To help twist the President’s arm to take part in Europe’s longest running poker tournament Paddy enlisted the help of sexy cheerleaders Pippa O’Connor and Sara Kavanagh as well as pledging to add $1,000,000 to the tournament prize fund should President Obama accept the invitation.

President Obama, a self-confessed Texas Holdem Poker player, has already expressed an interest in visiting Ireland and has Irish roots that can be traced as far back as the 1850’s.

Paddy Power said “With a name like O’Bama there has to be a strong Irish connection so we’re hoping that if the President has business on this side of the Atlantic at the start of April he may just stop by and try his luck”

The Irish Poker Open is the longest running No Limit Holdem poker tournament in Europe and second longest in the world after the WSOP, Las Vegas.

The 2010 Irish Open takes place in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin from Friday 2nd – Monday 5th April 2010. Weekly super satellites to the Irish Open 2010 Main Event run on Paddy Power Poker each Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evening, with a variety of feeders running daily.

While most people will automatically fire out a huge raise with these hands to get people out, because of your position, almost any raise that you put out there is going to be shown as a sign of strength.  This will still probably thin out the field and gives you a lot of alternatives depending upon what you are holding and what your opponent does when the action gets to them.

Middle pairs are a tough hand to commit a lot of money to and if you make a large raise in early position with them and you get a few callers before the big raise, you are almost committed to making the call because of the implied odds.  This can end up hitting your stack up pretty hard over a bad stretch and is something that can easily be avoided.

The same can be said when you are holding onto AK or AQ suited.  While AK is a hand that many people will commit their stack to, it is almost something that you have to get away from in this situation.  With multiple callers, it is all but guaranteed that someone is holding at least AA or KK, if not both.  You could be drawing dead and just donating to the cause.

Just doubling the blinds in this position gives you a lot of options when someone comes back over top of you here.  If you are holding AA or KK, you are in a great position to force a call from your opponent. There will be plenty of money in there after their raise, especially if you had a couple of people trying to sneak in after your small bet.  Regardless, depending upon the size of their stack, you have put them in an odds situation that they may not be able to look past.

When you are sitting on lesser hands, you have two situations that you may be faced with.  An excessive raise is surely a sign of a big hand and allows you to get away from your hand rather cheaply.  A nominal raise will allow you to get in on the hand for a small price and still be able to take down a big pot if you happen to hit your card on the flop or are looking down at all under cards to your over pair.

This is just something to consider to mix up your playing as sitting back just a bit can get you bigger pots that being super aggressive early.  You are concealing the strength of your hand with this raise and either allowing yourself to get out cheap or possibly build a huge pot and get isolation against a re-raiser.  This will definitely keep people on their toes when they face off against you.

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