Popular poker presenter Phil “The Tower” Heald will be in Dublin this April as host for the Irish Poker Open.
The Tower, very well-known in the UK as the Grosvenor live stream anchor, will be playing a leading role at this year’s Irish Open festival – introducing the action as well as interviewing players, chatting to event winners, and reporting on all the fun and excitement at the tournament.
The Irish Open is familiar ground for The Tower who has been attending the event for years as a player as well as undertaking occasional stints in the commentary booth.
This year’s Irish Open, which is taking place at the RDS from April 10 to April 21, is set to be the biggest and richest poker festival ever held in Ireland with a massive €2,500,000 Main Event prize pool guarantee. The Irish Open will also be celebrating its 45th anniversary with a ton of new events over 12 days including a brand new €1,000,000 guaranteed LuxonPay Mystery Bounty event and a guarantee for the Mini Irish Open of €1,000,000.
The Tower hails from Rotherham where he combined his first career as a Coca-Cola and Whitbread lorry driver with a bunch of DJing gigs on the side – weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals, quiz nights, poker nights and ten years of compering karaoke evenings. In 2004, he moved to Blackpool to take up DJing full-time and became involved with a local poker forum called A World of Poker. At the time, poker forums were the only way that players could find out what was happening at live events and forum bloggers would travel the world reporting from various tournaments.
In 2006 The Tower made his first poker broadcasting appearance on a poker show for Sky TV. He was then asked by A World of Poker to be a frontman for their new online broadcast called Internet Corner. After a year of blogging the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour, The Tower started recording videos from GUKPT stops and in 2013 became commentator for the GUKPT’s new live stream. Working with Cardroom Direct for the last decade, the team was delighted to agree a three-year deal recently to cover all Grosvenor’s National Poker League events.
The Tower, who has also worked at the Battle of Malta, the MPN Poker Tour and the Gala Casino British Poker Tour, said: “I have had the occasional stint as a commentator at the Irish Open but I’m really looking forward to being this year’s host. The Irish Open is unique – there is nothing like it for atmosphere and fun. Last year’s festival was huge and I know numbers are going to be even bigger this year. It’s going to be an amazing event.”
