#237: “All Eyes On Dublin”

It takes a fair amount these days for me to consider a trip back to the dirty ol’ town of my birth. Malta has quickly become my home away from home and while I miss the people of Dublin, it is a sad reality that most of my friends emigrated over the past decade. I love my apartment in Portobello, my home since I was 18, but I am coming round to the idea that it was cool place to spend my salad years. (Shut up, there was some salad in all those kebabs!)

I used to say “all I need is a well located box with perfect internet” but having spent the last four months in Sliema, I am starting to understand the modern obsession with space and light. Sipping a three euro Butler’s cappuccino, I used to people-watch the corybantic frenzy of shoppers and lunch-breakers rushing through the most NAMA’d street in Dublin, wondering if it will ever stop raining. Quaffing a one euro espresso with the sun shining, I now stare at the Valletta the way I imagine Monet looked at Rouen Cathedral and daydream about being on an episode of Grand Designs in which Saron and I faithfully convert one of the town’s dilapidated buildings.

Well, this week and for the next fortnight, there will be a fair amount happening in Dublin. In fact, Dublin is THE place to be for a self-respecting poker player, or, a self-loathing one, for that matter. It is the last stop of the Pokerstars UKIPT Season 5 with the small matter of an EPT in tow, the first on these shores since 2007, back when the biggest game I played was a $26 45-man SNG.

For Pokerstars, live poker events were originally about product placement and online sign-ups. They were probably run at a break even model in most cities and if they did make a profit, it was a fraction of what they would have raked, for far less effort, if those regulars attending had just played their usual online schedule. The point was to bring visibility to their brand, to produce TV content (essentially hour-long paid advertisements on late night TV), to create buzz, to have winners who could be photographed and interviewed and (most importantly,) to get players onto the site where they would become regular customers.

Nowadays, the EPT and regional tours have a slightly different function. Practically everybody has a Pokerstars account and practically everybody who plays poker is aware of the brand. ‘We are poker’ was a bold slogan at the time but it has proved itself to be portentously clairvoyant. The tours are now about maintaining market share and creating balance for the players who like to incorporate live play into their schedules. Through the attempted ‘sportification’ of poker, the tour stops also form a year-long circuit which, complimented by shows like ‘Sharkcage’, provide events to be followed and an ever growing roster of famous players to root for and against. Pokerstars clearly value keeping a physical presence despite their primary business existing online.

With that, it’s a no-brainer to build upon the success of the hugely popular stops like Barcelona and Prague. They make a tidy profit and are loved by the players, both as holiday destinations and hotbeds of poker. They also create enormous prize-pools and therefore generate huge stories as vast sums of money are won and lost. These stops will be permanent fixtures (laws of the land permitting) for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, Deauville and San Remo have been axed. The once prime value spots on the EPT circuit lost their lustre and popularity in recent seasons. My adopted country of Malta has come into the fold and, while it is pound for pound a tougher pair of main events, there is a ton of value in the smaller sides and it is certainly a great destination for poker. London has also been bumped, possibly because it is so extortionately expensive to exist there for any amount of time or possibly because it had shrunk to what had become the most elite field for a £1K+ buy-in anywhere in the world (with the possible exception of WSOPE). Replacing London this year is Dublin and with David Curtis at the helm, it is sure to be a top notch festival. That said, I do worry about liquidity in the Irish market so to give it the best chance of success, I think Pokerstars and Davey Boy were clever about scheduling and realistic about what it can accomplish.

First things first is the UKIPT week, a schedule that more or less writes itself. Pokerstars have these festivals down to a fine art with buyins ranging from €110 to the €2200 Highroller. The addition of nightly turbos in the €330-€550 region should keep the traveling players happy without ostracising the locals completely, some of whom might take a punt. I would expect 1000 runners for the UKIPT Main, 750 for the Cup and 200 for the Highroller.

The EPT week is a different animal altogether. I imagine Pokerstars have about 700 as their target for the Main but I think it’s fair to say that it will likely attract just 50-60 locals at a stretch. The early days of this tournament will be during the working week, making it even less appealing for the recreational player. However, it’s not unusual for the indigenous population to make up just 8-12% of an EPT field so expect a raft of UK, French, German and Russian players to kick in a good chunk of the prizepool. The largest X-Factor as I see it and the biggest challenge to David and co. will be whether the festival captures the imaginations of a North American market who love Ireland as a destination but have gotten out of the habit of coming over in recent years owing to the decline of the Irish Open.

But the EPT is more than just a main event. It is a 10 day festival with 70 events and this, I believe, will be the hardest sell for the organisers. Whatever about the existence of liquidity in the upper tier of Irish professionals (many of whom have been killing it in recent years) and the relative health of the staking market here, there will be liquidity issues when it comes to the side events, games which usually rely on a good local turnout. With this in mind, Pokerstars are hoping to draw in the Irish locals with multi-day €220 and €330 tourneys similar to the regional Cup events on the last weekend. They will be competing with the European Deepstacks on those days of the festival, a popular event which may seem more appealing to the faithful. That said, Prague EPT/Eureka never seems to suffer from having even more poker on the other side of town. Lets just hope that The Regency up their security and the Continuity IRA don’t have a beef with anyone from the poker community. Gulp!

In an uncertain time for poker and the Baazov Amaya Pokerstars machine, all eyes are one Dublin this week for what will hopefully showcase the best Ireland has to offer on and off the felt. I’m traveling with the UKIPT Season 4 MVP who is looking to go back-2-back in leaderboard victories. The plan is to put in the hours almost every day but as hard as I work, I know David Curtis has been working 10 times as much in the hope that it becomes a permanent fixture on the circuit. (If you don’t believe me, just ask him!) And I gotta say, it would be nice to have a good reason to come home to the big smoke each year.