Neil Channing: A Monkey At 100/1

Neil Channing’s facebook status currently reads as follows:

Neil Channing is 100/1 for the Irish Open with Paddy Power. They must be made to pay for this impudence.

This facebook status was set on the 22nd March – two days before the final table. It still stands today presumably for one or a mixture of these two reasons:

1) Neil has barely had a moment to himself for 72 hours
2) Neil is bloody proud of the outcome of this status!

Being a professional gambler, Neil is, unsurprisingly, a persistent market maker. At any poker event, you can get back or lay players and outcomes in any market you can think up – you name it, Neil will price it.

Neil is frequently hired by several bookmakers to act as their poker handicapper and price up the players in advance of various events like the GUKPT.

At the Irish Open, after the end of the first day when Neil was sitting on a very healthy chip stack, he made himself a 40-1 shot to go on and win the title. Upon seeing that the sponsors Paddy Power were offering the much bigger price of 100-1, ever the handicapper, he saw this as a great value bet and so he lumped on to the tune of a £500 bet. Yep – he’s a legend.

For us, the fact that this extra £50,000 return would not really be life changing to anyone if they were to actually win £600,000 at the Irish Open, makes it even more brilliant a pay day – sort of like the icing on the cake. Or the bloody big party, however you like to look at it.