Niall Farrell Embarks on ‘Hero’s Journey’ in BBC Documentary
Three years ago, Niall Farrell was scrolling through Facebook when a notification popped up on his phone. A man named Greg Clark had made a comment on one of his posts, hoping to talk to Farrell when he traveled to Las Vegas that coming fall for the rescheduled 2021 World Series of Poker.
Farrell, the No. 1 Scottish player in all-time poker tournament earnings according to Hendon Mob, has managed to amass a considerable list of titles over the course of his poker career, including poker’s triple crown via a WPT Main Tour title at WPT Caribbean in Season XV, a WSOP bracelet in Europe in a 2017 25,000 High Roller, and the 2015 EPT Malta Main Event. He also has millions in online tournament earnings, including a 2014 Full Tilt Poker FTOPS Main Event victory and multiple PokerStars SCOOP titles.
But what Clark had to offer was an opportunity very few poker players are afforded – the spotlight of a documentary feature that would air on a major television network in Scotland.
“I ended up speaking on the phone to him, and he was telling me that he makes documentaries,” said Farrell. “He recently had one released for the BBC called Real Kashmir FC, which is about an ex-Scottish footballer who was coaching out in Kashmir in India. It had done really well. It won lots of awards and a BAFTA Scotland. So I watched that, it was really good, we got talking and it kind of just went from there.”
Clark flew out to meet Farrell in the closing weeks of the 2021 WSOP, and after getting a feel for each other and some preliminary footage the pair agreed to move forward with the project, which would eventually come to be titled The Four Rules of the Poker Kings.”
A documentary crew followed Farrell across four tournament stops in 2022 – EPT Prague in March, EPT Monte Carlo and UKIPT Dublin in May, and ending at the 2022 WSOP.
“We were just trying to get as much footage as possible, so basically any time I went to play poker, Greg would travel with me,” said Farrell. “The main reason being, it’s poker is very unpredictable. When we first started filming, he had a kind of outline where he said, ‘Well, ideally what would happen is the hero’s journey. You have a bit of adversity, then you overcome it, then you win and you’re successful.’
“I had to tell him, because he was coming cold to poker, I can’t guarantee you I’m gonna win anything. I could go a whole year, and the ‘hero’s journey’ is just he starts off losing, and he loses more for the rest of the year. But we actually got very, very fortunate – a couple of close calls, and then we got an actual tournament win, which was incredibly fortunate for the doc.”
Farrell’s win at the UKIPT Dublin Main Event serves as a high point for the documentary. Along the way, Farrell also managed to final table a high roller at EPT Prague and made a deep run to the final two tables of the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event.
The documentary served as something of a time capsule for both Farrell and the poker world itself, as more venues opened up post-COVID and Farrell got back to more regularly traveling the tournament circuit. It shined a light on a particularly challenging window for Farrell, as it represented the first time Farrell left his partner and their then-two-year-old son behind after getting to spend the vast majority of that time enjoying the privilege of being a father.
“It’s interesting looking back at it now because, with COVID and my son being born, the decisions were kind of made for me,” said Farrell. “Having a new arrival in the family, it seemed like a good time to take the benefit of the good fortune I had up to that point, where I’m able to take a year or two off here and just be a dad and all this kind of stuff.
“It’s quite interesting to see me getting back into the swing of things as well,” said Farrell. “Another reason why it was kind of really fortunate that we got the poker footage that we did, because I think coming back after a fairly lengthy layoff, it’s quite likely you would just bust a bunch of tournaments in your return, normally. I was fairly comfortable and seemed to be doing quite good getting back in the swing of things. Some bad habits still remained, like being in sulk for 30 minutes after busting a tournament in my incredibly fortunate and privileged life.”
While the documentary is clearly geared toward those outside of the poker bubble, there are quite a few highlights along the way for poker enthusiasts and outsiders alike. There’s a moment in which Farrell pulls out a plastic grocery shopping bag full of cash ahead of entering a high roller, a fair number of adult beverages consumed alongside Farrell’s signature style of banter, and a moment in particular that stands out for Farrell simply because of a jarring visual.
“One of my favorite ones was in Prague, where I’m talking at a little cafe,” said Farrell. “We did an introspective kind of moment, but that was actually on St. Patrick’s Day, and Greg had told me we probably wouldn’t be filming that day. So I’d been in a bar and got my face painted, so I’m actually just sat there, and there’s just no context or any explanation for it in the doc, where there’s just bits where I have green face paint on and just no explanation as to why that’s happened. So a lot of people on Twitter are asking about that.
“Also, my mom says I swear too much,” Farrell said. “And she’s right, I do curse far too much.”
Farrell isn’t the only featured player in the documentary, either. Longtime Scottish pro David Docherty, who attended a number of the same events as Farrell along the way, talks about his longtime hunt for a signature victory in his career. Amongst the closing credits is a scene of Docherty’s long-awaited win in the 2023 Irish Poker Open Main Event for $398,780.
“I’d only known my part, so when the kind of ‘Cool Runnings’ bit at the end, where it says how everyone gets on and David won the Irish Open, I thought that was really cool,” said Farrell. “It was a really uplifting end to the doc as well.”
There were several delays over the course of production, leading to the lengthy period between filming and its release earlier this month by BBC Scotland. But one of the unintended side effects of the delay has been a strong reminder for Farrell as to his biggest motivating factor for continued success in poker – a throughline in the documentary that carries forth to the present day.
“Seeing my son at two years old, I forgot how unbearably cute he was at that age,” said Farrell. “He got his looks from his mom, for sure.”
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