Spraggy rises to Team GRND's challenge
Six PokerStars Ambassadors and their elite teams of challenge-takers and move makers have begun the Shamrock Showdown at the 2025 Irish Open, combining tournament competition with hilarious off-the-felt games in the ultimate test of craic mastery.
Meet Team GRND, Team Spraggy, Team Fintan, Team Marle, Team Parker and Team Wistern .
Each team includes a player who won their way to the Irish Open via an Emerald Pass Community Giveaway and is now part of the action both on and off the felt. They’ll be taking part in poker tournaments, challenges (creative, skill-based and just plain weird, if last year is anything to go by) alongside some of the greats of the online poker streaming world). Community interaction doesn’t end there: fans, friends and rival players can back their favourite team for a chance to win a share of $2,000 in Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) tickets.
The first points on the board (34) went to Team GRND (captained by Felix ‘xflixx’ Schneiders) on Day 1 of the festival (as they excelled at RiverDance, Photo-ops with PokerStars Staff and making a high-five montage video); they also won the opportunity to challenge Team Spraggy to an impromptu quiz on Friday.
This had a 20 point swing on the line for captain Benjamin “Spraggy” Spragg, who had to take on nine questions solo: get more than three wrong and he would lose 20 points for his team; answer six plus correctly and he would gain 20.
Spraggy didn’t even let Craic Den Host Phil Baker finish his question, “How much is a pint of Guinness…” before shouting, “Too much!” which was a crowd-pleasing answer. When Baker finished, “…In the Craic Den?” he did manage to hit the correct answer (€7.50) with, one suspects, the assistance of the bar staff.
“How many days were there between Parker Talbot’s first live cash and his first live win at the Irish Open?” he was asked.
Given 10% leeway, he found the figure of 4,372 days – winning a point and some “oooh” sounds from the crowd (it was 4,363).
Spraggy proved himself of medium ability at the “higher or lower” format – guessing correctly that there were more than 200 poker tables at this year’s Irish Open, that there were more than 310 dealers, and that last year’s prize pool topped €3,150,000. But he failed to guess that there were more than 50 nationalities represented in 2024 in the Main Event, and that there were fewer than 25 runners in the Irish Grand National in the same year. When he slightly overestimated the number of entrants in the Main Event, too, it was down to the wire for question nine.
“What is the official national symbol of Ireland?” asked Phil Baker.
“Clover. No! Harp!” This was controversial – should he have been allowed to change his guess? The mysterious Craic Commissioner had to be called. The determination was that he should have been asked, “Is that your final answer?” and with this crucial omission he gained 20 points for his team, making them the only ones apart from GRND to have made inroads on the scoreboard at this early point.
The further adventures of various team members including 2023 Irish Open Champion David Docherty, Georgina “GJReggie” James, and Irish Open Ambassadors Tim Silman, Elizabeth Bennett Martin, Chris Dowling (fresh from his Big O victory on the first day of the festival), Brian Morgan and Karen Muir can be followed on the PokerStars Blog.
