AUTHOR: Jerry "Jet" Whittaker TITLE: Andrew is flush after new poker payday DATE: 6:38 AM ----- BODY: IRISH poker star Andrew Black has played his cards right once again to earn himself another lucrative payday. He won €238,910 at the European Poker Tour event in Monte Carlo. Having reached the final table at the richest tournament ever held outside America, the Belfast-born poker prodigy was eliminated in seventh place. Earlier this year he won $500,000 at the Aussie Millions tournament. His biggest win came in 2005 when he took home $1.75million for finishing fifth in the World Series Of Poker. Despite another tremendous performance the former attorney expressed his disappointment at not winning the tournament outright. He said: "I should have done better. I made a mistake on the final hand and I got a bit ragged by my own standards. It's not a very forgiving game." Black is a practicing Buddhist and insists that the winnings were not important - his only concern being to continue his high standing in the game of poker. He added: "I'm not a money guy. I might give some away and spend some of it. But my plan is really to take the poker world by storm - to re-invent the standards of poker. "No-one has really dominated year after year and I want to do that." Another Irish player Shane Reihill finished 22nd and won €33,800. In an interview with The Irish Post last year Black gave his opinions on why the Irish have enjoyed so much success playing poker. He said: "Ireland has always been a nation of outsiders to some degree. I think poker has often been the realm of artists of one sort or another, but maybe not artists as commonly viewed. "Ireland has a history of writers, poets and revolutionaries and in some ways poker at its best has connections with all of those kinds of things. "Ireland has also always had a bit of the rebel in him and poker definitely has a bit of that. "Irish people are very much peopleorientated and a lot of poker is about getting a sense of people and trying to judge people, so it's a very social game. "So that's another reason for our success."
--------