I started my employment with Boylepoker at the end of November 2007 and the first thing I was keen to prevent was an overlay in a decent promotion the previous incumbent had created; we were giving away a WPT bootcamp package worth about $7000, the tournament entry was $100 and there were 19 entrants when I joined.

I phoned a few of my savvy poker friends and bumped it up to over 50 but we fell short of 70 runners. Oh well I thought, some lucky punter will love us as a result, I was later informed the winner of the tournament worked for PPP in Dublin, irony is a devious mistress sometimes.

A couple of weeks later I was at the Boylesports sponsored Cheltenham meeting with a few customers and asked what they thought of our current network supplier as I myself was keen to change. The majority view from the customers was one of ambivalence, the exception being a very pleasant gentleman I sat next to who said he liked our current supplier; in fact he liked everyone bar iPoker. As they were exactly the company I proposed we move to I guessed he wouldn’t be to happy when he found out, when he got home and won $50k in a network guaranteed tournament I hoped his pain at moving would be lessened.

January

Was spent making key decisions that would impact the success or failure of Boylepoker: such as issuing notice on our network supplier and signing a contract with our new suppliers iPoker. We then began the task of preparing for the migration; recruiting for the new poker team and had to change the website radically as it was quite simply awful.

February

A pivotal moment in Boylepoker’s year began on a Friday afternoon in a meeting with my boss and Conor Tate. We were looking to have some sort of impact on the Irish market and though I was unsure of the value of sponsoring a poker player, when my boss said we should sign someone for the forthcoming Irish Open I was intrigued.

Marty Smyth

A few names were discussed and when Conor Tate mentioned one Marty Smyth I dismissed it as I knew he was signed by one of our competitors. Conor quickly corrected me saying Marty had done a few things with other sites but nothing was signed and sealed. We all agreed that he sounded like a good candidate and we should call him. He agreed to a meeting which I couldn’t make but my boss did, he did say though the ultimate decision was mine.

I didn’t need to meet Marty to sign him up; my boss and Conor Tate only confirmed what I had heard on the grapevine, decent bloke, decent player and so by the end of the month we had signed Marty up until the end of the year as Boylepoker’s sponsored pro.

March

We sponsored and assisted running our first live tournament, the DCU student tournament. It was well ran and good fun, but ultimately unsuccessful. I’m all for putting money back into the poker community but you need something in return; even if it’s not a profit. We asked for feedback on how we could improve things, out of the 200 odd entrants only a handful responded to our request. We examined why and vowed to learn from our mistakes.

Meanwhile, I had a complete turnaround on the value of being associated with full time pros and wanted one more for the team at the forthcoming Irish Open. On a weekend in London I had crashed at my ex flatmates place. A good friend, a decent poker player but most importantly someone who shared the same views on the poker world as me, Neil ‘Badbeat’ Channing seemed ideal to me to join the stable and after speaking to him and him acknowledging some interest I went to the money men and asked for more. The Irish Open was upon us and nothing could get done before it; as they hadn’t dismissed it out of hand I was optimistic we could sort something out afterwards, the rest is history.

Another coincidence occurred at the IO, Marty was knocked out of the main event by another old friend whom I was definitely interested in getting on board; up and coming poker player Paidraig Parkinson.

The weekend was great fun, lots of friendships and promises were made, often over a refreshing Guinness or two. I interviewed someone for the team, organised Neil’s victory party and treated a few of the dealers to an outstanding lunch after the festival had finished.

April

Gerry ‘McLovin’ Bishop

We did a photoshoot with Marty, Karen and the poker team, the results were hilarious and none better reflected the attitude of the team than Gerry’s ‘McLovin’ pose for the craic.

A few weeks later we assisted in backing a couple of players in the World Open. We got 2 out of the 6 finalists wearing our logo with Marty overcoming Badbeat in a titanic heads up match. What a start to our relationship, within weeks of joining us Marty had delivered a trophy and some much needed publicity. Many online players weren’t aware of our existence and this result guaranteed us a few pictures and paragraphs in the poker press. From here there was a small chance they would take a look at his sponsors site and then a chance they would give us a try. As we were giving away fortunes we thought there was every incentive for players to sign up.

Marty Smyth at the WPO

May

We completed the final signing of the poker team; Ciaran, Gerry and Lisa and I prepared for migrating onto iPoker invigorated after Marty’s win.

We also had time for a memorable trip to Sunderland along with some customers where we had a great day topped off by a five goal thriller.

June

Was the beginning of the World Series of Poker; Las Vegas becomes the epicentre of the poker world, so I was a little miffed there was no plan to send me. Happily though one person would be going to join Marty, Tim Cullihane won our tournament play-off and was off to the show.

The main reason there was no plan to send me was that we were about to launch on our new poker platform. I had heard many horror stories poker rooms had experienced during migrations and though we got delayed by a few hours all went swimmingly well, which reflected on the migration team.

