Happenings in Europe

United Kingdom

After the exploits of our Olympians this summer, a definite patriotic mood has swept the UK this past month. People have been glued to their television screens watching modern day heroes perform extraordinary feats, all in the name of the great Union Jack. Yet how does this apply to poker?

It certainly isn't in the performance of our boys at the World Series of Poker, as has been well documented in this very column - only a solitary bracelet made it's way across to these shores (well, to Northern Ireland at least). Yet, amidst all the rubble and near-misses, one man who has emerged as our own poker gold-medallist is the online phenomenon Chris "moorman1" Moorman. For over a year, Moorman has been one of the world's best online tournament players, yet August saw him reach the pinnacle of the online world when on the back of an unprecedented fifth 'Triple Crown' (awarded when a player wins three major tournaments in the same week).

While all the talk in online poker is usually about the young guns of America such as Tom 'durrr' Dwan or David Benefield tearing up the scene, it is refreshing to see one of our own more than just compete. Moorman's achievements are all the greater when put in the context that the major sites such as Full Tilt and PokerStars's tournaments are all suited to the timezones of American players. Now that Moorman has branched out into live poker, it seems only a matter of time before the UK has another superstar poker player on it's hands, in the young man from Brighton.

There is plenty of excitement ahead for poker fans in the nation's capital in the coming months. First up is the World Series of Poker Europe which has benefited from the welcome news that all four events will be held just at the Empire casino this year, and not a wild goose chase across London as they were in 2007. As if that wasn't enough star spotting for you, this will be quickly followed by the Europan Poker Tour London at the famous Vic casino. With the exciting addition of a £20,000 High Roller event, all of the biggest names in world poker will surely be in attendance. And the great thing is that, unlike any other major sporting event, spectators can get in for free and watch their heroes at literally an arm's reach away.

There have been some interesting developments in the London live poker scene this month. While it seems to have been legally ambivalent for a few years now (and a mystery as to how it has stayed open this long), the dream is finally over for Clerkenwell's infamous Gutshot Poker Club. Ever since the high court failed to hold up its appeal as to poker being a game of skill, the Gutshot has been on a legal knife-edge. The end finally came at the start of September with the doors closing for the final time. However, it appears that the owners are simply moving the business to another, as yet unconfirmed, venue in London, under a different name. How this will solve the legal issues is anybody's guess, but the owners of the Gutshot certainly aren't lacking in determination.

Meanwhile, a new poker venue, the Fox Poker Club is preparing itself for a launch in Piccadilly Circus in early 2009. Early claims that it will be "the world's premier poker club" will certainly take a lot to live up to. However, reports suggest that famous ambassadors of London poker such as Barny Boatman and Joe Beevers are heavily involved with the project, which can only bode well. The Fox Poker Club will be a members-only club but free one-month memberships can be obtained on their website right now.

Every month it seems that live poker in the UK is growing at a huge rate with more and more options for both the serious and the recreational player. Poker in the UK is truly on the rise and while great athletes such as Rebecca Adlington may encourage girls to take up swimming, what we are truly interested in is where our next poker stars will come from. With all this great activity across the nation, and players such as Chris Moorman to look up to, the state of play for UK poker is very promising indeed.

Gibraltar
Border-Line Road Rage

Gibraltar has endured a long, hot summer this year, but few will have felt the heat more than the many gaming company employees who commute into work in Gibraltar by car from their homes on the other side of the border in Spain.

Queues for pedestrians and vehicles crossing the border have been a major political issue since the land border between Spain and Gibraltar fully reopened in 1985, after being firmly shut for 16 years. Recently, with Gibraltarian/Spanish relationships supposedly tempering in light of increased tri-partite (Gibraltar - Great Britain - Spain) dialogue and the so-called "Cordoba Agreement", border queue problems were meant to have become a thing of the past. The truth, however, is that there have been very minimal improvements, and queues both into and out of Gibraltar can often be hour-long at peak times, all year round.

The school summer holidays normally see a reduced flow of traffic as commuting school goers are removed from the early morning and afternoon rushes into and out of Gibraltar. This is comfortably counteracted by the seasonal rise in tourists during the holiday season. However, with a new school term just around the corner, Gibraltar's growing popularity as a destination for holidaymakers and day-trippers on a year-round basis, may see the traffic-flow peaking well into the autumn months. When you add the discrepancy in petrol prices between Gibraltar and Spanish petrol stations, and the thousands of Spaniards who cross the border each week in order to fill their tanks, many would argue that this problem is quite a way from reaching its climax.

