Poker Team

Last night John O'Shea took down yet another European Championship of Online Poker tournament. John picked up €40,500 and his third ECOOP title when he came first in the $430 PLO tournament last night. In December John won the PLO Hi/Lo event in ECOOP III and last week he successfully defended his title.

Read John's blog about winning last week's PLO Hi/LO here. Check back tomorrow to read his blog detailing last night's win. 

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!

Watch out for Andy Ward in tomorrow's ECOOP PLO event #13. He'll be playing under the nickname AndrewWard, feel free to cheer him on!

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.

We just discovered a brand new concept at Xtranormal.com which allows you to make your own movies by creating the script and characters. So we thought this would a perfect vehicle to allow us recreate all those special poker memories, which can viewed timed and again. We sent Ciaran off to create a movie, which recaptured a wonderful poker memory in his life and here's what he came back with!

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.

Last nights charity event at the Jackpot was a great success. With names like Eamon Dunphy , Rosanna Davison , Ken Doherty , Nicky Power and Don Fagan in attendance the 92 runner event was always going to be a an eventful night but with over €3,000 raised for a very worthy cause the night itself proved to something special.

The tournament went on until 7.30 am this morning with one Boylepoker employee cruelly going out on the bubble in 10th place at 5am this morning !

1st Damien Balfe €2200
2nd Phlip Godkin €1200
3rd Noel McMahon €910
4th Connor Sweeney €750
5th Steve Chambers €500
6th Daisy €500
7th Eamonn Connelly €500
8th Anto M €400
9th Mr X €400

Bubble 10th €0 Ciaran Corbett :(

With people travelling from all over Ireland, we are gearing up for the live final of the Be Our Sponsored Pro promotion. Tournament kick off is 5pm. We will be posting regular updates here so stay tuned!

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

Last weekend I avoided the card rooms, the computer and the Deepstack tournament, and ventured to the big smoke to meet an old friend. I got off the bus in Dublin city centre and went straight into Fibber Magee's bar, which happens to be directly opposite the bus stop. Andrew joined me shortly after and we had good fun catching up on old times, between those awkward silences that occur when you haven't seen someone for years.

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.

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.

You'll all be pleased to hear that Boylepoker.com sponsored player Marty Smyth has reached the final of the Poker Million VII. After a gruelling semi-final yesterday Marty booked his place in the final of the Poker Million for the third year running. The tournament will be shown on Sky Sports 3 at 7pm tonight, Friday December 12th.

This is the third year that Marty has made it this far, with a sixth place finish in 2006 and a second place finish in 2007. This year Marty hopes to top that and take down the title along with the $1,000,000 first prize.

Click here for a detailed view of Marty's results history.

Boylepoker and Boylesports would like to wish Marty and all the Irish players the best of luck at the Poker Million VII final.

Congratulations to Marty Smyth on his two nominations for European Poker Awards. Marty has been nominated under both the "Player of the Year" and "Tournament Performance of the Year" categories. Winners will be announced on January 15^th, 2009.

Good luck Marty!

Last week I managed to blag my way onto Sky Poker’s TV show - The Club. They had innocently emailed looking to get in touch with the champ (not me the other one - Marty), but were foolish enough to put a phone number in the signature of the email. I called and was able to convince the producers that it was imperative they had an IPO segment on the show!

Hi, my name is Ciaran Corbett, you may remember me from such telephone conversations as "Welcome to Boylesports, may I have your account number please?" or "Boylesports customer service how may I help?".

As much as we love to while away our afternoons writing humorous blogs for your enjoyment, we do have a lot of work to do and occasionally social lives to enjoy (except for Gerry), which also place demands on our schedules.

Writing a blog, where do I start, it appears that I have a phobia, no, maybe more a fear of all things internet postable. I don't have a Bebo, Myspace or Facebook account and I loathe posting on any kind of forum, even though this can be part of my job at times.

Recently in the office the words blog blog blog has been wielded like a lightsaber at a Star Wars convention. My boss being the decent skin that he is, could see the unease that would come over me when the word blog was mentioned in my presence and has kindly spared me the trauma by recently posting about our GUFRGHJFHKPT Luton trip. Luckily I have managed to duck, dive and dodge the blog bullet thus far, but realised that my time was running out, I have decided to jump before I was pushed, so here goes.