A week later we were avidly following Marty’s progress to the World Championship Omaha $10,000 final table on the various poker forums. He actually phoned me up just before the start to ask if it was ok for him to wear a hat which I of course said ok to; Marty wasn’t even put into this event by us but was still wearing our logo, who was I to say no to him earning a few extra dollars. It turns out he was phoning me to bluff the sponsor of the hat that he wasn’t allowed to wear it, it turned out the hat was a gimmicky dentist’s smiley face hat that Marty was to embarrassed to wear but to polite to say no to.

WSOP cash

I got to work in time to listen to the final hands on the mobile, Conor Tate just held up his phone to the noise, the subsequent cheering and chants of “you’ll never beat the Irish” confirmed victory for our man, the joy was untold.

As we had migrated successfully and with Marty winning I hopped on a plane to Vegas in time to enjoy and pay for a few victory celebrations though missing the carnage of the actual evening of victory which by all accounts was a messy one but a historical occasion. To celebrate Marty’s win we held a 10k freeroll for all our players.

July

Brought about the start of what can only be considered a one sided battle. Ciaran and Marty like a prank and Marty set the ball rolling by phoning Ciaran and informing him he was very displeased with one or two things Ciaran had put up on his web page, Ciaran took it in good spirit and dedicated the remaining part of the year to winding Marty up.

Ciaran with Kevin Webster

August

A new promotion in honour of Marty, a scalp the champ tournament whereby whoever knocked Marty out of this Omaha comp would receive a cash prize. Marty did the honourable thing of course and won the tournament. He carried on his good run down in Cork where he won the Omaha event at Macau, a four way chop was done and all four players agreed to go all in blind, Marty had them drawing dead by the turn.

Ciaran and I turned up for the weekend and had a cracking time, the highlight being Ciaran convincing Marty that not only was he going to be on Match of the Day but also setting up a spoof radio interview.

Very much like the IO the weekend was great fun, lots of friendships and promises were made, often over a refreshing Guinness or two.

September

Sponsored pro Padraig Parkinson

Plans and preparations were well underway for what would be our main entrance into the live event arena - the IPO, but before that a little bit of other business had to be taken care of. After thrashing a deal out in Vegas which took about five seconds, Padraig Parkinson joined the team and was to play in the WSOPE Omaha tournament as his first in our colours, an event he duly cashed in for a decent five figure return.

It wasn’t just Marty and Padraig bringing home the bacon, Ciaran won a GUKPT side event which saw him qualify for the Champion of Champions event and gave him office bragging rights; in fact I imagine it will still be mentioned by generations of Corbett’s for years to come. He topped it all off by appearing on Sky TV’s poker show but blotted his copy book by not once mentioning Boylepoker.com but happily mentioning one of our competitors!

October

IPO winner Ruairi Coy

The IPO was the main focus for us and if we weren’t nervous enough already attending a most spectacular poker event in the wonderful surroundings of Killarney made us realise what we were attempting to do. The sponsors and organisers of the Killarney tournament had hosted a tremendous event, now it was our turn.

The IPO was a statement for us, all poker players, no matter what their bankroll enjoy a well run poker event in Ireland and we wanted to appeal to the smaller stakes punter as we believed the big buy in players were more than catered for. We wanted to increase our profile and our client base not just in Ireland but also in Europe, something I’m particularly proud to say we did.

The event was a blast from start to finish and something those of us involved with will never forget. We invited VIP players and asked them to wear Sunderland shirts as a bounty though we informed them no one would be given any money for attending a whole host of Europe’s finest took part. We introduced a world first in that every registered player would have part of their rake added to the prizepool. We added over 30k of our own money to the prizepool and worked our socks off to make the event the success it was. Oh, it also broke the record for the amount of live entrants in a tournament outside of the US.

November

We ran an online festival to celebrate the IPO and in line with all our promotions, added plenty of extra money. We held a $5,000 dealer freeroll to show our appreciation for the real stars of any poker tournament, another first.

Marty hadn’t won a big event for weeks and we were getting nervous, luckily our online players decided to join in the fun, one, Breandan Reaney winning the Fort Knox jackpot ($80,000) and the skilful John O’Shea winning the ECOOP PLO8 and placing 5th in a NLHE event.

December

Poker Million champ Marty Smyth

Just as we were winding up for Christmas after making our preparations for the New Year Marty decided to give us one last magical moment for 2008. Saving the best till last, he not only won the Poker Million creating poker history that undoubtedly will never be broken; he also ensured our best promotion to date paid out in full. Just to round the year off we held a tournament in his honour attended by friends, family, staff, and people he and Boylepoker have made friendships with over the year.

Conclusion

And so, approximately a year after relaunching we found ourselves in a much better place. We had a poker platform which although far from perfect is more reliable and offers much bigger network guarantees. We have a team as passionate about poker as any of our customers. We have a much improved website and a much improved customer services team. We have planned pretty much the same for 2009, interesting promotions, promotion of the product, release of training tools; association with all types of poker characters, lively uncensored blogs and of course the IPO. Sadly we cannot guarantee Marty will have a year like this one but im sure he will do his best.

So all in all a good start and expect even more in the forthcoming year. As Mr Vincent Jones correctly states at the end of lock stock, “It’s been emotional.”

Happy New Year from the Boylepoker Team,

Paul Spillane
Ciaran Corbett
Gerry Bishop
Lisa Condon