Karen Muir, one of Ireland’s most successful female live tournament players, has joined the Irish Open as their newest Ambassador.
Karen is a well-known player in the Irish poker community as well as in Europe where she plays regularly in tournaments and cash games at major festivals. She will be joining fellow Ambassador Chris Dowling in raising awareness of the Irish Poker Open both at home and overseas and helping to promote the event to her wide network of female players.
Karen, who lives in Dublin and has been playing poker full-time for around nine years, has a string of great results to her name including winning the NLH Bounty Freezeout at the Master of Classics in Amsterdam for a coveted MCOP Plate and cash prize, and as well as taking down the Pot Limit Omaha Double Chance tournament at Estrellas Poker Tour in Marbella for her first PokerStars spade trophy. She is also a founder member of Ireland’s team in the Match Poker Nations Cup – which Ireland, sponsored by the Irish Open, won the first time they ever played it in 2017. Overall, her live tournament winnings now total more than $50,000.
She said: “I’m absolutely delighted that the Irish Open has given me this honour to represent the event and become an Ambassador. It’s an amazing opportunity. I’ve been playing the Irish Open for nearly a decade – in fact, next year’s event will mark my tenth anniversary. Hopefully I’m going to win it – it’s been a long time since a woman won it! I travel abroad at least ten times a year and I’m a very social person so it will be easy to spread the word about the Irish Open wherever I’m playing.”
After working for the family casino business for many years, Karen first took up poker in 2008. After only a few months, she had won a satellite to the £2,000 Sky Sports European Ladies Event and found herself sitting alongside such poker luminaries as Liv Boeree and Annette Obrestad. Despite the tough competition, she finished sixth for $6,000 and was hooked on live poker from then on. Most recently she was competing at UKIPT Brighton and is currently in Spain for Estrellas Malaga.
She added: “The Irish Open is always on my calendar and I always try to play it if I can. Even though I’m primarily a cash game player, I love playing big tournaments. So, whatever I go to, I’ll usually play the Main Event, a few side events and then some cash. I can’t wait for next year’s Irish Open – it’s going to be amazing wearing the Irish Open patch at the longest-running poker tournament outside of Las Vegas. I played at the new RDS venue last year and it was great; I can’t wait to play there again as an Irish Open Ambassador. I’m thrilled.”
