If you wish to play the event, you may pay on the day or in advance, or there is also the option of winning your seat through a variety of online satellites.

Blind Structure:

Level 1; 1:00pm - 1:30pm 25-50
Level 2; 1:30pm - 2:00pm 50-100
Level 3; 2:30pm - 3:00pm 75-150
Break 15 mins
Level 4; 3:15pm - 3:45pm 100-200
Level 5; 3:45pm - 4:15pm 150-300
Level 6; 4:15pm - 4:45pm 200-400
Level 7; 4:45pm - 5:15pm 300-600
Break 45 mins (Dinner)
Level 8; 6:00pm - 6:30pm 400-800
Level 9; 6:30pm - 7:00pm 500-1,000
Level 10; 7:00pm - 7:30pm 800-1,500
Level 11; 7:30pm - 8:00pm 1,000-2,000
Break 15 mins
Level 12; 8:15pm - 8:45pm 1,500-3,000
Level 13; 8:45pm - 9:15pm 2,000-4,000
Level 14; 9:15pm - 9:45pm 3,000-6,000
Level 15; 9:45pm - 10:15pm 4,000-8,000
Break 15 mins
Level 16; 10:30pm - 11:00pm 5,000-10,000
Level 17; 11:00pm - 11:30pm 8,000-15,000
Level 18; 11:30pm - 12:00pm 10,000-20,000
Level 19; 12:00pm - 12:30am 15,000-30,000
Level 20; 12:30am - 1:00am 20,000-40,000
Level 21; 1:00am - 1:30am 25,000-50,000
Level 22; 1:30am - 2:00am 30,000-60,000

Online Satellite Schedule

Friday 9th May - Mermaid Poker 8pm start; $10 entry [+reg] Freeze-out
Wednesday 14th May - BoylePoker.com 8pm start; $5 entry [+reg] (reb-buys for one hour at $5 each)
Friday 16th May - Mermaid Poker.com 8pm start; $10 entry [+reg] Freeze-out
Wednesday 21st May - BoylePoker.com 8pm start; $5 entry [+reg] (reb-buys for one hour at $5 each)
Friday 23rd May - Mermaid Poker.com 8pm start; $10 entry [+reg] Freeze-out
Wednesday 28th May - BoylePoker.com 8pm start; $5 entry [+reg] (reb-buys for one hour at $5 each)
Friday 30th May - Mermaid Poker.com 8pm start; $10 entry [+reg] Freeze-out

Discuss this poker tournament in our Irish Poker Forum

The No Limit Hold’em main event is a European ranking tournament being held at the Majestic Hotel in Tramore from June 12th-15th. A series of side events will also run with the prize pool an estimated €120,000. Buy in for the main event is €500+50.

Keith McDonnell, managing director of Bodog Europe commented, “This is the first Bodog sponsored poker tournament in Europe and we’re excited about giving our European online players a tournament where they can meet face to face and compete for some serious money and bragging rights! There will be many more Bodog tournaments across Europe to look forward to, and with our full range of services launching soon, Bodog is set to take the European scene by storm.”

If a trip to Ireland to join over 200 poker players in Waterford’s biggest poker tournament takes your fancy Bodog Poker is running a Freeroll on June 8th at 6pm GMT and a series of qualifiers from June 8th-11th at 8pm GMT on Bodog Poker
.

Qualifiers are also being run in the Bodog Poker room for €50+5 with one seat being offered for every €550 in the prize pool.

For a chance to win a seat at the Waterford Open, players should register at Bodog Poker and play in the Bodog Waterford Open Freeroll or the Waterford Open Qualifiers. Players can pre-register at Bodog from today.

Download Bodog Poker

Comment on this article in our Poker Forum.

Virgin Poker will be running the next Virgin Poker Festival in plush poker club Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham over the weekend of the 28th/29th June! This promises to be a weekend of real quality Poker action. UK Gambling Forums is offering their poker forum members an Exclusive shot at winning 1 or more seats in the shape of a 1 Seat guaranteed exclusive freezeout.

Virgin Poker Festival Schedule

Virgin Poker Festival 2 Day Deep Stack: £105 two day, deep stack main event (£5,000 added to prize pool) and £1000 of value added bounties

- Bad beat prize of return flight to Las Vegas
- Three added value, low stakes side events
- Wii Bowling, bar promos and heads up challenge

How To Qualify

There will be no direct buy-ins. All players must qualify online.
There are 3 standard ways to qualify

* Festival Weekly (€15 + €1.50): Every Sunday at 19.30 (BST). 1 seat for every 10 players.
* Festival Satellite (€1.65 + €0.15): Everyday at 20.30 (BST). Win a seat to the Festival Weekly tourney.
* Festival Super Rebuy (€7 + €0.70): Every Thursday at 20.15 (BST). 1 rebuy allowed when a players has under 500 chips + 1 add on after 60 minutes.

