European Masters of Poker: A Different Class

A congratulatory email, a creased t-shirt, baseball cap, and a mouse mat. That can be the extent of your hospitality when qualifying online for a live tournament. Not much of a memento especially as, to many, winning an overseas trip in an online tournament is both a memorable experience and notable achievement.

Admittedly some poker sites make more effort than others. A complimentary rucksack containing a branded pen may also be laid out on your hotel room bed.

I am being harsh here. The likes of Unibet do issue free drinks vouchers aplenty when piggybacking themselves into a nearby nightclub but does that really constitute the advertised party?

As I conceded to that particular Microgaming skin recently: Hosting a live poker event is clearly not easy, it’s like hosting an orgy, renowned as a place where it is hard to please everyone.

Indeed, “playing poker on competitor’s site during commentary; criticizing Unibet’s live betting products and showing lack of respect to your partners working with you,” was displeasing enough to see the Scandinavian outfit breach our particular agreement.

My co-host Jorma Vuoksenmaa got extremely upset when I said all Finnish poker players have two letter N’s in their surname and are devoid of personalities. I confess I was wrong on one count.

I digress. As a masterpiece of stupidity months after the European Masters of Poker announced their dates for the Barcelona leg of their tour Unibet decided to use the very same September 13th – 16th slot to stage their London event.

Thereafter the World Poker Tour thought it was prudent to drop a cluster bomb on the pair of them with a €7,500 buy in WPT Paris overlapping a €3,000 entry WPT Malta event during the same period.

No end of options then but where does your commonsense take you? Where is the value, what’s affordable and where will you be looked upon as something other than a name and number on a spreadsheet?

BetVictor, which has its poker home on the IGT/Entraction network and offers a buffet of goodies ranging from five-card pot-limit Omaha to Telesina to Soko and beyond, is surely offering the best goodie-bag on the net.

Last season, this year, and beyond, BetVictor are giving their qualifiers an unrivaled €20,000 present in the shape of 10 free packages into the following season’s EMOP.

This is not an EMOP promotion. It is purely for BetVictor qualifiers playing in legs of that popular poker tour and is formulated by a simple leader board where BeVictor’s qualifiers earn points dependent on their finishing position at EMOP’s.

Leader Board Finish Position Prize
1st 3 x EMOP Packages
2nd 2 x EMOP Packages
3rd 2 x EMOP Packages
4th 1 x EMOP Package
5th 1 x EMOP Package
6th 1 x EMOP Package

Last year it was Late Night Poker third-place finisher Rob Ockell who earned himself three free EMOP packages. This year, Irish poker veteran Kevin Spillane, helped by a fourth-place finish in Prague’s EMOP leg, is in pole position for the first prize.

We are not talking thinly spread birdseed here. Ten packages and six winners all drawn from the relatively small pool of online qualifiers from one site. One final table finish is surely all that’s needed to guarantee at least one free EMOP entry the following year. Naturally that is difficult enough work but the question remains; who else gives you a present like this for free?

Such promotions do create a competitive edge amongst BetVictor’s qualifiers but there is also an unrivaled camaraderie within the group. Reluctantly it has now become more of a family unit.

Not just any family either. Victor Chandler’s generosity makes the EMOP experience more like some kind of Italian Sunday afternoon family get-together. Drinks, dinners — not of the “queue-up like you were at school and present your meal ticket and tray” variety — fun and games are all perks of qualifying on this “premium partner” IGT/Entraction powered site.

The hard truth and sad fact is nine-out-of-ten players in most tournaments will go home without cashing. Only a tiny percentage make the final table and all but one seem irked by their elimination.

So if the business at hand comes up a little short, what can be better than an afternoon meet-up, a spot of fishing, golf, 10-pin bowling, or a night-time pub crawl? BetVictor’s players have enjoyed it all often ably assisted by a local friendly hostess.

In Prague, for example, it was the lovely Lenka who tended to players’ needs, serving our complimentary drinks at the tables, booking restaurants and taxis, and showing the BetVictor team all of the sites and sounds of the city at night.

The visit was rounded off with a Superbowl party before big-screen TVs where most of the gang enjoyed dinner and entertainment until an unearthly 5 a.m.

EMOP’s BetVictor-style is a new experience, a different experience, and a fun experience. It is enormous value and a very big freeroll with thousands in EMOP packages up for grabs.

So if you eat, sleep, and drink poker why not join the BetVictor Poker Team in one of the remaining EMOP’s of 2012. The Barcelona leg runs from September 13 to 16; it is an event which attracted 454 players last season.

Dublin concludes the 2012 tour in mid-November. It offers added panache with the stunning Clontarf Castle staging the tournament and also offering luxury accommodation.

Satellites cost as little as a pint of the black stuff or a single serving of tapas. So if you have any excuses not to attempt EMOP qualification at BetVictor kindly write them on the back of a postage stamp and address them to your preferred online poker site along with a request for a complimentary t-shirt. ♠