Poker Blog - Irish Open 2010

What do you think of the copy I wrote for our new Irish Open 20-Seat Guaranteed super sat page?  We had to think of something interesting to grab people’s attention, and have a list of reasons why you should qualify for the IO with paddypowerpoker.com rather than other poker rooms (even though the €100,000 Sole Survivor should be reason enough, right?!!!!).  Check out the page HERE

Played a £100 well-structured Holdem MTT in the Vic in London last week while there for work; what a great location for poker!  I was well above average in chips after the first 2 1/2 levels, but was knocked out by the table chip leader just before the break when we both hit a flush on the river, he held AQ clubs and I held KJ clubs.  It was folded to me in the cutoff, I raised to 600 (blinds were 100/200), all folded but the villain in the BB.  The flop came down AJ5 with one club, he checked and I bet 2/3 pot, he flat called.  Very suspicious, I figured I was behind but might take it off him on a later street.  The turn was the 3 of clubs, check check.  The river was the 7 of clubs, so we both hit our flush!  He made a bet of 1300, I raised to 3500, he reraised to 7000 putting me all-in.  I knew I was almost certainly behind here, but called with a sigh hoping to be shown the Q-high flush or a set.  Bah humbug!!!  I’ll be back to the Vic tho

A big, massive, GINORMOUS Congratulations and Well Done is due to our own Phil ‘flukesfla‘ Flavin, who took down the Fort Knox Sit’n'Go Jackpot for a tasty $110,000 on Saturday morning.  He won six consecutive $50 Jackpot Sit’n'Gos (click HERE for more info on these bad boys!), starting on Friday evening and finishing a few hours later but over a hundred grand richer!  Phil is a long-time PPP player from Tramore in Co. Waterford and one of the nicest guys around; he’s also already qualified for the Irish Open with us so will be in with a shot at the €100,000 package in April…go go go Phil!  He’ll be writing up a blog report of his big victory, I’ll post it up later in the week.

More news: if you are based in the Nottingham or London area (obviously in the UK, not London, Texas!) you may be interested in the live satellites we’re running over there in March.  There is a 5 package guaranteed live tournament in the Vic card room in London on March 17th (St. Patrick’s Day!) and a 7 seat guaranteed live tournament in Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham on March 19th.  Both events are going to be fun, and some of the team from Paddy Towers will be in attendance as well

I’ve another strategy video to share with you - this time it is all about Understanding Position in Texas Holdem (I’m having trouble with this myself, limping UTG with muck most of the time!):

What do you think? We should have a lot more videos to share over the next few weeks, so keep visiting to check them out

Want to learn a little something about that infamous poker move called the Continuation Bet (or C-Bet as all the cool kids are calling it)?

Well, we’ve got just what you’re looking for!  Check out the latest video in our Youtube channel:

What do you think - helpful or not?  We’ll be adding more and more videos to the channel and to our Poker School page over the next few months!

Are you aware of our Royal Cash Races yet?  We’re running this cash race for the entire month of February, broken down into four weekly counting periods with more than $2,500 to be handed out during each.

The king of the heap each week will snag $500 - not enough to buy a crown but enough to set up up like Prince Charles Prince William for a few days of living the high life

We’re also running the Double Up Sparking STT promotion for the entire month of February.  This is an iPoker-wide promotion with $250,000 (yep, a quarter of a million buckerinos!) in cash and prizes up for grabs, solely for Double Up STT players.

Players get points for each Double Up they play, with more points going to the winner than the loser (makes sense I think).  This promo also starts from February 1st.

I’m also working on an MTT promo for the middle part of the month…stay tuned for more details!

Where would you play if you won the €100,000 Sole Survivor package?  For me, I’d defo have the WSOP main event and a trip to the PCA in January on the list, those two would really be cool!  Marcel Koch became the very 1st paddypowerpoker.com Sole Survivor at last year’s Irish Open and he’s been able to play in some very cool tournaments as a result; EPT London (where he cashed in 80th place), GUKPT Grand Final, EPT Prague, ECOOP Main Event, the Irish Winter Festival and now EPT Deauville in France:

Next up for Marcel is the Irish Open; he won’t be able to have a shot at retaining his €100,000 Sole Survivor crown unless he qualifies with us online (we don’t make exceptions for anyone!) but will be gunning for 1st prize nevertheless and the €500k+ winner’s cheque.

Man, I’d love a chance to become the Sole Survivor!!!

First off; congrats to thefuzzbuzz (a.k.a loosecannon on the very popular Irish poker forum boards.ie) who took down the weekly Omaha game on Monday night for just over $4,000!  This tournament is one of the best Omaha events available anywhere on the internet; the buy-in is $100 + $9, the guarantee is $15,000 and there are loads of feeders available to play daily.  There are $10 + $1 rebuy feeders each day at 4.05pm and $12 +$1 rebuy feeders each day at 9.05pm.  There are also $15 + $1.50 freezeout sats and a $10 rebuy last chance feeder every Monday at 6.30pm.  I’m gonna play it myself one of these days, though we really just get Noel ‘BigCityBanker’ Hayes to take a few shots as he is the team’s Omaha expert!

Next up, we’re running a weeklong $5,000 Cash Race starting from Sunday evening:

The cash race runs from January 25th 00:00 to January 31st 23:59 and the top 60 players will win cash or prizes - the top player will take down $1,000!  Get onto the tables and make your mark!

As you know, we’ve extended a special invitation to President Obama to take part in the Irish Open 2010 this April - and if he shows up we’ll add $1,000,000 to the prizepool!  President Obama is a known poker player, having taken part in Dealer’s Choice games while he was a state representative in Illinois (supposedly he prefered Stud to Holdem and was a cautious player) so maybe he’ll take us up on the offer.  How cool would that be!!!!

There is our regular Thursday night Irish Open Ticket Only super satellite on tonight at 7.30pm - a great way of getting to play without having to pad out the prizepool for the rest of the package; who needs accommodation when the tables stay open so late?!!!

Onto the caption competition…

It’s Paddy outside the US Embassy in Dublin, hand delivering the invitation to Obama along with some sexy cheerleading types!  Can you come up with a good / funny / clever caption for this?  The winner gets an Irish Open feeder token worth €16.50 + €1.50; please remember to leave your poker nickname (screenname) so that I can award the token if you win!

Still waiting to hear from Obama…

…no, not Ivan Drago, we’re talking political power here!

We’ve extended an invitation to the Irish Open 2010 to President Barack Obama, an acknowledged poker player, and will add $1m to the prizepool if he turns up and plays!

Hopefully if he does he’ll know the game is Texas Holdem, not Five Card Draw!

Check out the press release HERE

We’re on a major social websites buzz right now and I’ve targetted 1,000 members for our Facebook group within the next month or so.  Given that we’ve 280 right now, this is a big ask!

So what I’m going to do is entice people to sign up (and get their poker-loving friends to sign up) by running a Facebook Frenzy $500 Freeroll once we hit 1,000 members; once the magic number is hit I’m going to message all members with the details of the freeroll (date and time) and the password needed to play.

Will this be enough to encourage people to get involved?  My fingers are crossed anyhow!

The PPP Facebook group is here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18428562837