O'Dwyer Takes His Squeak-Free Seat

Calum Grant

Level 4 : Blinds 1,000/1,500, 1,500 ante

One more crusher has taken his seat in the tournament to boost the field to 14 entries.

Steve O'Dwyer, with nearly $40 million in live earnings, has hopped into the mix and finds himself on the direct left of PokerStars ambassador Ramon Colillas.

O'Dwyer has had some massive influence at EPT Prague, after successfully ending his crusade against the famous Prague chair squeak.

For most of the stop's history, the "eeeeeek" that would follow anytime someone needed to leave their chair became one of the biggest pet peeves. Steve O'Dwyer was one of those players, and he had been on a crusade to get the problem fixed for the best part of ten years.

“It’s always been my biggest complaint here in Prague is the chairs causing psychic damage,” O’Dwyer told the Poker in the Ears Podcast last year. “It’s not a squeak. It’s the loudest, most painful screech you could possibly imagine, with those bare metal bottoms of the chairs ripping into the tile floor every time one of the 500 people in the room slightly shifts their weight a little bit.”

Thankfully, the solution was found at PokerStars' last trip to Prague, where ferules (chair caps) were added to the feet of the chair legs, and thankfully, those ear-piercing squeaks are a thing of the past!