Paul Spillane Archives

You may have noticed that for the past 14 months we have run a freeroll on a Friday night in association with the Daily Mirror. Every week we sent over an article from one of our sponsored pros and they printed the password to the freeroll at the bottom of the article, all complicated stuff!

Details have been announced of this year's IPO extra chips incentive and unsurprisingly it hasn't gone down well with everyone. It is a new(ish) idea and to that end I just wanted to answer a few questions that have popped up on various forums and also explain in a little more detail the thinking behind it.

Another month of giveaways with the best of the bunch being our Champion's League promotion. Basically the promo was a $1 freezeout with the winner receiving an all expenses paid trip for two - including flights, accommodation and two category 1 tickets - to the Champion's League final in Rome.

Emmet O'Leary won the prize and as a Man Utd fan he was very chuffed. I spoke to him upon his return and even though we couldn't fix the result for him, he said he had a fantastic time and even (like our Ciaran) managed to find places to get some booze in a dry city; you'll never beat the Irish!

Before I mention the promotion I have to mention a hand at the recent JP Masters.

We were six handed and on my right was a player called Tony who had been taking some time to make his decisions. He then got involved in a pot with Scott Gray, was raised on the flop and once again went into the tank. He began cutting out his chips, staring at Scott then restacked his chips, stroked his chin, went back to cutting out the raise then cutting out a possible re-raise, then sighed and put the chips into stacks then put them all into one stack and then began pondering again. Then he cut out some different coloured chips and began stacking them. The table was in complete silence, then Nicky sat back in his chair, looked at him and said: "I bet you were good at Lego as a kid".

April was a good month in many ways other than as written before - we didn't get the Irish Open winner. To be fair, we barely had a player make day 2 so we knew our fate early on. It seems these new logos are not as lucky as the last lot; I might have to send them back! It wasn't just in Dublin were we got let down; we also sent a player to Salzburg after he won a satellite but again came back empty handed.

Any football fans out there had a promotion tailored to their needs with our Champions League Tournament. For $1 you and a friend could be at the Stadio Olimpico on May 27 - promise to take me with you and I might change the settings on your doomsday switch!

After a few months of planning the 'Poker Show' is on the airwaves, it debuts tonight at 20.00.

It is based on the TV show Padraig & Jesse hosted a few years ago, undoubtedly one of the best shows ever produced that had poker as its subject matter. Obviously being hosted by these two it didn't take long for all manner of things to be discussed other than poker, which is probably why I was such a fan.

We started Sunday off with another round of golf between the three of us but this time Marty, not Nicky, did the handicaps. Marty won on the 16th. Along the way we were joined by Andy Ward, Ian Frazer, Paul Marrow, Ciaran O'Leary and Warren Lush. We really didn't deserve a gallery the way we were playing. The most surprising and most welcome visitor was the sun, in fact we all got sunburned, another 100-1 shot in the winner's enclosure.

I played the 1500 side event but turned up a little late as the hotel had to give me 38 different key cards before admitting defeat and getting a locksmith to let me in. When I did make my table I was genuinely chuffed to find Dan Harrington on my left, I knew I would be outplayed on the blinds but in return I would be getting a close up lesson on things not just poker from one of the most respected voices in our world and I'm glad to say I wasn't wrong.

I'm rarely optimistic about the chances of our players doing well, not because I doubt their talent, but because I tend to plan for the worst and anything better than that is a nice surprise.

This year's Irish Open was an exception. When I listed and priced the runners for the main event it dawned on me that one of our players had a real shot of going deep as we had so many talented players in the event. As it was, we had one man standing on the Sunday, most having been knocked out on day one; it didn't make the event any less enjoyable though.

What a month March was for the poker team, more on that success story later.

iPoker decided that what the network players needed was a huge tournament with a guarantee of $2.5 million. This must seem like a great idea, especially if you don't have to pay for any overlay, sadly we as one of their cardrooms do.

February must be one of the few months that we didn't have a lucky logo victory, but we came mighty close.

It was only as I drove down to Galway with Marty and Karen in tow, that I began to realise how utterly stupid I had been in allowing our VIP manager Ciaran three weeks holiday in January. I mean the bloke's barely through the door and here he is skiving off to the States, whilst the rest of us are left holding the baby; I'm getting soft in my old age (28).

