While the football World Cup boils away nicely over in scorching Germany, two other international teams of eleven players are lining up, this time over the green poker felt.

In a first-of-a-kind event 22 poker players from Ireland and Great Britain will compete in the International Charity Heads Up Council (ICHUC) tournament on Saturday 8 July 2006 at 2pm in the Fitzwilliam Card Club, Dublin for the benefit of the Poker 4 Charity and OnePercentPledge charities.

And if you’re not lucky enough to make the final line-ups, there will be a €20 rebuy charity tournament after the Main Event.

Eleven players from each team, which must include at least one female member, will compete, mano-a-mano over a variety of games designed to test the strength-in-depth of each country’s skills: eight games of no-limit hold em, one pot limit Omaha game, one pot limit Omaha high-lo game, one pot limit seven card stud game.

The tournament will see each participant stake €200. Of this, €125 will be staked on each heads up match, €50 on the team event, €25 to be split between each charity.

The Irish team is being sponsored by paddypowerpoker.com and the Great British team by bluesqpoker.com – making this also a battle of the Tribeca network.

The teams are captained by James ‘Royal Flush’ Dempsey (GB), and ‘Mr Antesup’ Mike ‘LuckyBlind’ Lacey (Irl).

Three places in each team are reserved for on-line qualifiers, while the rest of the team will comprise of players selected by the team captains and are likely to include some big guns who are currently being kept under wraps in an attempt to psyche out the opposition.

Dave Kingston, spokesman for the OnePercentPledge charity, said, ‘Two tribes are going to war again – this time over the green felt. The strategic battle for the upper hand in this challenge is monumental, I’ve never seen so much secrecy or needling prior to a game. It’s a good thing it’s for charity or I fear blood may actually be spilt!’