This summer saw an entirely new problem in the form of industrial action taken by the Spanish National police who patrol the border and who have implemented a work to rule policy during July and August. There is some irony in the fact that in practical terms, their "strike" has meant that they are actually increasing their workload by scrutinising the travel documents of every person who crosses the frontier. This is far more than they would do all year round, and inevitably, even further delays are caused throwing Gibraltar's already overcrowded road network in total disarray.

Less than a quarter of the employees of Gibraltar-based gaming firms are Gibraltarians. A majority of the foreign nationals who staff the industry have their main place of residence in Spain, either just across the border in La Linea de la Concepción or further afield in the Costa del Sol. Walking across the border into Gibraltar is an option for those who live close by, but for most there is little option but to drive to Gibraltar and risk queuing bumper to bumper for up to three hours every day in the searing heat. This is very much the situation which Tom Harrison finds himself in. Tom works for a well-known UK bookmaker which runs its online gaming operation from Gibraltar. He lives in the outskirts of Estepona (about 30 minutes drive from Gibraltar) with his wife and young family. With his wife employed on the Rock and his son at school in Gibraltar, he has little option but to brave the queues on a daily basis for nine months of the year. Tom says, "Recently we have been parking the car in Spain and walking across the border on foot, however when school begins in September that will no longer be an option as we aim to get [our son] to school on time".

Gaming firms based on the Rock have been forced to adapt by increasing the flexibility of their employee's working hours. According to a member of the Human Resources department of the abovementioned UK bookmaker, "People no longer want to work 9-5 which is where border queues are at their worst. Employees would rather come into work at 06:00 to beat the queues both in and out of Gibraltar". She also reports that more and more employees are volunteering to take the dreaded night shifts which ordinarily are not to most people's liking. Whilst these options are available in 24-hour industries like gaming, they are however not available to others where 9-5 is the norm. The Royal Gibraltar Police have been working flat-out this summer to manage the enormous tailbacks and traffic problems caused by the border queues. Their advice for commuters travelling into Gibraltar remains the same as ever, to park their vehicles in Spain and walk across the border. Locals are also advised to avoid using their vehicles at peak times, particularly in areas affected by the queue.

Tristan Cano lives and writes about the gaming industry in Gibraltar

Ireland

It's a busy month for Irish poker. By the time you read this, the LadbrokesPoker.com €250,000 guaranteed Irish Poker Festival, which was filmed for a documentary on Irish terrestrial station TG4, will have been and gone. We'll have a report on that event in the next issue.

The BoylePoker.com International Poker Open will be taking place just as this issue hits the streets, which expects to see a massive 1,000 plus turnout.

And finally the PaddyPowerPoker.com Irish Winter Festival is likely to experience a large international contingent turn out alongside local stalwarts to vie for the estimated main event prize pool of €1 million.

PaddyPowerPoker.com Irish Winter Festival

This highly-anticipated event takes place from Oct. 25 to 27 and has an estimated prize pool of €1 million. It is a €1,500 + €150 buy-in no-limit hold'em freezeout with a capacity for 800 players, and takes place in Citywest Hotel, the home of the 2008 Irish Open.

Weekly super satellites at $200 + $20 freezeouts take place every Sunday evening at PaddyPowerPoker.com, while rebuy qualifiers to the weekly Sunday final costing $15 + $1.50 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. take place daily.

The $3,500 Irish Winter Festival packages to be won at the super satellites will be made up of an Irish Masters (main event) ticket plus expenses.

Elsewhere the company has revamped its C*A*S*H V.I.P. programme. The new and improved system will reward its soldiers with bigger bonuses from both cash and tournament play. These rewards will be easier and quicker to obtain, particularly for players at higher levels who can also avail of an unlimited monthly bonus.

Marty Smyth Does Remarkable Double

BoylePoker.com pro Marty Smyth, who earlier this year won the World Series of Poker $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha World Championship in Las Vegas, has achieved a rare double - he is now the Macau Sporting Club Irish Poker Classic Omaha champion, as well.

Smyth triumphed in the €300 buy-in (with one rebuy) Omaha event at the Macau festival in Cork in August, and became the first person in the world to hold both titles simultaneously.

"I was pretty sure that if I won it, I would be the first player ever to do the WSOP/Macau Festival PLO double," said the former Irish Open and current World Open champion, "a feat that in all probability will never be repeated (or possibly even attempted) again!"

