The Irish Open Deaf Championship was a while in making. The seeds were sown in January 2024 when JP McCann met Darren Chow at the WSOP Internatinal Circuit stop in Calgary.
Chow takes up the story: “I met JP through a good friend called Raph. JP and I shook hands, we had a little chat and that’s where he came to me with the idea of the Deaf Poker Tournament.”
For Chow it was a no-brainer. “I thought yeah, that’s a brilliant idea. Is this a dream coming true? This is something I’ve wanted for years. We chatted for about an hour and I came here in the April.”
Fast forward 12 months and the inaugural Irish Open Deaf Poker Championship has just reached its conclusion. The event was won by Switzerland’s Starny Hoang (€1,825), with fellow countryman Ueli Munoz (€1,180) the runner-up. Chow himself finished third (€780); a fitting reward for all his efforts.
The day had begun with five finalists. Hoang had qualified from Day 1A, alongside Sabahudin Jusic, who had taken the scalp of eventual bridesmaid Munoz in what turned out to be the key hand of the day.
Munoz claimed his spot the following day, helped by not one but two straight flushes — and he was joined by Chow and fellow Canadian Yen-Jung Chen, who despite playing his first ever live tournament, was starting the final day with the chip lead.
Experience told as the day wore on however, and Chen was first to fall, his losing out to Munoz’s Kings. Sabahudin Jusic was the next to go. Jusic is used to the pressure, having won multiple golds at the Deaflympics as part of Croatia’s handball team — but he never got the run of cards needed to mount a sustained challenge today.
That left our podium finishers to duke it out. Chow was short-stacked by now and fell shortly after, when he ran Jacks into Hoang’s Kings. The heads up battle that followed provided a fiiting conclusion to this superb event: Hoang and Munoz going tit-for-tat for close on two hours before the former prevailed.
This tournament was turning heads right from the start, such was the novelty of a table of people speaking International Sign Language. Novelty perhaps, but certainly no gimmick. This felt like a tournament that is here to stay — and will only get bigger in the years to come. The camaraderie and all-round postivity of the past three days has been a welcome reminder of the joy this game can bring when it is done right.
