Northern Ireland Poker Tour - Launch

carfax

Hi All,

PokerKings N.I. and PokerIreland.ie are going into partnership to bring you the Northern Ireland Poker Tour 2009.

The tour will consist of four major, one-day, No-Limit Hold'em Freezeouts in May and will culminate with the Belfast Poker Finals - a two-day event - to take place on Saturday 13th & Sunday 14th June 2009.

This is a first in Irish poker but all players must remember that under Northern Ireland law; NO CASH CAN BE ACCEPTED ON THE DAY OF EACH EVENT.

Every Player must pre-register on PokerIreland.ie (PokerKings is setting up a website dedicated solely to this tour in the next few days so you will be able to pre-register there too).
You will need to pre-pay your entry fee in its entirety before each event (there can be no cash changing hands on the day of the event under N.I. law)

The locations for the tour are as follows (12 noon start for all tournaments);
Omagh; Sunday 10th May - Buy-in £100stg (+£20 registration fee)
Portadown; Sunday 17th May - Buy-in £100stg (+£20 registration fee)
Coleraine; Sunday 24th May - Buy-in £100stg (+£20 registration fee)
Derry; Sunday 31st May - Buy-in £100stg (+£20 registration fee)

Belfast Finals; Saturday 13th & Sunday 14th June 2009.

Blind structure for each of the first four events will be as follows;
10,000 starting chips with 30 minute levels.
Level 1; 25-50
Level 2; 50-100
Level 3; 75-150
Level 4; 100-200
Break 10 mins
Level 5; 150-300
Level 6; 200-400
Level 7; 300-600
Level 8; 400-800
Break 10 mins
Level 9; 500-1000
Level 10; 800-1500
Level 11; 1000-2000
Level 12; 1500-3000
Dinner Break 40 mins
Level 13 2000-4000
Level 14; 3000-6000
Level 15; 4000-8000
Level 16; 5000-10000
Break 10 mins
Level 17; 8000-15000
Level 18; 10000-20000
Level 19; 15000-30000
Level 20; 20000-40000
Break 10 mins
Level 21; 30000-60000
Level 22; 40000-80000
Level 23; 50000-100000
Level 24; 80000-150000

If I have left anything out of the above post you will have to forgive me. We have already left it late in the day to start promoting this so we really need every poker player to get behind this.

If we can establish this tour and make it a great success then I am sure we will be able to get an online sponsor on board so that we can offer better value in terms of the reg fee etc in the future.

All venues are TBC but we will be back on in the next few days to go over full details including blind structure for the Belfast Finals.

Many thanks,
Stephen.

carfax

We are going to be looking for every player to lodge their buy-in to any Bank of Ireland branch in advance of each tournament.

Full details will be posted as soon as possible for details on this.

Mr. Wolf

This looks great Steven, can I run offline sats for these games and block-register the winners on their behalf or do they have to register themselves?

pokerkingsni

Hi folks, i will be running these tournaments with Stephen.

Anyone in the North intrested in playing or running live Sats let me know and we can get them set up.

Looking forward to a great Tour.

carfax

Mr. Wolf wrote: »

This looks great Steven, can I run offline sats for these games and block-register the winners on their behalf or do they have to register themselves?

Cheers, we would be delighted if you can set up sats....We will need each player to fill out a reg form on either of the websites. Once they do that and the buy-in is referenced with each name then its all gravy baby .

Stephen.

pokerkingsni

Mr. Wolf wrote: »

This looks great Steven, can I run offline sats for these games and block-register the winners on their behalf or do they have to register themselves?

Hi Mick, if you are running live sats I can be there on the night and sort out the winners registration there and then.

Cheers, Eoin.

Mr. Wolf

Cheers Eoin, i'd like to do sats straight into the main event in Belfast if thats possible as well as the smallers games, could you give me a call on 086-2205111 whenever you get a chance please
Mick

carfax

We for got to say;

Estimated £20,000 Prize-pool in each of the four lead up events

Estimated £100,000 Prize-pool in the Belfast Finals

oneillMan999

how much is the belfast event gonna be? and why is the registration 20% ?
is there a full dinner included at breaks?

northwestguy27

I'll be up for the Derry event, probably get a few heads along too. Looking forward to this. Keep us posted on Venue etc

pokerkingsni

oneillMan999 wrote: »

how much is the belfast event gonna be? and why is the registration 20% ?
is there a full dinner included at breaks?

