The advent of Late Night Poker on Channel 4 in 1999 did much to popularise poker in the UK and appropriately the first person the British public saw taking down a heat was Liam Flood, who booked his place in the first series final in the very first episode.
Sadly Flood passed away on Saturday, 16 August 2014, aged 71, but to those who were inspired to take up the game watching him and the other protagonists on Channel 4 he will go down as one of its true legends.
To those fortunate enough to have faced him across the felt he was a 'gentleman', a man with a 'great sense of humour' who was a 'genuine pleasure' to play against. To those who never had that pleasure, he was a true ambassador for poker who showed it was a game to be enjoyed, despite the huge amounts of money that were sometimes at stake, and that you don't have to wear shades and a hoody to be seriously good at it.
A bookmaker by profession, Flood began playing poker tournaments in Ireland in the 1980s and was a close friend of Terry Rogers, who created the Irish Poker Open, which Flood won in 1990 and 1996, becoming one of only four players to win it more than once. A unique third victory eluded him, but he never stopped trying, and on his last outing in 2013 he cashed and made the top 40.
Despite taking up the game relatively late, closing in on his 50s when he won the Irish Open for the first time, he was instrumental in putting Irish poker on the map and was one if the first Irish players to take part in the World Series of Poker.
Flood also took over running the Irish Poker Open when Rogers passed away in 1999 and oversaw its growth from humble origins of three or four tables in the Eccentrics Club to Europe's largest and most prestigious poker tournament.
He was a finalist in series one and two of Late Night Poker and went on to be the floorman for its Celebrity Poker Club spin-off.
In 1997 he had an 11th-place finish in the pot-limit hold'em tournament at the WSOP and won the European Championship in London, defeating Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliott heads-up. The following year he finished 15th in the no-limit hold'em tournament at the WSOP.
And for a decade from the turn of the millennium not a year went by without Flood's name appearing on the list of Europe's top earners. His biggest cash coming in 2007 when he finished fourth in the Poker Million VI on Sky Sports in December for $175,000.
A year earlier Flood recorded his first outright win in a televised tournament, winning his heat, his semi-final and then the final of the Party Poker European Open, beating Darren Hickman in the final and pocketing the first prize of $125,000.
He reached the final table of the Million again in 2008 and this time chopped it four ways with Marty Smyth, Eoghan O'Dea and Ciaran O'Leary and in all his total career live earnings exceeded more than $1.1m seeing him ranked ninth on the all-time Irish money list.
Flood's legacy to the game of poker is immense and his presence at poker tables throughout the world will be sorely missed but the tournament he helped to build into one of Europe's great festivals lives on and with it the memory of one of the finest men to win it.