Your Exclusive chance to qualify for the V-Fest
UK Gambling Forums members can qualify via an EXCLUSIVE 1 Seat added satellite:

Poker Resources

• Poker Forum - Our Poker Forum is the ideal place to discuss poker strategy and play freerolls, leagues and value added games! Join today!
• Poker Rakeback Deals - Poker Rakeback Deals Explained, and our pick of the top deals available.
• Poker Tournament Listings - Live Poker Tournament Listings.

Play Poker Now! Download the Poker.co.uk poker software and play on the best UK Poker room today.

What makes the Irish Open so special?

Firstly, the quality of the field. Most of the leading European poker players take part in the event, always joined by a number of Americans. Last year these included Dan Harrington and Mike Sexton. This year stars such as poker icons Doyle Brunson and Sorel Mizzi led the US invasion.

Secondly, there are the Irish poker players themselves – led by the experienced and entertaining event director Liam Flood, they are hospitable, good fun and they just love their poker (and their beer!)!

Thirdly, everyone who is playing stays in the same place so that, once the playing stops, the fun really starts – this is one of poker’s most social occasions. Where else can a satellite player rub shoulders with Roland De Wolfe, Todd & Doyle Brunson, and superstars of the online-playing fraternity, such as Isaac “Mr_Menlo” Baron, Sorel Mizzi etc?

Irish Poker Open Prizepool

Irish Poker Open 2008 Prizepool- - €3,001,400

1 € 801,400
2 € 420,000
3 € 275,000
4 € 220,000
5 € 175,000
6 € 135,000
7 € 100,000
8 € 75,000
9 € 50,000
10 -12 €32,500
13-18 €24,000
19-27 €18,000
28- 36 €13,000
37-45 € 9,000
46-54 € 6,500
55-63 € 5,500
64-72 € 4,500

Irish Open Day 1(a)

Day 1 kicked off at 2pm (315 Players), and UKGamblingforums staff wandered around snapping the players without challenge.Irish hopes included Andy Black, and a bunch of players from Boards.ie as well as plenty of satellite players.

Other big name players on day 1(a) included Sorel “imper1um” Mizzi, Doyle Brunson , Trond Eidsvig (who seems to final table every EPT), Roland de Wolfe (who spent the first 90 Mins of play getting a Massage), Todd Brunson, Joe “BigEgypt” Elpayaa, John Duthie (one of the founders of the EPT), Mike “Timex” mcDonald on same table as Dave “devilfish” Ulliot, to name but a few. I also recognised Jen Mason, Ram Vaswani, and spoke to micky wernick and HendonMobster Barney Boatman (both of whom were very nice and let me take their pics.)

The first elimination of the day was given a large chocolate easter-egg in a basket (expensive egg, at 4500 Euros!). Irishman Andy Black grinded his stack up to about 45k pretty quickly, however he busted out pretty soon when his opponent rivered a backdoor straight. D’oh!

Top 10 Chipcounts at end of day 1(a)

82,250 Jay Renehan
78,700 AlexanderFitzgerald
72,375 Carsten Joh
69,325 Mazhar Nawab
60,100 Thomas Dempsey
59,275 David Gregory
59,150 Keith Littlewood
56,225 Sorel Mizzi
55,225 John Keown
53,800 Doyle Brunson
51,300 Graham Clarkson

Irish Poker Open Day 1(b)

It turns out Paddy Power didn’t sell as many seats as last year, so they were trying to sell a few seats by running some 1 hand satellites (350 Euros buyin, 2 tables, 1 hand - winner takes all, 2nd place gets his money back).. So half an hour later they announced that there was an overlay, and poor old Paddy Power were paying the remaining two hundred thousand euro to make up the guarantee!

Top 10 Chipcounts Day 2

99400 Eric Larcheveque
92250 Lars Hougaard
84875 Knut Rysstad
82250 Jay Renehan
78700 Alexander Fitzgerald
76425 Conor Tate
72375 Carsten Joh
69700 James Daly
69325 Mazhar Nawab
65000 Nick Goodall

Day 2 saw the feature table getting opened up, and of course Doyle Brunson was there in his iconic stetson. Sorel Mizzi was on 120k+, and looking good to final table this event 2 years on the trot. Irishman Donal Norton was another serious contender to hit the final table with a huge stack. Neil Channing was also looking good for a Final Table spot with plenty of chips around him.

