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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).
Anyway I arrived in one piece in Galway on New Years Eve and had a fair old rare up as a guest of Padraig, for his traditional Hogmanay festivities. The night ended up at ten the following morning after hitting the breakfast buffet, before calling it a night, which soon developed as a regular custom for this trip.
The IPC had been given a great reference by all those I spoke to that had attended the previous year; great tournament; great town, great venue, great craic. A few weeks later it all seems a bit of a blur, but I know I enjoyed it immensely. Some of the highlights included: emptying mini bars with Ciaran O'Leary and big Manus; Mike Sexton falling asleep during a Mad Marty story (honestly); clubbing with Eddie Hearn Devilfish and the Party chaps; crashing Channing's suite at around 4am after waking Ciaran up to get the video camera (sadly the footage is censored and not for public display); drinking with Flipper and Nicky Power; the 'Simon' charity event, (special thanks to Mr Hanlon who was on cracking form); meeting lots of new people and old friends.
Of course the overall highlight was that the event was won by a player wearing our colours. Some big names are either sponsored or associated with the 'lucky badge', but this particular festival saw one Rory Rees Brennan make his debut for us, after agreeing to a small short term sponsorship deal to see how it worked for both parties. I hope you read all his blogs on how he managed to win the tournament at http://boylepokerblog.com/index.php/author/rory-rees-brennan
I thought they were excellent, I always enjoy reading about the hands a player loses, rather than wins, as I think as a reader you can learn more and the hand he passed against Skalie only to be shown a bluff is a classic.
The whole thing was filmed by RTE and we had a plethora of players sprinkled in the mix at the closing stages. Scott Gray (25th), Rory Brown (10th) Rory Liffey (9th), and Peter Murphy (7th), who all performed fantastically well and will undoubtedly all be in the winner's enclosure very soon.
The event was not without incident, as anyone who follows these events online will know. Someone or some people at the event cheated. Chips were added during the course of play and unfortunately no one was caught (fortunately for them, as I feel 255 plus people would have been more than happy to apply some swift justice). Though the cheats have it a lot tougher these days, it just goes to prove you will never stop some feckers from trying to ruin things for everyone. Fintan and his team did remarkably well in the handling of the situation and even suffered through his own pocket to the tune of 25k, wp Fintan.
We ended things with what is now becoming a nice tradition, an online tournament with lots of free money being given away in the form of bounties. The other tradition we have installed, is a small party for the winner. But as Rory was off to Oz a few days later, we didn't have time, but we will correct that situation as soon as he's back!
Strangely Marty didn't win a million dollars this month, a temporary blimp I'm sure, but more than one of our payers did hit the podium in the gold medal position. Kieran 'Flipper' Walsh won the CPT for €40k, (congrats Kieran) trickey1212 won an all expenses paid trip to Manila, to take part in the APT; definitlymaybee who won himself an all expenses paid package to Salzburg to take part in the ECPT and Imperial12 won a seat at this years Irish Open; congrats all.
It wasn't a quiet month on the promotions front either with the announcement of our partnership with pokerswat: http://www.boylesports.com/poker/d.asp?show=Promotions_PokerSwat
A poker tournament involving all the great and good from the Premier League Darts community and a personal favourite the Murphy Multiplier: http://www.boylesports.com/sections/poker/d.asp?show=Promotions_MurphyMultiplier
It wasn't all plain sailing though; the first big boob of the month was our clothing supplier, being let down by his clothing supplier, meaning we didn't have of our new badges available for Galway (though our players did well enough without them). I managed to keep calm until about the 18th when I finally cracked and started giving verbals to all and sundry.
Next up were the advertisers; not one day passes without a salesman from some poker magazine you've never heard off wanting to give you a fantastic price on an advert you don't need. One or two of them will have been sorry to have rang on the 18th.
There were connection issues during the month and after some great detective work by one of the guys who works in customer service (He found out what our IT Dept and the whole of I-Poker couldn't) we discovered that Eircom users were suffering from a jumpy server issue that Eircom managed to eventually resolve.
Finally January is the month we began to accept poker affiliates. The software was in testing for 12 years, then we discovered a few mistakes which took 16 years to fix, 11 years to retest and finally just like that it's here. We are just about to sign two pretty big deals which should be announced next month and fall nicely into the February blog.
I hope you had a profitable month and that your enjoyment wasn't interrupted too much (Esp. if you're an Eircom user). Don't forget you comments count here, look at the 3 promotions we did this month, all three suggested by customers and all three turned around within about two weeks.
Be lucky,
Boylepoker Team
Comments (2)
Just came accross your site. will be doing a full review soon.