We will be confirming the buyin for the Main Event in Belfast at some stage today.

The registration is 20% to cover all the costs of running these events. Registration costs have been discussed at length before.

Dinner will be available and is not covered in the registration. We are talking to venues at the minute to get a good deal for players.

Cheers, Eoin.

pokerkingsni

northwestguy27 wrote: »

I'll be up for the Derry event, probably get a few heads along too. Looking forward to this. Keep us posted on Venue etc

Thanks northwestguy. As Stephen said before we still have a few details to finalise. We would hope to have these sorted by this evening and will let you guys know as soon they are.

carfax

Cheers for all the feedback everyone....

We are taking everything on board.

With regard to 20% reg fee, this is simply the best we can offer players without running these events at a loss to ourselves...Bear in mind there is no side action and venue, dealers, promotion and all the rest costs time, money & effort to organise, not to mention actually running the tournaments themselves

We will be announcing full details as soon as we possibly can.

Lots of different organisers have been in contact with us with regard to running satellites to all of the various events. Thanks a mil to anyone that has emailed already, and if you are interested please email or PM myself or Eoin.

You can also email me on stephen@pokerireland.ie, I know that Eoin will have a new website set up shortly, which will be dedicated to poker in NI.

Cheers,
Stephen.

mully_85

Great news!

we'll give u all the support u need for the omagh leg.

just a word on the structure, and whether that posted is the finished article?

whats the reasoning behind omitting antes? vital aspect of tournament poker imo!

and also, thres a few levels missing there, i always find the jump from 500/1k to 800/1500, and 1/2 to 1.5/3k way too crippling, surely theres room for a 600/1200 and a 1200/2400?

carfax

mully_85 wrote: »

Great news!

we'll give u all the support u need for the omagh leg.

just a word on the structure, and whether that posted is the finished article?

whats the reasoning behind omitting antes? vital aspect of tournament poker imo!

and also, thres a few levels missing there, i always find the jump from 500/1k to 800/1500, and 1/2 to 1.5/3k way too crippling, surely theres room for a 600/1200 and a 1200/2400?

Hi Mully,

Cheers for the support.

On the structure; yes it is pretty much the finished article...We are expecting over 200 players in Omagh. Starting at 12pm for a one-day event we expect this to finish between 2am and 3am...If we add in those levels it will bring it to at least 4am.

We're not using antes for the simple reason that some of the dealers are being trained up now, and for the next few weeks. Because we are using some less experienced staff we've left out antes so as to keep the game moving along properly.

Cheers,
Stephen.

pokerkingsni

Just want to add that the Buy-In for the Belfast Event on June 13th/14th is £300(£40reg included).

Full 2 day structure to follow shortly. We are currently getting live satellites set up in Omagh, Cavan and Belfast. Time and dates will follow too.

Dyson147

Looks like these games are going to do well....Best of luck to all involved,,,will be taking part in sat's for these,,,,hope to see you there!!!

smcb

perfect news for a monday morning! nice one lads will most likely play in either the omagh or portadown legs

smurph

Hi stephen,
don't want to put a dampner on things, but I thought that you needed a bingo licence to run card tournaments in the north, or some peculiar rule like that. If the games are shut down, can you guarantee our money back.. Will there be cash games allowed at the tournaments? I know they had a bit of trouble holding the Norther Ireland Poker Championship a few years ago when they tried to hold it in City North Hotel in Meath.There was an article about it on Poker pages

carfax

smurph wrote: »

Hi stephen,
don't want to put a dampner on things, but I thought that you needed a bingo licence to run card tournaments in the north, or some peculiar rule like that. If the games are shut down, can you guarantee our money back.. Will there be cash games allowed at the tournaments? I know they had a bit of trouble holding the Norther Ireland Poker Championship a few years ago when they tried to hold it in City North Hotel in Meath.There was an article about it on Poker pages

Hi Smurph,

We have a written opinion from a barrister, have been in constant contact with the P.S.N.I. (or at least Eoin has been, with their public events licensing people and we are getting in conatct with all the local authorities now before we announce each venue officially etc) and every bit of feedback we have gotten so far has been very positive.

We will of course refund in full any and all money for tournament registrations, buy-ins and anything else if any problems do arise. That's a guarantee from myself, PokerIreland.ie and PokerKings.co.uk....

