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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.
On Sunday evening we went to the Vic, London's premier cardroom and had a couple of drinks with an old friend, namely Neil 'Badbeat' Channing who was as ever on sparkling form. Later I caught up with Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliott who looked at CC and asked in all honesty if he 'was my boy'. I was so shocked I missed the obvious opportunity to ask him if his young looking girlfriend watching him play was his granddaughter (luckily for him the Vic allows under 19's). Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly were also playing so the room was pretty buzzing by the time we decided to call it a night.
Monday we met the coach laid on to take the players and staff to Sky studios near Heathrow airport, a journey lasting approx 30 minutes. The bus passengers endured Mike 'The Mouth' Matusow telling us how unlucky he was whilst we nursed coffees and he occasionally paused to tell his estate agent to buy more stocks, properties, gold and the odd luxury car.
At the studio we met old friends such as Jesse May, Mad Marty Wilson, John Duthie and Joe Beevers, and then took our place in the green room whilst Marty took his seat alongside John, The Mouth, Joe and two internet qualifiers. Marty has made the last two finals of this event, we were hopeful of at least a semi final, though realistic that he would be beating the odds to do so. The fact that 2 other Irish players had qualified just added a little more pressure.
The green room is a like a mini cinema, hosting a huge screen and luxurious seats that one can relax in. The cards were in the air and Jesse May began his commentary in a style unique to himself (after a ten gallon pot of espresso). Being able to see the player's holecards really made the already exciting event better and enabled CC to grab a few much needed tips on how to play a 6 seater shootout.
Some 4 hours after it began Marty was heads up with one of the internet qualifiers and was playing as smoothly as a recently waxed Brazilian. I went to watch in the control room with John Duthie (an ex TV show director himself) and was amazed at the amount of work that goes into producing one of these shows.
Marty made short work of the qualifier and went for an afternoon kip whilst CC and I were enthralled by the whole thing and decided to watch the 2nd heat they were filming that day, starring an old friend (Ram Vaswani), another Irish player (Eoin O'Dea), another big mouth (Tony G) and the queen of poker (Annette '15' Obrestad).
Annette breezed into the green room, totally un-intimidated by a room full of male strangers, said hello to everyone and was a little ray of light (I think CC has a thing for her now btw).
We watched the heat but Annette got rivered early to be knocked out and CC seemed to lose all interest: he started tugging my sleeve asking when we were leaving so I decided to call it a day and headed back to the hotel for a quick freshen up before taking Marty out for a suitable celebratory dinner. We had a great time and later met up with Eoin who had fantastically won his most difficult heat, ensuring there will be 4 Irish semi finalists in December (which will be shown live on Sky).
Tuesday morning it was difficult to get out of bed but as we had 3 appointments with journalists we didn't really have a choice. Pushing our luck a little, we took a gamble on sponsoring another player in a later heat to see if we could get two into the semis, but sadly he got outdrawn and it's down to Marty to win again. A busy day was topped off meeting Marty for one final pint before home time and wishing him all the best for the couple of tournaments he intends to play in London later in the week.
So a flying visit, more success for Marty and we will be back in December to see if he can win a tournament he is more than overdue to win after being horribly outdrawn for the title in the previous two finals. Wish him luck, though the way he's playing he's not going to need it.
Comments (2)
its not that hard of work....Please, im 24-7 365 days a year!
Apologies i keep meaning to go but fall asleep as soon as i get home. I will be there before i go on holidays so very soon, whats on next Tues?
I will ask Messers Channing and Devilfish but to be honest their more hassle than there worth! haha
Speak soon
Cheers