#185: “Put A Cork In It”

My late grandfather believed that children should be seen and not heard. it was therefore quite a shock to him when his first grandchild was a chatterbox who liked to bombard him with questions. Politely, he would answer the first few but my insatiable curiosity would eventually erode his patience and he would hit me with his favourite line: “Put a Cork in it!”

Twenty-five years later, I am still chatterbox, still asking questions, still voicing my opinions to anybody who’ll listen (and to many who won’t). John O’Shea said to me recently that I’d be the last person with whom he would want to get into a verbal argument. Coming from him, I took that as a compliment but I think it is fair to say that very few gamblers hide their feelings under a bushel. After all, what is a wager if not a financially backed opinion on how a future event will transpire.

This week, I am in London for the last leg of the UKIPT and, thanks to my opinionated nature, an EPT freeroll in the Hippodrome. The nice people at PokerStars, in conjunction with Davey Boy Curtis, have gifted me this tournament entry, citing me as one of the UK and Ireland’s poker-influencers (translation: loud-mouths). I am very grateful to them for this and am more than happy to add another tourney to my already relentless live schedule.

Since Deauville, I have been to the Masters Finale in Dortmund and the UKIPT Cork. I bricked both tourneys in Dortmund but Cork was a great weekend for The Firm. Jason binked the High-Roller, Daragh Davey final-tabled the Deepstack Turbo and I final-tabled the €300 side event. Dara O’Kearney made a deep run in the Main and Nick Newport went all the way to the final table, being eliminated in 8th at the hands of popular winner Thom ‘The Bomb’ Finneran.

In other news, Pokerstars are upping the buy-in for next season to £1100 or €1100 and re-jigging the schedule. I see pros and cons to the increased buy-in but my reaction to the tour stops announced so far is mostly negative. Kicking it all off in Marbella is just stupid. It’s the UK and Ireland Tour. If players want to play in Spain, they can play the Estrellas Tour. On top of that, the Isle of Man is a bizarre and slightly creepy destination. Douglas is a tiny place with a population of about 25,000 people. It feels like the poker fraternity are being brought there to be Wicker-Manned. That might actually not be a bad thing as being burned inside a wicker effigy of Jake Cody would be preferential to having to go to Nottingham for, not one but, two poxy visits to the cramped charmless misery-shed that is the ‘Dusk Till Dawn’. On the bright side, the Galway leg looks exciting as it will coincide with race-week and may, if executed well, become the premiere poker festival in Ireland. Another piece of good news is that Dublin looks likely to stay on the schedule.

Since I supposedly have the ear of PokerStars, I will voice my opinion thusly: I think it is a big mistake for the UKIPT to remove the smaller stops from the tour, placing their emphasis on the bigger cities and the ‘novelty’ locations of Marbella and the Isle of Man. To whoever is making the 2013/14 schedule, my advice would be to return to Bristol and keep the third Irish leg in the People’s Republic. In the words of my grandfather, ‘Put a Cork in it!”