There will be absolutely no side-action, cash games, side tournaments or anything of the sort. One of the conditions of running these tournaments is that (a) no cash changes hands on the day of the event and (b) the tournament is a freezeout, where the house takes no percentage of the prize-pool, which of course if the way all tournaments are run anyway.

I am fairly familiar with the situation that arose around the City North and its not my place to say anything really except that there are a few important differences with the way we plan to run this tour.

Stephen.

thenuts

carfax wrote: »

Hi Smurph,

We have a written opinion from a barrister, have been in constant contact with the P.S.N.I. (or at least Eoin has been, with their public events licensing people and we are getting in conatct with all the local authorities now before we announce each venue officially etc) and every bit of feedback we have gotten so far has been very positive.

We will of course refund in full any and all money for tournament registrations, buy-ins and anything else if any problems do arise. That's a guarantee from myself, PokerIreland.ie and PokerKings.co.uk....

There will be absolutely no side-action, cash games, side tournaments or anything of the sort. One of the conditions of running these tournaments is that (a) no cash changes hands on the day of the event and (b) the tournament is a freezeout, where the house takes no percentage of the prize-pool, which of course if the way all tournaments are run anyway.

I am fairly familiar with the situation that arose around the City North and its not my place to say anything really except that there are a few important differences with the way we plan to run this tour.

Stephen.

If the house takes no % then where does the reg go????

carfax

thenuts wrote: »

If the house takes no % then where does the reg go????

W-i-l-l-n-o-t-j-u-s-t-i-f-y-w-i-t-h-a-n-s-w-e-r....

Seriously though, a registration fee is what it says on the tin, a registration fee and it goes towards covering the event costs.

We pay out 100% of the entrance fees/buy-in/£100stg's that we take in. If we get 200 players we pay out £20,000stg, not 19k, 18k or any other number (thats what would be against the law).

Stephen.

carfax

Hi all,

I am really disappointed to have to announce this but we feel that even the slightest risk of this tour running into legal complications means that we can't go ahead with it.....Its months of work that we've put into preparations for the tour but I think Eoin summed it up best on thehendonmob.com .... ....

"Hi guys, unfortunately we have to announce that the NIPT is cancelled.

The Laws in this country are currently behind the rest of the UK and Ireland and despite a lot of time and money invested we cannot run these events at this time.

We will continue to work through the red tape and try to bring poker to Northern Ireland.

We would also like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who supported this Tour, we hope that at some stage in the future the powers that be crawl out from their cave and join the rest of the world!!

Thanks, Stephen and Eoin."

The Clamper

Thats a real shame

have you considered the "raising funds for charity" route ?

i recall reading somewhere about raising funds for charity being a loop hole and that once you agree to donate at least 5% of the funds raised, they are inclined to allow a risk reward event, i.e. gambling, like a lottery

just my tuppence worth, might be worth looking into, before scuppering the whole deal, considering all the work you have put in so far

Dw

smcb

the titheads in charge of this turdhole country really don't have a clue. too busy worrying about people actually enjoying themselves in a non-paul berry handjob masseur manner. ah well

Hot-Rod

Really disappointed to hear this stephen, was looking forward to this. When will our MLA's come out of the dark ages, it wasnt long ago the shopping on sundays was the greatest evil of all time and if they relaxed the law, society has a whole would be doomed and everyone is going to hell, according to Paisley and his lot.

If this is the case relaxing the laws on poker isn't going to make it worst for us, I cant be sent to hell more than once, and seeing as i was out shopping last sunday i am already heading that way :rolleyes:

Just as a matter of interest stephen, poker rooms such as the Bridge Club in Banbridge, Red 14 in Armagh run tourney's regular in the north within there clubs. Would it be worth a go chatting Ivan Donaghy and coming to some sort of arrangement to hold the events in their premises??? just a thought.

oneillMan999

THIS is very unfortunate indeed...i feel sorry for you lads up there..surely there are loophole options such as aformentioned charity thing or instead of using anything which says ££...use points instead, maybe private members club is an option.

carfax

Thanks for the words of support on this. I really think we have to knock this idea on the head for now though. We put a lot of work and effort into making sure we were doing everything in line with the law, but in the end it didn't matter at all.

If/when things change North of the border I can guarantee that Eoin and myself will be one of the first to organise a major event.

Stephen.