You may have noticed one or two Boylepoker.com banners floating around Blonde Poker of late. If you're not up to speed on who we are or what we're about, then read on. If you are, read on anyway - you might have missed something!
Boylepoker.com is a member of the Boylesports group, Ireland's largest independent bookmaker. Around two years ago the powers that be decided to give us a little more prominence within the group, which resulted in some very welcome investment that has given us the platform to raise our profile and emulate the big boys.
Initially to help promote our brand we decided that we needed to change networks and moved from Microgaming to iPoker, Europe's largest poker network. After that, we moved into the realm of player sponsorship and by a stroke of luck (or genius if you happen to be talking to our Poker Manager Paul Spillane) we managed to sign one Marty Smyth. The rest as they say, is poker history – definitely seen through ginger tinted glasses from our perspective.
Sponsored pros
Marty's achievements over the past couple of years have been nothing short of phenomenal, a WSOP Pot Limit Omaha bracelet win last June, which saw him take home a cool $859,549, was topped by his Poker Million VII victory on Sky Sports in December.
Thankfully, off the felt and away from his laptop Marty lets his guard down and through his blog reveals himself to be as prone as the rest of us to putting his foot in it. Bad enough that in one post he told the poker world he was preparing to celebrate his partner Karen's 30th birthday (28 Marty, it's always 28), worse still he let slip how he had unintentionally left Karen stranded on some razor sharp coral off the coast of Australia whilst he chased after a turtle!
Our second sponsored pro Padraig Parkinson can also boast tournament winnings in excess of $1 million. The Dubliner's big wins include a third in the World Series of Poker main event in 1999, for which he collected almost $500,000, and also a third place in the 2006 WSOP $1,500 NLH event.
Padraig though, is equally as renowned for his broadcasting and writing as being a top class poker player. He currently presents The Poker Show, an online radio show with the 'Voice of Poker' Jesse May and writes regular blogs for Boylepoker, on top of wearing our 'Lucky Logo'.
A more recent addition to our team is a young outspoken poker prodigy named John O'Shea. Whether he is winning vast sums of money in an effortless manner or forgetting his manners in another witty blog, John 'doesalrite' O'Shea definitely entertains.
Tournaments
John recently made a successful defence of his European Championship of Online Poker PLO Hi-Lo title taking down $25,000. This odds-defying win provided a nice little bonus to four lucky Boylepoker players who had a combined 15% slice of him.
The success of our sponsored pros has enabled us to give even more added value to our players with promotions such as this. In December last, Marty Smyth's third successive Poker Million final table appearance was celebrated with the Marty Smyth Poker Million Tournament where the prize money was boosted by 5% of his winnings - adding $50k to the prize pool. The winner, who originally won $200 took home another $20,000 as a result.
Following the success of so many of our online tournaments and promotions, we decided to branch out last year and along with Poker Ireland, host the International Poker Open 2008, at the Regency Airport Hotel in Dublin.
This was quite an ambitious undertaking which proved to be hugely popular. After selling out well in advance, we were delighted to see the largest poker field ever to be assembled outside the US taking part in our €135+€15 tournament with a prize pool of over €200,000.
The IPO truly was international with over a dozen different nationalities participating and no less than 400 French players flying to Dublin. Such was the positive feedback from the three day event we have decided to host it again in 2009.
Entertain and Inform
Over the past year or so we have endeavoured to entertain and inform our players as much as possible, whether that be through poker strategy blogs from Marty Smyth or tall tales from Padraig Parkinson. One of our most popular offerings though, has been our Heads Up interviews.
Our roving VIP Manager Ciaran Corbett has managed to corner a host of big name poker pros from around the world, including Neil Channing and Jamie Gold, and get them too answer his quirky questions on camera. It has to be said, he's gotten some fairly quirky answers, you know who we're talking about Rory Liffey.
We have also teamed up with PokerSwat.com, an online poker training site. We regularly give away free membership to the PokerSwat site, a terrific resource for players seeking to improve their game.
The Poker Show
Our commitment to giving as much as possible back to the poker community took another step forward in 2009 with launch of the UK's first live online poker radio show. The Poker Show, as mentioned previously, is brought to you by Boylepoker.com in association with Matchroom Sports and presented by our very own Padraig Parkinson and his long time friend Jesse May.
The first three shows provided several ‘soon-to-be-classic’ interviews, controversial comments, some live censorship, and a Phil Hellmuth world exclusive. Irish poker pro Rory Liffey was cut off one minute into his interview due to controversial and expletive-riddled comments, only to ring back, abuse the presenters and hang up on them!
Now that's what we call entertainment. You can listen to archived shows here.