It's debatable whether an activity in which your main goal is to not die can be defined as a sport but, regardless of that, Jerry Seinfeld once pointed out that the luge is probably the only sport in which you could have someone competing against their will. Abduct someone off the street, stick a helmet on them to stifle the screams, throw them on a tea tray and push them off at the top of the run shouting "hold on tight!" as they disappear on their cannonball run.

If they don't have their bones ground to dust halfway down they could end up with a gold medal.

Any sport involving gambling takes a different approach, lulling you into a false sense of security before revealing its vindictive side, like the charming lady in a Bangkok bar who it turns out is actually just after your kidneys. Go horse racing and no matter how hard you study the form you will still be shown up by the mate who has tagged along for the first time and backed a 66/1 winner based purely on the fact the horse had the same initials as him. It might be galling, but at least you can rest easy in the notion that they too are now hooked, and Paddy Power will shortly own their soul and their house.

Poker takes a similar tack, always somehow bequeathing riches on the beginner and letting them think they have some God-given talent with cards.

I've lost count of the amount of times that the supposed sucker at a poker table has, having regularly glanced at the list of rules hastily scribbled out for them beforehand, plonked their cards on the table at the end of a hand and declared, "I have a 5, 6 and 7. Is that any good?"

Everybody else groans and points out that it's not, but having a flush is, and the big pile of chips in the centre of the table is theirs.

All of which might explain why you can sit and watch something like the Paddypowerpoker. com Irish Open and briefly think to yourself that you could survive there. It does seem pretty straightforward, right?

Well, gambling may be the son of avarice and the father of despair, but it's also the stepbrother of delusion. Most of us could no more compete at that level of poker than the fat man sitting on a bar stool screaming obscenities at Cristiano Ronaldo could beat a Premiership full-back for pace.

Even beyond dealing with the pressure and doing complex probability mathematics in their heads, it was obvious the finalists were playing with minds as much as cards. The most interesting thing about poker is how it strips a character bare. It's not exactly the kind of TV you can dip in and out of, but once you commit yourself to watching it builds tension, develops characters and becomes compulsive.

And RT�'s coverage featured some hilarious use of music. Whenever they cut to a break and showed a montage of the action up to that point they played 'Montage' from the film Team America:

World Police, a spoof song designed to sound like over-wrought big-haired rockers from the '80s and featuring lyrics like, "Show a lot of things happening at once;

Remind everyone of what's going on;

And with every shot you show a little improvement; To show it all would take too long, We need a montage. Oooooh, a montage. Even Rocky had a montage."

Genius.

The final three players left standing were all cut from different cloth. There was Sorel Mizzi, a Canadian and an expert in chopping, or restricting the size of the pot, enabling him to make steady gains while rarely coming within touching distance of going bust. In a previous life he was a risk assessor.

Then there was Roland De Wolfe, the current wonder kid on the scene and the most exciting player on show, constantly rushing in where angels fear to tread but rarely doing it foolishly. Whenever he had a tough decision to make he wouldn't stare at his cards or the table but right at his direct opponent, waiting for minutes on end for them to give a sigh or blink that was the tell he needed. And then he'd bet everything he had on the conclusion he'd reached. In a previous life he was a stuntman.

De Wolfe's unnerving technique and instinct saw off all-comers save eventual winner Marty Smyth, a Belfast man with an implacable mask where his face should have been. Even when within touching distance of the ?650,000 winner's cheque he still kept a Zen-like dedication to the task in a hand. In a previous life he was a poker player, surely. You can't learn that kind of nervelessness anywhere else, not even doing the luge.