Hope everyone had a good Chrishmas and got over the New Year without too bad a hangover. I must admit to being a bit of a Christmas grouch, although I hide it well enough and the feast of sport on over the holiday keeps me some way sane.
It's back to work this week. 1st up is tonight's fantastic $10,000 added Festival Frenzy tournament at Boylepoker. I'm sure most of you will have qualified for this non-direct buy in event already; if you haven't satellites are running all day today ending at 6.45 with the main event starting at seven.
On Thursday I'll be at the City West for the WPT Ireland. When I started out playing the game, this date was always filled with the Irish Poker Championship at the same venue and that event returns to it's spiritual home as a side event of the WPT starting the Friday.
The WPT is a hard one to call turnout wise. On a negative its relatively big buy in for a country where disposable income is at an all time low. This makes it hard to see where the walk in buy ins will come from. There's also the clash with the PCA, which could affect overseas visitors.
The positive is the brand, every poker player in the country will fancy the title of WPT champion, so a few mattresses will be raided to come up with the buy in.
I've herd people predicting very low turnout for the event, but personally I think the numbers will be decent. I'd call anything over 150 starters a relative success for this type of buy in, in its first year. Hopefully it gets over 250 and establishes itself as a permanent way to kick off the poker year.
I, as every other Irish poker player, kinda like the ring of " Irish WPT Champion".
