Mad Marty's Wild Card

A DREAM COME TRUE…OR AN APRIL FOOL

Mad Marty Wilson in action

Alec White and Paul Lecke

After playing in televised poker tournaments for more than six years and having worked behind the scenes for 18 months, I was asked to be the tournament director at the recent PartyPoker.com World Open. The tournament began on April 2 and I was traveling down the day before for a rehearsal. Sitting on the M25 car park for two hours, I rang Andy Pyrah from Matchroom Sports to confirm the time of the rehearsal. "What rehearsal?" he laughed. An uncomfortable thought now came to me. Was this someone's idea of an elaborate April Fool's prank and there was no job at the end of my journey? As it was, I ended up hosting a great week of poker.

A balanced field of 36 online qualifiers and 36 pros made up the runners, with a celebrity heat made up of six sports personalities. To win this heat, you just had to be the most aggressive player, and so it came as no surprise when football and movie star Vinnie Jones won, qualifying him for the main draw. I know some professionals have strong feelings about such events, with the usual phrase "crapshoot" being overused. However, the fact is that the places to be paid for are always filled and have a reserve list, to boot, showing that these tournaments are popular and have a market.

To those interested in poker, if they were to be at the event and involved in the filming, they would not only see the hard work involved, but also the great atmosphere surrounding the whole week. With 35 crew members, three commentators, two dealers, and myself all working a minimum of 12 hours per day, it gives some indication of the work involved. TV director Tony Davison summed it up perfectly when describing how 80 hours of footage is cut into 16 one-hour shows: "Deciding which hands to include, what will appeal to the die-hard poker player and what will excite the novice, these decisions generate as much controversy as the game itself."N



Online qualifiers had won their ticket for as little as $9, a $17,000 package of flight, a week's accommodation, and spending money on top of their $14,000 seat. These qualifiers, who were on a natural high because they already felt like winners, were eager to be drawn on a table with one of the big-name pros, such as Mel Judah, "Devilfish" Ulliot, John Shipley, Tony G, Donnacha O'Dea, Dave Colcough, and exciting young Swedish players Daniel Larsson and Bengt Sonnert.



This atmosphere continued from the studios to the hotel, where you could always get a game. The structure actually made for considerable play; in one heat, a record 18 hands were played in the first level.

By a natural process, due to the aggressive style of certain players, we had some heats that were over at the $7,000-$15,000 level, whilst other heats played heads up for more than an hour at the $15,000-$30,000 level, where the blinds were capped.

Particularly impressive was some great heads-up play in John Shipley's heat, some entertaining poker from the Belfast boys, and excellent play from young American online qualifiers Kevin Almon and Robert Tronzo. Congratulations to New Zealander Lee Nelson, who took home $400,000 and the trophy, and also to runner-up Liam Flood.

"Mad Marty" Wilson is a professional poker player from Wolverhampton. He is a poker consultant for Matchroom Sports and is sponsored by Noble Poker.