Category: Live Poker Tournaments

While we are hopeful that there will be nice weather this summer, there is no getting away from the fact that there will be some people that prefer things a little bit colder. This is where the big Summer Freezout Poker Tournament at the Manchester 235 Casino could be of benefit! If you think that July gets too warm in the heart of Manchester, finding a cool casino to cool down will be just the tonic and the big event on the 10th of July is definitely going to be a great place to be. There are cash prizes on offer and you can find plenty of free food and drink to keep your energy levels high. Additional fun will come with the bounty prizes that have been placed on the heads of players that are part of Team Confidential and Team 235.

Another massive incentive for getting involved with this tournament comes with the fact that it can begin a journey which will end with an October trip to Paris. This is because two players at the Freezeout event will gain a place at the WSOPE Satellite event which will be taking place in September at the Manchester 235 club. Not only will there by accommodation, travel and the all-important buy-in, playing well in Paris could see you bagging a poker tournament bracelet.

There will be big money involved for the top players

This shouldn’t overlook the action and excitement that is available at the Freezeout event though. The prize pool details have not been formally announced but at the last event the players played for a share of £2,300 and the top three players all managed to bag £500 each! The event is open for anyone over the age of 18 and to make sure that it is a really cool evening, the organisers promise to offer ice pops for every players! There will be a free drink given out to players when they arrive, the break-time sees a free buffet being provided and anyone that holds a Player Rewards Card will find that they are entitled to free paring at the event too. You won’t have to spend a lot of money to make the most of this Summer Freezeout event!

If this sounds like the sort of poker event that you want to get involved with, you will need to be quick as there are limited places up for grabs. There are only 110 places available for this tournament and the pre-register section is open now, so sign up if you wish to guarantee your place at this prestigious Manchester poker event.

If you have come off the back off a weekend with poker success or no poker action at all, you may be keen to find the next big poker event to look forward to. Even if you had a disappointing time with respect to poker, it can make sense to find an upcoming event and get back in the mix. When you fall off a horse, you need to get back on one as soon as possible and this is definitely the same case when it comes to playing poker. If you lose and then let your loss hang in the air for a while, it will not do you any good. It is important to push on and the upcoming GUKPT event in Portsmouth could be exactly what you are looking for.

The festival of poker actually begins this Sunday so the 26th of May is the day that you want to have in your diary. This is going to be the date that matters for some people but of course, there will be other poker players who are not getting excited until a lot later on in the week. This is one of the positive aspects about these poker tournaments. Depending on your cash, confidence and financial status, you can come into a tournament whenever you want.

Play poker for cheap

The first satellite events start this Sunday and with a buy-in fee of £30+£5; there is a very good reason to start early. Not every poker player has the bankroll to chip in a lot of money when they feel like it and playing your way to a tournament for a low entry fee is definitely something that many poker players love to do.

Of course, if your main focus is on the Main Event, you will need to wait until Thursday the 30th of May to get involved. The action starts at midday for the £500 + £50 buy-in and the Day 1 event spans Thursday and Friday. This means that on Saturday, Day 2 proper takes place and then the big final is going to be held on the 2nd of June. This is certainly a lot to look forward to and the 2pm start-time on Sunday will definitely give players a time and date to plan ahead to. Plenty of poker players will have fallen by the wayside by this point but those still in the mix will have high hopes of poker success.

There are plenty of great poker tournaments to choose from these days and one of the best is the Genting Poker Series. Given the huge number of Genting casinos around the country, it makes sense for the company to have a tournament of this nature and the tournament looks like being a big success.

Over 300 players were involved at the Genting Poker Series Sheffield Main Event and there was definitely a lot of action and excitement around. With £100,000 on offer as a guaranteed prize, this is definitely the sort of thing that people wanted to get involved with but anyone hoping for a local or English poker victory would have been sadly disappointed.

This is down to the fact that Mudasser Hussain came all the way down from Glasgow in Scotland to show the English poker players how to win a tournament. With the top prize being just short of £43,000 this was a smashing success for Mudasser and you can bet that he’ll be delighted at taking part in the event. He has already taken to Twitter to celebrate and he kept his followers up to date with how his tournament went.

Anyone looking for some solace in an English player finishing second will have been disappointed too because Yucel Eminoglu grabbed the second spot. However, his prize fund was at the same level as third placed player, Athir Ali who does hail from England with both second and third prize standing at £28,500. There were prizes over £10,000 for fourth and fifth place too with Wai Yu and Adam Chadwick picking up a sizable amount of cash too. With plenty of big money on offer, these poker events are always going to be of benefit to players who play well and have a little bit of luck on their side.

Everyone can get involved with this poker series

One of the most interesting things about the Genting Poker Series is that it has an entire leg online. It is always good to be able to travel around the country and play in different poker venues but this is not always suitable for every poker player. Being able to stay in the comfort of your own home and have the same opportunity as other poker players to reach the grand final is definitely something that will appeal. Online poker is something that is open to everyone and it is good to see that there is scope for every poker to be involved.

