Nobody Does It Better

I’d been a week in the excellent Baha Mar resort attending the partypoker Caribbean bash when I got a mail asking me to show up for a little while at the pool party, as they were shooting a few promo pics for the upcoming $20,000,000 online tournament. I first made sure that having my picture taken in front of the banner advertising this event wasn’t an admission that the $20 million guarantee was my fault!

I then set about trying to figure out where the pool was. I asked Charlie Rimmer for directions. In hindsight, asking a guy who was whiter than I was after a week in paradise wasn’t the smartest move I’ve ever made but I got lucky as he knew somebody who’d actually seen the pool. “It’s easy”, she said : “Just head in the direction of the beach and it’s on your left”. This led to the inevitable “Where’s the beach question”.

It was actually party’s fault I hadn’t had time to focus on the better things in life. Those player friendly structures where the blinds crawl up make it nearly easier to win the tournament than to get knocked out of it! They also make it harder to get reentries. How they got so close to making two $10,000,000 guarantees is a mystery to me.

Speaking of mysteries, I was a little unfortunate on day 2B of the main event in that I got stuck for several hours at a table populated by guys most of whom were regulars in the high roller and super high roller events. I held my own but it’s a poker tournament. Holding your own for a long period is moving backwards. These lads tend to be on the serious side and not great fans of having the craic. They did tell each other how they’d got knocked out of the $25k and $50k events. I would have been far more interested if they told each other how they’d got into them in the first place!

The trip home wasn’t perfect. First BA overbooked flight to London so I was left hanging about while they took their time sorting things out. It was a proper bore till I met lovely German couple who were good craic. Then, my flight to Dublin was delayed three times. I got a train to finish the journey and three students from Galway forced me to play poker with them. The maximum bet was fifty cents. Funny how far you can fall in a week! I won €2.20 but they stuck me with their bar bill. I hope they are studying economics. If so, they will go far.

Next up its the partypoker November Poker Festival live in Dublin’s Fitzwilliam Club. For details see fitzwilliamcardclub.com. The festival starts on the 28th but you can play a Day 1 of the main event on partypoker on Sunday 23rd Nov at 8pm and have a week to make travel arrangements before you are due to play Day 2 on Sun 2 nd Dec. The buyin, €450, creates a perfect battleground between pros and club regulars and one hell of a lot of craic. Last year, the club players won when David O’Kelly defeated pro Sean Prenderville in a dramatic heads up battle. The event will again be televised with Jesse May and I doing what passes for commentary. See you there!

I nearly forgot. The aforementioned $20 million guaranteed MTT kicks off Sunday on partypoker. 4 players will become millionaires and $10 million is guaranteed in satellites. I can’t wait!