Boylepoker.com Be Our Sponsored Pro challenge Winner: Noel Magner

Dublin, Ireland: March 31, 2009 – Noel Magner has won the Boylepoker.com Be Our Sponsored Pro challenge, defeating the eight other finalists over the weekend in Dublin to take down the $20,000 prize comprising sponsorship into three upcoming live events.

Boylepoker.com’s Be Our Sponsored Pro competition saw nine online qualifiers battle it out in a live to win a sponsorship package of paid entry and expenses for the Irish Open 2009, the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Manchester main event, and the World Series of Poker $1,500 no-limit hold’em event.

There were nine seats up for grabs in nine different tournaments with the winner of each tournament progressing to the final table held in Dublin’s Jackpot Club on Saturday March 28 during the Boylepoker.com Poker for the Homeless March Madness weekend.

Magner came second in the pot-limit Omaha online event which was won by Boylepoker pro Marty Smyth but under the rules of the competition, where an already sponsored Boylepoker player could not qualify for the final table, was awarded the seat.

The final table for the event was:

Seat 1 – Mark Reilly
Seat 2 – Enda Kendrick
Seat 3 – Noel Magner
Seat 4 – Pat O’Callaghan
Seat 5 – Stephen McLean
Seat 6 – Alan Reenan
Seat 8 – Patrick Aherne
Seat 9 – Barry Brennan

Paul Spillane, head of Boylepoker, said, “Congratulations to Noel and good luck in the live events he will now represent Boylepoker at. He played brilliantly to get to the final table and continued by dominating the game from the off and is now a deserving Boylepoker pro. We hope the logo is as lucky for him as it has been for the rest of the team.”

Join Boylepoker today and receive a $600 Bonus.

Poker is a Game of Skill finds New Study

Cigital Inc recently conducted a study in conjunction with online poker room PokerStars and they found that poker is, indeed, largely a game of skill. The results, which were released last week were praised by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA).

The study took facts and figures from more than 100 million hands on PokerStars and supports the notion that poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance. It found more than 75% of hands were won with players never seeing more than their own cards and the community cards. 12% went to a shown down, and were won by players with the best hand, while 12% went to a showdown we won by players with the worse hand due to the opponent folding.

Senator Alfonse D’Amato, the Chairman of PPA said, “This study provides the raw data to back up the compelling arguments made by poker players around the world that it’s skill, not pure luck, that determines the outcome of this game.”

John Pappas, Executive director of PPA said, “The question of whether poker is a game of predominant skill or chance is not about the player’s ego, but the nature and legal protections of the game. In courtrooms across the country, judges and juries are finding that poker is a game of skill not chance like lotteries or slot machines, and this study confirms that fact.”

Circus Casino, Stoke on Trent. £100 Freezeout with £1500 added

They say poker doesn’t make you crazy, but here at the Circus Stoke it  helps, as the dealers choice cash game regular Dave ‘JOCK’ wilson clearly demonstrates…lol

Paddypower.com launches additional Irish Open 2009 betting markets

paddypower.com today launches two additional Irish Open 2009 betting markets, the Sole Survivor market and 2008 Final Table Player To Last Longest market.

The Sole Survivor market offers odds on players’ chances of winning the poker room’s online qualifier promotion, which awards a €100,000 prize package to the longest-lasting paddypowerpoker.com qualifier.

The 2008 Final Table Player To Last Longest market offers odds on who among the eight final table players from last year will survive the longest in this year’s event. Irish Open 2008 champion Neil ‘Bad Beat’ Channing is the shortest odds at 4/1, while runner-up Donal Norton is available at 6/1.

2008 Final Table Player To Last Longest:

Odds are subject to change. The Irish Open 2009 betting markets can be found at paddypower.com

£1,500 Added for the Circus Casino £100 freeze-out

 The Circus Casino, Stoke-On-Trent have announced that they are to a add a huge £1,500 to the prize pool for the £100 freeze-out this Sunday 5th April, with a further £200 to the winners online account.

Always a popular event, the cardroom usually attracts 130-140 runners for the £100 game, which is held every month.

Schedule:-

Doors open at 12:00.

