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I wasn't in Ireland for the Boylepoker IPO before I got a taste of the buzz that it was creating. The first taxi driver in the line of cabs outside the airport was a lad called John. I'd met John in his cab about two weeks before last year's IPO and on hearing about his genuine disappointment that that tournament was a sell out, I had managed to talk the good people in the Boylepoker team into sorting out a seat for him. This year, he'd left nothing to chance. He was in and ready to go.
I opted to play day 1A and managed to play practically all of it. After a few hours, I managed to make the unforgivable mistake of confusing three five thousand chips in one of my opponent's stack for five hundreds. But the dealer punished him rather than me and I knocked the poor guy out. He took it very well and I'm sure he'd be delighted to hear that I got dogged myself several hours later. Sometimes there is some sort of justice in this cruel game.
On the morning of day 1B, I was standing outside the hotel, talking to 1999 WSOP champion, Noel Furlong, when Manus Burke from Galway joined us. He was in great form. He'd just come from the car park where he'd seen two gamblers throwing two euro coins up against the wall to determine who was going to pay the car park bill. He said it epitomised everything this tournament was all about and he now didn't care what happened to him. That was just as well because what happened wasn't very much.
Mad Marty was in flying form. No one was safe, and it certainly didn't matter whether they spoke English or not. He accosted some poor French guy who was minding his own business as he walked in the front door of the hotel, carrying a bottle of coke in his hand. Marty told him that only beverages purchased on the premises could be consumed in the hotel. The French guy shrugged his shoulders and did his best, but stopping Marty when he's in full flow is near enough impossible.
The lad finally caught a well-deserved break when Marty took a shine to one of the stick-on badges he was wearing and asked if he could have it. Luckily, the guy gave it to him or we could have been there forever. Marty finally let him go with a friendly warning. Some things never change.
The tournament was so well run that when Steven went on the forums asking people what could be improved in the future, he got a very friendly response from all who had played there. There were only a few minor issues, though some might consider the bar running out of Guinness rather careless. Another mild gripe was that in one of the side events the information about the number of players remaining in the tournament was a bit behind what was actually happening. Rory Liffey came up with the last word on this : "Why can't they just stand up and count the number of tables and then sit down and do the maths?" You just can't win.
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