Final chipcounts end of day 3

Seat 1: Neil Channing — 2,748,000
Seat 2: Tim Blake — 912,000
Seat 3: Kai Danilo Paulsen — 716,000
Seat 4: Thomas Dunwoodie — 544,000
Seat 5: Edwin Tournier — 562,000
Seat 6: Donal Norton — 1,164,000

The Final Table

Channing ran good on the final table and won himself >800K Euro. Channing had also placed a bet on himself at 100-1, so quite a nice payday for him. Irishman Donal Norton came 2nd for Just over 400k Euro. Congratulations to both players!. No Final table deal was made.

Discuss the Irish Poker Open in our Poker Forum

Rake is how poker rooms make their money. That is the money that the poker rooms deduct from every pot. Usually the rake is a couple of percent with a cap at around $3 at the highest limits. There is also rake on tournaments, where the large portion of the buy in goes to the prize pool, and a little fee goes to the poker site. The poker rooms make huge money from the rake the players contribute with. It is not unusual that a single player pay $3000 to the poker room every month, and that’s just one player. A poker room with more than 10,000 active players earns quite a lot of money to say the least.

What is Rakeback?

Rakeback is a refund to the poker player.. Poker players receive a percentage of the rake they pay to the poker room. A normal rakeback offer is between 25% and 40%, but sometimes players can get an even better offer. If you receive 35% rakeback, and rake $1000 one month, you will get $350 back. The more you rake, the more you get back.

How do I get rakeback

If you want to get rakeback you have to sign up at a poker room through a special link (which lets the poker room know that they must give you rakeback (as normal players do not automatically get rakeback). Some sites offer multiple rakeback deals (e.g. Poker Rakeback Deals. All of the poker site links on this page entitle you to rakeback when you join the poker room.

A referring rakeback site earns a couple of percent of your total rake back, but the major part of it goes back into your bankroll.

Some of the poker variations are better suitable for a rakeback deal. If you play shorthanded poker, you are involved in more pots, and therefore pay more rake (and can potentially earn more rakeback). If you play at more than one table at the time you also play more hands, and pay more rake. When you are involved in a lot of pots you should definitely play with rakeback - otherwise you are really throwing away a LOT of money unnecessarily.

There is no downside to rakeback - you will earn a lot of extra cash, or save cash depending on how you look at it. Just do it!

Top Rakeback

• Cakepoker 33% Rakeback
• Poker.co.uk 30% Rakeback
• CelebPoker 30% Rakeback
• Betfair 37% Rakeback
• WillHill ~50% Rakeback
• PKR 30% Rakeback

At Irish Poker Online we like to reward our poker playing community with some of the best poker leagues money can buy. The more players that engage in the leagues, the bigger the prizes and incentives we offer.

Our poker leagues are free for anyone to join (simply register your interest in our poker forum)). Leagues are generally short, consisting of up to 6 games per league - consisting of some freerolls, some value added games (a small buy-in and a substantial amount added to the prizepool), as well as a final for those who make it to the top of the league.

Click Here Join the UKGF Poker League

€1 Million estimated prizepool for October Bank Holiday Tournament (Online satellites begin Sunday April 13th).

paddypowerpoker.com today announces full details of the Irish Winter Festival, which will take place the 25th to 27th October 2008. The festival will be headlined by the Irish Masters (a tournament with an estimated prizepool of €1,000,000) and also feature two one-day side event tournaments.

The Irish Masters is a €1,500 + €150 buy-in No Limit Hold’em freezeout tournament with a capacity for 800 players and will take place in Citywest Hotel, the home of the 2008 Irish Open. Starting on Friday October 25th and running for three days, the tournament will pit the cream of the Irish poker community versus the best the rest of the world has to offer.

The side event tournaments will consist of a €200 + €20 buy-in No Limit Hold’em rebuy tournament (with rebuys available for 90 minutes) on Sunday October 26th and a €500 + €50 buy-in No Limit Hold’em freezeout tournament on Monday October 27th.

“We are very excited to confirm our sponsorship of the 8th annual Irish Winter Festival”, said Paddy Power, Communications Manager for paddypowerpoker.com. “We are building on the back of a successful Irish Open and will spare no effort in making the Irish Masters a ‘poker player’s tournament’, well structured and accessible to both local and international players. Pints, a party atmosphere and lots of poker; what else could anyone ask for!”

