Wherever the Irish go, they always make themselves heard. So when the final table of the 1999 World Series of Poker contained two sons from the Emerald Isle, you somehow knew they were never going to lie down without putting up the fight of their lives. We get the whole story from the men who made it Ireland’s main event as JJ ‘Noel’ Furlong and Padraig Parkinson tell the tale of their battle with the Yanks

When the 1999 World Series of Poker main event was down to seven players, a railbird, noting that three of the remaining men were Irish, cried: ‘It’s Ireland against the rest of the world!’ ‘It always has been,’ came the swift reply from Dublin’s joker, Padraig Parkinson.