Roy Wood may have made a few quid pretending he wished it was Christmas every day, but even thirty years ago that looked like a bluff to me! Celebrating Christmas once every five years would be more than enough for me, New Year’s Eve on the other hand is a totally different story, I’ve come to love it since we began spending the celebrations in Galway.
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We’ve all been there. It’s time to make a move. Unfortunately, we’re dealing with a bunch of customers about whom we know somewhere between very little and nothing. But before we pile in there are a few clues as to who we should select as our victim. Nationality, age, sex, choice of clothing, body language, and bits and pieces of chat may sometimes be misleading. But in a crisis it may be all you’ve got, so you’ve just got to go with it for better or for worse.
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Boylepoker.com sponsored pro Padraig Parkinson is a regular contributor to www.cardplayer.com. You can now read his Card Player articles on our poker blog as well.
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I met Frank Cruess Callaghan in Gare du Nord early on Friday morning on my way to London to play the GUKPT main event. I wasn’t surprised he was going to London but I thought he’d fly as he has more air miles than Biggles. Luckily, we were in carriages at opposites end of the train, because much as I like Frank, poker stories where the flop, the turn, the positioning of the button and the size of chip stacks are liable to change several times are best listened to much later in the day or preferably not at all.
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After snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in my heat in England, I moved swiftly onwards to Amsterdam where I’m told I wasted a lot of valuable Amsterdam time by finishing within a couple of tables of the bubble in both the Omaha and the main event. If this is indeed true, it will have to be put down as very careless.

On an early break I bumped into a good friend of the Irish, two time WSOP bracelet winner Jan Sorensen. The last time I’d seen Jan was in Galway last January where he was unusually bemoaning his luck and worse still, expressing doubts about whether he could ever win again in the modern game.

In Amsterdam he told me he hadn’t played since then but then smiled broadly whilst he said that he’d been keeping very busy gambling on football. He burst out laughing when I asked him if he was winning, which I didn’t take to be a very good sign. I lost all interest in the tournament when the last Ireland and Boyle’s man, Alan Betson, got practically bubbled. A couple of days after I got home Jesse May told me Jan had won. I hope 600,000 is less than he lost on the soccer for the year!

A few weeks ago I got a phone call at five in the morning from Stormin’ Norman. For years, Norman drove a bus by day and played poker all night, which is why I always take taxis (they might all be at it).

I figured it couldn’t be good news so I went on the attack with a “Do you know it’s five o’clock in the morning?” “Sorry”, said Norman “I forgot you were an hour ahead in France.” Sometimes you just can’t win.

A couple of weeks later, I was in Maidstone in Kent, playing in and doing what passes for a commentary on a TV poker tournament. During a break, Norman phoned me again to thank me for the small favour I’d done him after the last time we spoke. We had a laugh about this and that for a while before Norman got around to mentioning that he’d be available to play any tournament I couldn’t attend myself but felt like sticking somebody into. I asked him if he’d mind travelling to Cork. “Why? Is there a tournament on down there?” asked Norman quite excitedly. “No”, I replied. “But that’s where the end of the queue is!” That’ll teach him.

I was standing around at the Killarney tournament recently and the talk was that the bar had been raised. Some of those who weren’t paying attention fully went on a complete tilt because they thought that they’d have to climb over rubble to get their next drink. But they calmed down when they realised that it just meant that a new standard for Irish tournaments had been set. The IPO certainly met that standard, thanks to a fine piece of organisation from Stephen and a marvellous team effort in the hospitality department from the Boylepoker team. They don’t use the term team lightly.
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My first outing as a Boyle’s man in the WSOP Europe Omaha Championship threatened to start with a bang. I was minding my own business in Heathrow on my way to the Heathrow Express when Mr Smyth found me and talked me into going for a drink. It wasn’t too hard. Twenty-five minutes later, we were evacuated in a security alert. Lots of people were quite anxious, but not me. I was with The Champ. Bad things don’t happen when you’re with Mr Smyth. Read more

Boyle Poker’s Paul Spillane was a regular on the tournament circuit several years ago. He was one of those guys who knew it was only a game and behaved accordingly. He added colour and fun to the tour, never more so than when winding up Americans, which seemed to be his main hobby. I walked into the poker room in Binion’s one morning several WSOP’s ago, wiping the sleep out of my eyes. Read more