Around this time last year I received an email from someone asking if I was interested in talking to a couple of chaps who were setting up a poker training site; they got lucky as their timing couldn't have been better.

I met Anthony and Donal at Boyle HQ after a few rounds of phone calls with my gaffer, the real guv'ner. The boys made a decent pitch and after a few more meetings we shook hands and agreed on a deal.

Donal O'Connor from PokerSwat phoned me with an idea about 10 days ago and now it's live, 'Murphy's Multiplier'.

The proposal was simple, would we be prepared to put up a prize if Peter Murphy could turn $100 into $10,000 in a set time?

I'd met Peter a few times this year, chiefly at the IPO where he final tabled and more memorably at the Brucepoker festival where I have never met a man so drunk yet unable to fall over. Of course, though I had met him a few times I had been closely following his progress and like Donal I was and am of the opinion that Mr. Murphy is one hell of a talented poker player. I think his record in 2008 is phenomenal.

I started my employment with Boylepoker at the end of November 2007 and the first thing I was keen to prevent was an overlay in a decent promotion the previous incumbent had created; we were giving away a WPT bootcamp package worth about $7000, the tournament entry was $100 and there were 19 entrants when I joined.

I phoned a few of my savvy poker friends and bumped it up to over 50 but we fell short of 70 runners. Oh well I thought, some lucky punter will love us as a result, I was later informed the winner of the tournament worked for PPP in Dublin, irony is a devious mistress sometimes.

I was awake earlier than expected on Friday, I wasn't sure at first why I couldn't sleep and then it dawned on me why I had so much adrenaline pumping through my veins, the Poker Million final. It's not difficult to explain, every Marty victory catapults both his name and ours into the poker player's consciousness, and that's a good thing.

A veritable lifetime ago young Ciaran and I were in London on a business trip, which also allowed us to attend Marty's heat in the 2008 Poker Million. Neither of us had attended a Matchroom televised event before so we were excited; the fact that our star man was in action as well just added to the magic.

Congratulations to Rob on winning last week's caption competition.

For your chance to win €25 and have it deposited into your Boylepoker.com account*, just leave a comment.

This week will go down in the history books as, err, long.

Things started great with a visit to Killarney to see how well or badly our competitors would run a huge poker festival; they ran it bloomin brilliantly and made us realise what a job we have on our plate next week to match what went on down there.

We went for lunch yesterday and came up with some even more great ideas, one involved monkeys, celebrities and drinking, so it is most unlikely to happen, but we do keep surprising ourselves. 

In case you don't already know, let me introduce the IPO team.

And so it was, that Friday past Gerry 'The Bishop' Bishop (original I know) and I  descended onto England's green and pleasant land, except it wasn't; we landed late on a wet crap sodden Luton.

We were there to have a look at how a GUKFUMJPT tour event is run and pick up some useful tips for our forthcoming IPO event in October.

The hotel was exactly as you would imagine; if you are a fan of Alan Partridge that is.

One of our responsibilities here at Boylepoker is to ensure that our sponsored money making machine (Marty Smyth) is well looked after whilst representing our brand, which is why CC (Ciarán Corbett) and myself went to London on Sunday evening last. Marty was playing his heat in this year's poker million early on Monday and wanted to make sure he had a little entourage as a WSOP winner.

Well I'm back on terra firma after an exhausting trip over the pond to continue my charity work. My colleagues explained that the USA has been suffering as a result of a global credit crunch, so I went over to Vegas and assisted in rejuvenating their economy by dumping cash in various watering holes and casinos. People think it's easy, but they forget how long it takes: playing cards for hours on end; then sitting in bars consoling yourself, drinking and telling stories - all the time handing over dollars whilst ensuring people don't feel guilty for receiving them.

I was at the Rio yesterday and thought to myself, If someone offered me a million dollars I wouldn't let a big burly man rub his hands all over my podgy white body, but strangely enough here I was allowing that very thing to happen and paying for the privilege.

Our online qualifier Tim Cullinane's brave run at this year's WSOP main event and the 9 million dollar first prize is over in a blaze of glory and disappointment. Before day 1 Tim had not slept a wink but still managed to run his 20k starting stack up to 76k before close of play. There followed a rest day which Tim spent shopping and playing poker before meeting up with a few of the chaps for a couple of beers and a bit of advice.