Dermot Blain

Dermot Blain has been blessed with more than just luck of the Irish. He’s been playing cards professionally and profitably for almost a decade, and there’s no way that luck alone has been the driving force that has propelled his success. He got into poker whilst working a sales job in Derry, but it was only when he moved to Dublin a couple of years later that he became hooked on cards.

Fitting the Irish stereotype nicely, it was a combination of luck and alcohol that kick-started his poker career. As he explained in a 2011 interview with Rebecca McAdam:

‘After a night on the piss with the lads we went to the Jackpot and I won a chunk, so I decided to play [poker] the next few nights and ended up going on a mad heater. I won about 20k in three weeks . . . I guess it was pretty hard to go back to work after that considering I won nearly a year’s salary in three weeks!’.

Since 2009, Dermot has accumulated more than $2,300,000 playing tournaments on an international scale. His first and biggest win to date came in his initial year as a travelling MTT grinder when he took down the APPT Main Event in Macau for $541,100.

Following this triumph, Blain has picked up three EPT titles, a WPT win and a recent victory at the PokerStars Championship in Monte Carlo. Although his bread and butter is No Limit Hold’em, the formerly sponsored FullTilt ambassador has achieved success in Pot Limit Omaha games as well. He plays cash games in both variants too and has sat at games as high as $100 / $100.

Unlike most poker pros, Dermot didn’t get into online poker until later in his career around 2010. He admits that he excels in the live format for a number of reasons:

‘I’m pretty good at reading people and know what certain people are and aren’t capable of, which is pretty important, it’s hard being stuck five buy-ins in a live game because it’s so slow . . . so I guess you have to be really patient, which I’m pretty good at’.