Smyth, however, got more than a little lucky, by his own admission, along the way. Writing on his blog at BoylePokerBlog.com, the Irishman said, "We decided to take a five-way split on account that it was 4 a.m., and with the average stack being about 100 big blinds, it looked like we could have been there until 4 p.m.

"However, there was still the small matter of deciding the trophy. We decided to go all in blind next hand, and the winner would get the trophy regardless of what his chip stack had been before the hand, and in keeping with the ridiculous run of form that I've been on of late, they were all drawing dead on the turn, and I had another trophy to add to my recent haul."

Record Numbers at Irish Poker Classic

The Irish Poker Classic's €1,500 + €100 freezeout main event at the Macau Sporting Club in Cork attracted a record number of 169 players, up 49 on last year's event. The top prize was a very tidy €80,000.

When play got down to the final four a deal was struck, and then Waterford man Nicky Power got busy against Rob Taylor, but a runner-runner turn and river saw Power's jack-high flush beaten by Taylor's ace-high flush.

Taylor's 4-4 then held strong against Ryan O'Donoghue's A-10, before the Irishman swept away Frenchman Oliver la Rochelle heads up, to claim the trophy and keep the title on home soil.

The final table payouts were:

1. Rob Taylor €46,000
2. Oliver la Rochelle € 47,500
3. Ryan O'Donoghue €38,250
4. Nicky Power €41,250
5. Jeff Duvall €15,000
6. Jonathan Butters €12,500
7. Mick O'Brien €10,000
8. Ben Blackmore €7,500
9. Paul Corrway €5,000
10. Michael McKeever €4,000

Holland

Summer Classics

With the World Series now well behind us, Holland Casino is traditionally focused on offering more tournaments during those rainy and increasingly dark months that identify the beginning of autumn. Actually, it is just the decreasing light that identifies the beginning of autumn, as one typically can't tell spring from autumn from summer if you'd just have to go by the always present clouds and threat of rainfall in the Netherlands, but details aside. Utrecht was once again the scene of the now infamous Summer Classics, a series of tournaments typified by a host of Dutch professionals, who all allow for a week off in their busy schedules, to participate in one or more of the tournaments with relatively low buy-ins.

Among the well-known players were Thierry van den Berg, Eric van der Burg, Julien Nuijten, Peter Dalhuijsen, Milly Uylenbroek, Jorryt van Hoof, Steven van Zadelhoff, Rolf Slotboom, and Michiel Brummelhuis. The latter was in good form as he came in second in the €200 no-limit hold'em with rebuys and then won the €1,000 buy-in main event. With several explicit and less explicit deals he netted an estimated €65,000. A novelty was the first official six-handed no-limit hold'em tournament in the Netherlands. The event proved very popular, so I believe that more Holland casinos will try this form, if they can afford to place only six players at a table instead of ten, or if they invest in smaller tables.

Dutch Open

For the fourth year in a row, autumn marks the start of the Dutch Open Poker Championship, a series of events with local preliminary rounds and one final tournament in which the best three players of every local round play each other for the lion share of the generated prize pool. The guys at pokercollege.nl have traditionally dominated this championship, as two of its founders Steven ten Cate and Peter Dalhuijsen have won the latest two editions. Rolf Slotboom was the first unofficial Dutch champion back in 2005. However, at the point of writing this article it seems that the new format of the Dutch Open has not been received very well by the Dutch poker scene. Of the 13 Holland Casinos in the Netherlands that participate, very few have filled more than 20 of the 60 available seats at every tournament, and the series is about to start.

The change in format from a €100 rebuy plus add-on tournament into a €500 freeze-out might have scared people off. I find this rather strange since the structure Holland Casino tended to use for this series warrants the need for at least ten times the starting stack by the end of the rebuy period - and even then it's still a lottery - so you would say that the players are getting a good deal here. Holland Casino might have failed to communicate this to the public, but understandably so as it is not easy to spin the fact that you have used a horrible structure for years. I am curious to find out which way the Dutch Open is going though, as there is a lot of potential in the idea, and you will learn more about it in a forthcoming Card Player.

Master Classics of Poker

After the Summer Classics it is time to look ahead and see what the Master Classics will be like. The famous tournament series in Amsterdam has long been the largest tournament of Europe and is still one of those events with grandeur, style and that typically Dutch 'gezelligheid'. The organisation seems keen on making the prize pool of the main event larger every year. Since the number of seats has been officially limited to 400, and they cannot be sure they will find 28 more seats like they did last year, they upped the buy-in to €6,000. The buy-in last year was €5,000, and Norwegian Trond Eidsvig took the first prize of €620,600. With the buy-in rise and current dollar to euro exchange rate, it seems that they will exceed the $1 million mark for first prize, especially if they hang on to the steep pay-out structure they have traditionally used. Now, that makes for a head liner, Holland Casino.