Weekly super satellites (€200 + $20 freezeouts) to the Irish Masters start online at paddypowerpoker.com on Sunday April 13th, with daily qualifiers ($15 + $1.50 rebuys) at 2pm and 8pm to the Sunday super satellites. The $3,500 Irish Winter Festival packages to be won at the super satellites will be made up of an Irish Masters ticket plus expenses.

The World Series of Poker originated in the United States of America, and the first event was organised by Tom Moore of San Antonio, Texas, in 1969 at the Holiday Hotel and Casino in Reno. The WSOP has always been played on American soil.. Until now, that is!

The World Series of Poker announced this month that poker’s biggest tournament institution will creep into Europe September 2007, with a number of events hosted across three separate London casinos in a poker schedule that will span eleven days.

The events which will constitute the WSOP in London mark the first time that WSOP champions’ bracelets (possibly the most coveted baubles in the poker world) are awarded outside of Las Vegas.

September 10th is the kickoff of the inaugural WSOP Europe Main Event. The No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournnament features a £10,000 buy-in (That’s US$19,600!!!) , and will include the Sportsman and Filly casinos in addition to Leicester Square.

Play will continue at all three sites simultaneously until September 13th, when the remaining players will all return to Leicester Square, to continue late-table action, concluding on September 16th. This can only improve the popularity of Poker in the UK.

Resources

• - Official WSOP site
• - WSOP History

September 2007

The International Poker Open commences in Dublin on October 6th 2007, (Shelbourne Hall, RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4) - promising to be the biggest ever poker tournament in Europe.

Online Qualifiers are running on Mermaid Poker:

How to Play?
Details:Instructions for registration into what will be the biggest ever poker tournament in Europe.
1. Download and Install Mermaid Poker (usually only takes a few seconds).
2. Follow the instructions to open an account with Mermaid.
3. Click on cashier and use any of the secure options available to deposit your International Poker Open entry fee.
4. Click on ‘Multi-Table’ in the main lobby and scroll down to ‘Inter. Poker Open’ which is listed under Sept 1st for technical reasons (registration will actually close on Oct 1st).
5. Click register and the entry fee will be deducted from your account.
6. Arrive at the Shelbourne Hall, Royal Dublin Society, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 on Saturday October 6th 2007 before 12pm and your Mermaid ‘nickname’ will be displayed on a screen with your corresponding seat number. Once you take your seat you are ready to play.

Please note that only persons registered on Mermaid Poker before Oct 1st will be eligible to play and that we are asking all players to bring passport/drivers licence I.D. to the RDS on Oct 6th to confirm their identity…..

This will be an excellent sponsored event with a guaranteed prize pool. The tournament will take place in the Shelbourne Hall in the RDS on October 6th, starting at high noon, 12 midday. Day 2 will take place in the Jackpot Casino Club, Montague Street, D.2.

Tournament Information
Starting Stack: 10,000 Chips.
Event Duration: 2 Days.
Fully dealer dealt.
Registration: Registration is open. All registration will be online and all players must be paid up before Oct 1st for this tournament. Standard payout structure will be used (ie approx top 10% paid)

Stephen Mc Lean will be tournament director along with Luke Ivory, Derek “The Clamper” Williams and Pamela Morris.

Blind Structure:

12:00 1. 25-50
12:40 2. 50-100
13.20 3. 75-150
14:00 4. 100-200
14:40 5. 150-300
15:20 30 minute break
15:50 6. 200-400
16:30 7. 300-600
17:10 8. 400-800
17:50 9. 500-1000
18.30 60 minute break
19:30 10. 600-1200
20:10 11. 800-1500
20:50 12. 1000-2000
21:30 13. 1500-3000
22:10 30 minute break
22:40 14. 2000-4000
23:10 15. 3000-6000
23:50 20 min break
00:10 16. 4000-8000
00:50 17. 5000-10000
01:30…end of day 1
END DAY 1.

DAY 2 Sunday 7th Oct - 1 hour levels
14:00 6000-12000
15:00 8000-15000
16:00 10000-20000
17:00 15000-30000
18:00 18000-36000
19:00 20000-40000
20:00 30000-60000
21:00 40000-80000
22:00 50000-100000

Buy In: €125 (+ €25 registration)
Location: RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.

Register online now: Download Mermaid Poker