Ladbroker Poker Million title to his 2008 World Series of Poker gold bracelet and 2007 Irish Open wins.  

Smyth did brilliantly to win as at one point in the final table he was the short-stack with just 15,000 chips and on the verge of elimination.  As reward, Smyth was presented with the winners’ cheque for $1 million and the trophy of the tournament he made his big time poker debut in.  

Here is how the final table ended with the players payouts:

Marty Smyth - $1,000,000
Eoghan O’Dea - $260,000
Ciaran O’Leary - $175,000
Liam Flood - $130,000
Kevin Allen - $100,000
Svein Petter Nielsen - $75,000    

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