Anthon-Pieter Wink is a professional poker player and freelance writer, from the www.pokerinfo.nl forum.

Scandinavia

This month, the Scandinavian column has turned into a mostly Swedish one. Expect this to change back next month - assuming, of course, that something interesting happens outside of Sweden.

Crowd Gathers to Play in Malmoe

Annual Swedish event Malmö Open Poker Championship in Malmoe turned out to be a bigger success than the arrangers had dared to hope for when all 160 seats were booked and paid for a day in advance. With an entry fee of SEK 20,000 (€2,200), lots of Swedish, Danish pros, and gold diggers were there to win. In the end, however, Alexander Björkquist crushed the competition in his second major tournament, after ousting Ove Johansson on a two-outer in the final hand.

Tournaments in Malmoe have seen their popularity rising recently, and it would be no surprise if this led to bigger events with more accommodated players in the future. Of course, this also depends on what the final verdict will be in the ongoing legal battle in Denmark - whether tournaments will be allowed outside the casinos or not.

More on the Swedish Monopoly

A governmental investigation of the gambling monopoly in Sweden has suggested letting competitors to state-owned Svenska Spel in on the market, providing they buy a license. This came as a surprise for many, as Jan Nyrén, former Chief Lawyer of the Lottery Inspection Department (LI), led the investigation. LI is traditionally the most loathed department in Sweden amongst poker players, due to them requesting that the police perform raids against home tournaments and clubs of dubious legal status. Therefore, cynical critics had expected Nyrén to suggest a continued strict monopoly.

Players need not get too excited, however. The proposed license system would only cover sports betting and horse racing to start with. Casinos and slots machines should, according to the investigation, still be monopolised, and online poker possibly become a future feature. The online gaming part of the investigation is yet to be concluded, mostly because Nyrén admits not having decided what to think about it.

Yet another surprising twist to the story is the reaction of the market. On the surface, it might look like this is a first step towards a less monopolised gambling situation in Sweden. However, there is no denial that the investigation was ordered to please the European Court of Justice, which has already threatened the country with big fines should it continue to insist on allowing Svenska Spel exclusively. Lasse Dilschmann, CEO of Ladbrokes in Scandinavia, was quoted in the daily evening paper, Aftonbladet, as accusing Nyrén of saying what the EU wants to hear in order to give the government more time - he would not be the only one in Sweden of that opinion.

Time will tell if the monopoly keeps standing upright or is broken up. As for now, all opinions are speculations only.

Expekt for Sale

Swedish bookmaker Expekt, based in Malta, has been put up for sale with the help of British finance company McQueen. The bookie, which is currently owned by Swedes Christian Haupt and Conny Gesar, has about 150 employees and 1.5 million customers, many of whom are Scandinavians.

Rumour has it that Unibet will be buying, but this remains to be proved. The two companies are traditionally fierce rivals, competing for the same market shares, and this move would possibly confuse many of their customers. For instance, their respective poker network histories have revealed their lack of will to compete with each other: Unibet went to B2B because Expekt belonged to Microgaming (then Prima), and once Expekt moved to Tain (and further on to iPoker), Unibet relocated to Microgaming. With few exceptions, this is a recurring theme of these two giants on the Scandinavian gambling market, and it could certainly be argued that buying Expekt would make sense to Unibet.

Trillion Disowns Boss Media - or Vice Versa

Finally, a quick farce was played out when Poker Trillion, a former Boss Media network skin, was terminated from the network for alleged violations and responded by issuing a press release and newsletters to customers. Their information to customers and press was that all Boss servers would be immediately seized by the Maltese justice system and that funds belonging to Boss's customers would be frozen.

Boss, a Swedish company, responded the next day by issuing a similar but obviously contradictory statement. It is currently unclear how the argument will end, but the servers have not been seized by anyone and funds are currently not frozen, despite the claims of Poker Trillion. There is a very real lawsuit and there have been preliminary hearings. Currently, Boss remains unconcerned, believing the judge will toss all Poker Trillion claims out of court, regarding this as a routine matter and a bunch of nonsense from a disgruntled former customer. However Poker Trillion has other opinions. We will wait and see.

Joel Hinz is a freelance poker journalist.