Half price 3 course lunch is available with your entry ticket, at a cost of just £3.50, served until 18:00hrs

The tournament starts at 18:00, with the last registration taken at 18:55 for late arrivals.

A starting stack of 10,000 chips with blind levels starting at 25-50, increasing every 30 minutes. 

Ample parking.

This is a dealer dealt competition.

Anyone wishing to register for this game, can do so at their regular circus casino to be assured of a seat, or on the day at the Circus Casino, Stoke-On-Trent.

Tel 01782-213499 For any further information.

A huge thank you to the Circus Casino, for allowing us to a live feed from the tournament so that you can enjoy all the action as it happens here at PokerNewsHeadlines.

Everest Poker’s New ‘Welcome’

If you haven’t tried out Everest Poker yet then now is a great time to open your new account. The popular European online poker room has recently revamped their deposit bonus for Poker News Headlines readers. Previously the $100 bonus was a great, easy way to boost your online bankroll. Many players were clearing the $100 bonus after just a couple of days. Now the bonus has been DOUBLED to $200.

The bonus is cleared at the rate of 7cents for every Everest Poker Summit Point and is added to your player account immediately. There is NO waiting until the end of the month and NO need to reach 1000 points to get your first payment. Ready to join? Here’s what you need to do:

- Join Everest Poker from any link on Poker News Headlines.
- Create a new account and make a deposit
- In the bonus code area enter code: Welcome
- Start playing to earn your $200 bonus.

That’s all there is to it! New players also get a $1000 freeroll token to freerolls that take place every Monday and Thursday at 19:30 GMT. That’s even more free cash!

Book Review – Life’s a Gamble.

I first met Roy Brindley in March 2006 in Vienna on a poker trip with 14 other Irish based players to the Spring poker festival at the Concord Casino.

I remember all 16 of us going out for a meal where some had arrived very late and as a result the kitchen closed before all of us had been served. Actually Roy was the only one who wasn’t served, and while the rest of us munched on juicy sirloin steaks (one hungry chap actually ordered two steaks for himself and didn’t think to share!) Roy was left with a measly baked potato. Hardly fitting sustenance for a travelling profession poker player of his stature.

Naturally he was given plenty of stick as digital cameras were pulled out of bags and coat pockets to get a snapshot of “Roy the Boy” and his baked potato looking slightly disgusted. I’d imagine at that moment he wanted to be anywhere else but there, starving and having a bunch of cheeky and inferior poker players taking the Mickey. Little did I know at the time, the dark places Roy had been to in his past and how big a part Vienna played on his arduous and extraordinary journey towards the spotlight.

“Life’s a Gamble” is written word for word by Roy himself and is a very honest and revealing account of his life from the beginning. In fact, to borrow a term I’ve grown fond of, the book is written with a level of “unbridled honesty” that is all too rarely found among the modern poker player. The book contains no poker strategy, in fact the first half of the book mentions little poker at all as Roy recounts his childhood and exposure to hardcore gambling from an early age, his love of grey-hounds and some harrowing experiences as a greyhound trainer both in the UK and America.

Roy hasn’t just been to the bottom of the barrel, he’s been buried underneath it. How many professional poker players do you know once lived in a cardboard box on the streets or in a dog kennel, and how many will tell you truthfully about their struggles with anger and depression or their run-ins with the law? He tells his story of hardship and degeneracy with enough humility that we can’t help but be drawn into his world and even though we already know the story has a happy ending, as we read on we feel his pain as he continually falls off the wagon. Roy becomes our hero and we desperately want him to reach his goals.

The development of his love for poker begins half way through the book as he tells of his first ever trip to a poker game at Dublin’s Jackpot Club, where he was stunned to find himself sitting in front of Noel Furlong, a former World Series of Poker main event winner. Here he plies his trade alongside some well known characters from the Dublin poker scene. His determination to win large sums of life changing money from the get-go is palpable and he recalls how he travelled around Europe searching for big wins, including his now infamous drunken victory at the Tony G invitational. He describes poker as his redemption. “It’s been like a dock leaf around a stinging wound; an improbable cure that has done the job admirably”.

