PARTYPOKER.COM IRISH POKER CHAMPIONSHIP
Gibraltar - 17th December 2007 – There is only one week left to qualify online for the PartyPoker.com Irish Poker Championship, Europe’s first major tournament of 2008. The main $240 weekly satellite on PartyPoker.com has been moved from Tuesday to Sunday as the festive season approaches and Sunday 23rd December is the last opportunity to secure a place via this route. Lower buy-in tournaments where entry into the main satellite can be won are available every day of the week. For every 25 players in the main satellite, PartyPoker.com will provide one seat. Qualification for the $5,000 package starts at $3.
The tournament will be held at the fabulous Radisson Hotel & Spa, Galway, Ireland, from Jan 4 to Jan 6, 2008. The PokerEvents.ie organized event is the first major sponsorship in Ireland by PartyPoker.com.
A spokesman for event sponsor PartyPoker.com said: “There is a definite pattern emerging to the tournament. It looks like the competitors will be split into three distinct camps. There will be a big group of local Irish players, the international online qualifiers and a good group of overseas pros.”
“Marcel Luske, Jon Kalmar and Robert Williamson III have recently booked their tickets for Galway and are expected to be amongst the favourites for the title. One PartyPoker.com qualifier to watch out for is 22-year-old James McManus from Dublin. In a period of two months earlier this year he went on a great run online winning a Mini Cooper S, a Nintendo Wii and $52,000 on the bad beat jackpot.”
The €2,000 (9 percent withheld) buy-in is expected to produce a prize pool between €500,000 and €1,000,000 and coverage will be recorded for six hour-long broadcasts on RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcaster and distributed internationally. Amongst the pros who have indicated they will attend are ‘Ambassador of Poker’ Mike Sexton, 1999 WSOP Main Event Winner Noel Furlong, ‘Flying Dutchman’ Marcel Luske, WSOP bracelet winners Ciaran O’Leary and Michael Keiner, Padraig Parkinson, Robert Williamson III, Jon Kalmar, Scott Gray, Bruno Fitoussi, Jan Sørensen, Roy Brindley, Mad Marty Wilson, Katharine Hartree, Jeff Duvall, Alan Vinson, Steve Wong, Rory Liffey and Ben Vinson.
December 17, 2007