The online event is not scheduled until November so there is plenty of time to go until players get the chance to enter last chance saloon and make a play for the big final which is scheduled for the middle of December. If you are looking to play your way to success at the end of the year, this is definitely going to be something that will appeal to you.

You don’t have to wait until November to get a chance of grabbing some poker winnings and playing your way to poker success though. There is a slight break for the summer but the Genting Poker Series recommences in August with a trip to the Genting Club in Wescliff Southend. After this, the focus falls on the Genting Club in Stoke in the middle of September. In October there is a jaunt north of the border to the Genting Club in Edinburgh. The success of Mudasser Hussain indicates that there is no need think that cross-border relations will stop your chance of success. This could be another brilliant chance for a Scottish poker player to grab a big victory or there could be the chance for an English player to get revenge for Hussain grabbing the big win in Sheffield.

Supporting a football team can be a bit of a gamble for many fans and it is not a decision that always has its roots in rationality. There are plenty of fans who follow blindly through the ups and downs without making the sort of rational decision making that would let them know that they were throwing away a considerable amount of money while getting very little in return. It is therefore no surprise to see that a team was keen to have a casino added to their stadium because let’s face it, football fans love chucking money away on something that will likely see them lose. You can just imagine the keen poker players lining up to get a seat at the table at one of these games!

The football club in question was Leeds United and this is a club that knows all about a gamble. They were huge in the late 1960s and early 1970s but the club never seemed to have the luck or the vital killer instinct to get over the edge on too many questions. Sure they managed to pick up the league title and an FA Cup but when you think about how many near misses they had, it is clear that there was something not quite right about the club. Even at their highest moments in European football, they were shown to be out of their depth by the top teams of the time such as Celtic and Bayern Munich.

Poker can be fun against clueless opponents

In more recent times, the gambles taken at Elland Road have been in the boardroom with some stupid decisions being made to chase the Champions League dream. Even amateur poker players would have loved to have played poker against Peter Ridsdale, a clown of a business man who had no sense of his own value or limitations. Again, this is exactly the sort of poker opponent you would love to find yourself up against.

Sadly for Leeds United and their fans, there will be no official poker games at Elland Road. This is because their application to be the recipient of the large casino licence for Leeds. Only 8 of these licences have been granted around the country and Leeds United were keen to bring a casino and plenty of poker table to Elland Road.

Their application was rejected though with Global Gaming Ventures being handed a provisional statement, which is the pre-cursor to the firm being awarded a full licence. There are conditions attached to this, so it is not all cut and dried just yet but the Leeds United dream of being a poker, much like their dream of being mainstays in the Champions League have been destroyed. Global Gaming Ventures plan on placing their casino within the Victoria Gate development, which has so far cost over £130m. With over 200 jobs expected to be created for the city with this new poker venue, there is a lot to look forward to in Leeds, even if this doesn’t extend to the football team.

One of the things about poker is that it is a great leveller and on the right day, an unfenced player can beat one of the best players in the world. All it takes is for the underdog to be at the top of their game, for the top player to be far from their best and then the turning of the cards can do the rest. Over the long-term, the skilled and experienced player will come out on top but in individual games, there are no limits as to what can actually happen. This is why players always need to bear in mind that playing poker can be risky and that they should only ever afford to bet what they can afford to lose.

The issue with this fact is that what one person can afford to lose will not be the same as other people. A couple of years back when the gambling debts run up by footballers such as Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney were made public, there was shock and outrage from people who are perpetually offended by everything in life. This was huge sums of money, more than the average yearly wage for most folk but of course, for the players committing the case to these games, it was the equivalent of a couple of hundred pound for the standard casino player. It was certainly an amount you would rather have than lose but you can handle losses like this every once in a while.

This is why it is important to bear in mind that while there has been consternation about the losses run up by a poker player from the UK at the EPT event in France, it is best to place it into context with respect to their annual income.

Poker losses are all relative

Talal Shakerchi managed to lose a sum of more than £850,000 in a single poker game being played at the EPT event. It was not an official event, it was an unofficial event being played around the grand final and there were 6 players who all paid more than £400,000 to sit down at the table together.

This is a huge sum of cash but the fact that Mr Shakerchi has managed set up his own hedge fund firm, Meditor, indicates that he is in a position to play these huge sums of money. There is also the fact that he has reportedly won more than £1m playing poker in recent times. It is right that certain people will be disgusted at the amount of losses run up by poker players but it is important to retain a perspective about what actually happened. Poker can still be a fun game to play at every level but it is important that UK poker players find the level that they are comfortable with.