By his own admission, his determination to succeed at times drove him mad. He describes how he once almost threw €34,000 out his hotel room window because he was disgusted at coming second at the 2002 World Heads up Poker Championship in Vienna, despite the fact that after registering for the event he couldn’t even afford a taxi back to the airport.

The book is not without its flaws. Roy mentions how desperately he wanted to win the Poker Masters in 2007 because he considered a couple of $50,000 cashes in tournaments in the previous 12 months to be “small change” which if true, the first prize of $120,000 in that event could hardly be considered a much larger sum. He also recounts how Andrew Black outplayed Phil Ivey at the World Series in 2005 which he says took place with two tables remaining, but actually happened 3 tables out with 27 players left. (Brindley had 3% of Black that year).

This is purely nitpicking on my part however and it’s important for me to say that the book is a welcome diversion from a growing list of shallow and self-absorbed poker player biographies. Usually, when professional poker players start talking about themselves I tend to look for the nearest exit for fear they might start comparing themselves to Tiger Woods and Muhammad Ali, such is the monstrosity of some of their egos.

Brindley may have his knockers and while he oozes self confidence one thing he certainly doesn’t have is an over-inflated ego which is very evident from this book. His story is an inspiration to people who have struggled and are struggling, poker players, gamblers and non-gamblers alike.

A compelling and entertaining read.

Silk-e-smooth Perfomance as Martin takes the GUKPT Title in London

Irishman Martin Silke took the top honours at London’s Victoria Casino this morning, winning the third leg of the GUKPT. An awesome final table of  9 players saw the trophy slide away as Silke polished a fine performance, and took the trophy, a cheque for £172,850 and a seat in the champion of champions event. Second place went to the unlucky Luke Trotman, who at one stage thought he had won the tournament, only to check again to see that he’d made a mistake and hadn’t.

At 01.05 am the heads-up cards were dealt. Trotman raised the blinds and Silke called. A flop of 5d-8h-7h was bet by Trotman, Silke called. The turn was the 8d, Trotman announces all in! A massive amount of chips now sat in the middle of the table. Silke thought and thought, then the reply came “call.” Trotman turns over Qd-6d, to show an open ended straight draw and flush draw. Silke looks pensive as he turns over K-7 off suit. The river was going to be vital as Trotman had Silke out chipped! River- 7d, Trotman ran around the table thinking he had won it with the flush! It wasn’t until Silke pointed out that he had the full house that Trotman realised. Amazed, he checked the board for a while, looking at every card. It finally dawned on him that he had lost the hand. Silke’s camp cheered as the dealer announced 980,000 – that’s what Silke had left. They counted the chips from Trotman’s stack and passed them to Silke. Trotman never really recovered from the hit and 20 minutes later came the hand that would decide 3 days of hard work. A flop of As-7h-9d had them both thinking. Trotman bet and Silke called. The turn fell to the felt Jc “I’m all in” said Trotman. “Call” comes the reply from Silke. Trotman turns over Ah-4d, Silke shows Ac-Kd, the crowd was going crazy as the river card, 10c, hit the table. Silke had done it, he had just beaten a field of 398 players to become GUKPT London champion 2009. An absolutely phenomenal heads up battle between two really great players. It was a deserved win for Silke but there where was no losers in this epic struggle just a second place that went to Luke Trotman who, incidently, was the last alternate to register for the tournament with only 5 minutes left. 

The final standings and prizes were as follows :-

1st Martin silke          £172,850
2nd Luke Trotman    £103,000
3rd Sam Oatley           £68,950
4th Jamie Brown       £45,350
5th Coung Tran         £33,450
6th Chaz Chattha      £27,450
7th Andreas Hagen  £21,500
8th Simon Eastwood £15,500
9th Dave Colclough  £11,950

Final 14 at the GUKPT, London

Just 14 players remain as leg 3 of the GUKPT at the Victoria casino London draws to its conclusion. Less than 11k in chips separate the top 2 with Jamie Brown on 797,500 and Martin Silke hot on his heels with 786,000.  There is a staggering £172,850 waiting at the cash desk for the victor and £103,000 for the runner up, who will triumph in this the biggest field ever assembled for any GUKPT event. 

Play resumes at 14.00 GMT today and will be played to a finish. It looks like being one of, if not the, best finals ever for such an event.