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#876 – How My Friend David Almost Became the King of Espana
The bearded young man in the center of the picture is David Lappin, an excellent poker player and friend of The Full Tilt Poker Blog. He is accepting congratulations and an oversized check for €60,000 for his runner-up finish in the third event of the Full Tilt Poker Series Espana at the Gran Casino Barcelona early in the morning on October 5. (The photo is courtesy of Rob O’Connor, a Dubline Bellybuster and professional photographer from Dublin.) O’Connor’s photo didn’t have a caption, but I imagine Lappin is asking, “Are there any liquor stores in Barcelona open at 3am where I can cash this?”
My friendship with David is evidence of the power of the internet to make the world a smaller and more friendly place. (That’s right. It’s not all about cyber-porn or guys taking other guys’ money at poker.) I’ve actually met David (who is from Ireland), just once, but I consider him a good friend. He has been an avid reader of the Blog and a frequent online tournament opponent. A couple of years ago, he asked me to participate in a private tournament hosted by his online community, the Dublin Bellybusters. From this event and a few others, I got to know a little bit about David and many of his poker friends. We had a nice meeting last year in London at the Million Pound Challenge, which I believe was his first live tournament.
When one of David’s friends, Patrick (Dr Fill Good), won my second Relay For Life tournament on Full Tilt last spring, he generously donated the entire prize to Relay. This led to the Dublin Bellybusters challenging me to a series of heads-up matches, the result of which was them contributing to even more to Relay For Life.
From David, I also met several people who are part of an online community named badbeatspoker.net. I think there is some overlap between them and the Bellybusters and also great competition and camaraderie. It was with great interest, therefore, that I followed the deep run of Scott Cook of badbeatspoker.net in the Main Event this year.
It was nice to see David grab his own piece of glory in the Full Tilt Poker Series Espana. He finished runner-up out of 200 players in the third event in Barcelona. Congratulations and good work.
David’s friends have been big supporters of my Relay For Life charity tournaments, the next of which is on the schedule for Sunday, November 22. Please sign up or, better still, get your online community involved and show those Dublin guys what for!
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