Some poker players may think that the idea of qualifying for a decent poker event via a satellite is a waste of time. There can be a natural reaction that the major players are going to be the winners at these events and that it is a waste of time to play your way through the online events to book your place with the big boys. That is not the attitude to have though. Just think about saving money through qualifying through the satellite naturally and you will start to see the benefits of playing in this manner. There is also the fact that qualifying through a satellite event is going to give you a boost in confidence, which is definitely going to be great news for many poker players. It never hurts to give yourself a boost in confidence at any point.

The East End Live poker event is not going to claim to be one of the most important poker events but there were many reasons why this event was being taken seriously. In total, there were 287 players involved at the event at the Aspers Casino, which tells you a lot about this poker promotion. Getting close to 300 players out for a major event is definitely something to take pride in and the organisers clearly pulled a lot of things together to make this event such a huge success.

Some big name poker players were involved

You can also look at some of the major names that were involved at the event to get a feel for how big this poker event was. James Dempsey, a player for Team Ivey was on hand, the Sky Poker expert Jen Mason was on hand, Joe Beever was involved and there were some big names from Blackbeltpoker.com in Richard Ashby and Jerome Bradpiece on hand too.

However, despite all of these big poker names being in attendance, it was Nik Stylianou who qualified via a satellite who rose to the top. This saw him clinch $9,000 and this was well deserved after defeating Dan Whittaker in the final showdown. Nik is a 40 year old poker player from the North side of London so if you think that the poker glamour and excitement has passed you by, don’t be too hasty, there could still be an opportunity for you to achieve poker success.

As you can imagine, Nik was very complimentary about the event and the organisation after his win! It is not as if he was going to start bad mouthing the event after he clinched victory but there did appear to be a high level of fun and excitement at this event. There is no doubt that Apers is fast becoming a very popular venue for poker players and this is going to see a lot more poker events in the near future.

As for Nik though, he told Blackbeltpoker.com that he may well give Las Vegas a shot after his triumph. With $9,000 to get him over there or to boost his bankroll, there is going to be a big chance for him to have some fun and see where his poker skills can take him. Playing in satellite events is no guarantee of success and the vast, vast majority of satellite qualifiers fail to make any real mark on the major events. However, we know that all it takes is one day to go in your favour and your life can be positively impacted in a serious way. If you have been thinking about playing satellite events but always decided against it, you may want to rethink your outlook.

While Nik picked up $9,000 for his win, second place went to Dan Whittaker who received $8,500. In third was Jim Parberry, who received $5,700. In fourth position was Mark England, who received $4,600 and fifth place earned $3,600 for Craig Connaughton. In 6th position was Carlo Hassan, who earned $2,750 and in 7th place was George Achillea, who picked up $2,000. Michael Brock was in 8th, earning $1,560 and in 9th spot was Lee Brooke- Pearce who picked up $1,200.

Everyone loves a weekend in Dublin and this will be the Sky Poker Tour needed no additional encouragement to head off to Dublin the green and see what the fair city had to offer. It seems as though this was a popular move with poker players because a fair number of players attended at the Sporting Emporium for the big event. The 127 players ensured that there was a sell-out and yet again there is proof that if you price an event wisely, there is a huge demand for properly structured poker events in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

There were plenty of big name poker players at the event but there was an understandable amount of pressure on Julian Thew. This is because Thew is a Sky Poker player and you always want to do well in the events that are run by the company that is putting money behind you. A failure in these events may lead to your sponsors re-evaluating their promotion of you so Thew would have known that a big display was important for him. Things hardly got off to a great start on Day 1 of the event with Thew holding a short-stack together but by hook or by crook he made it to the second day of the big Dublin event and this is when things can start to come together.

Consistent poker play pays off

Little by little, Thew played a consistent game, which is not something he is always noted for and he managed to battle his way into the final nine poker players that made up the final table. This is where having class and experience can often make a big difference and there was a feeling that Thew had timed his event tremendously. Even with poker players the calibre of Austin Cheetham and Peter Stoneman against him, Thew played aggressively and powered his way to success in the Irish capital.

The Dublin victory gave Thew his second big win at a Sky Poker event. His last triumph for his sponsor came in the glamorous surroundings of Luton back in February 2012. That win saw Thew win £11,200 and you get the feeling he will be looking forward to next month’s big event, which takes place in Birmingham. Birmingham is another city where Thew has managed to triumph in the past, taking a Genting Poker Series Main Event title and he will likely fancy his chances of success again.

The final 9 players at the Sky Poker Dublin event were Rory Brown who grabbed £635 for finishing ninth and Joe Wilkinson who received £775 for coming in 8th. In 7th place was Mark Strachan who received £1,200 and in 6th place was Vera Duffy, who picked up £1,650. In fifth place was Frank Baillie, who managed to pick up £2,120 and in fourth spot was Stephen Freeman, who received £2,920. In third place was Austin Cheetham, who receive £3,550 and in second place was Peter Stoneman, who picked up £4,570. This left Thew out on his own and he picked up £6,600 for winning the Sky Poker Dublin event.