The Irish Open is Europe's oldest poker tournament and a firm favourite with players from all over the world. It's set for 2-9 April this year and will be televised.

Preparations are gearing up and paddypowerpoker.com has announced the launch of secure online registration for the Irish Open 2007 main event and all side events taking place over Easter weekend 2007, 5-9 April.

Players can visit www.irishpokeropen.com and click on ‘register’. On the registration page there are three options:

• ‘I am paying for myself’ – suitable for players registering and paying for themselves
• ‘I am booking on behalf of other people’ – suitable for cardrooms and casinos registering and paying for group bookings
• ‘I am booking for myself and for other people’ suitable for players booking for themselves and friends

When the appropriate option is chosen registration and payment by credit/debit card, cheque/bank draft or bank transfer is just a few short steps away.

Before payments can be processed players must complete the registration process fully, following all instructions in the process. Players will receive a confirmation email once payment has been received.

Registration is not complete until full payment has been received. The final date for receipt of payment for online registration is close of business Wednesday 4 April.

Note to editors: The Irish Open is an over 18s event. Players must comply with all registration procedures and T&Cs to compete in the Irish Open. The Irish Open 2007 will be recorded for television. Promotional logos are allowed. PaddyPower.com does not accept bets from US residents.

The Irish Poker Open online payment gateway is secured by VeriSign, the intelligent infrastructure service that enables and protest billions of interactions across the world's voice and data networks. VeriSign monitors over 1.5 billion security events daily and secures more than 500,000 Web servers worldwide.