http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2012/04...ships-8253.htm

Firstly massively well played Callum for getting all of this organised pretty much single handedly with only a 2 month timeframe.

In terms of feedback:

- I thought the casino was very good, looked nice inside, there was never a long queue at the bar, plus food was pretty decent too.

- The side events each evening were enjoyable and was much better than previous years when there has only been cash games running.

- Having D4Events there was great, they have taken tons of photos, videos and live stream was good fun

In terms of thoughts for next year:

- I think maybe having a UKSPC Package, say its £100, and for this you get 3 nights in a hostel/hotel, some free food/drinks tokens, main entry buyin. This would save players needing to arrange their own accommodation and would mean we could get a very low cost if we pre-booked say 100 rooms in a place.

Could also get the sponsor to do a 'rake $x and get the package for free' to make it as good value as possible for players

Was there anyone from Northern Ireland that came over that you know of? I go to Queens in Belfast but have not found any poker players. I'd love to maybe come over next year with a group of friends. The event sounds great

Sounds awesome, there was a couple of Irish students there, some attending English uni's and some others who were visiting home for the holidays and made a stop at UKSPC, would be great to get a big group or two travelling over.

We could even have a 'Home Nations tournament' as there's already a strong contingent from Wales and Scotland in addition to most from England.

Keep an eye out on dates and schedule for next year.

Cheers Calzo, a well run tournament and I enjoyed playing in it and listening to your commentary

When do I hear about the Goliath Package?

you will be on a list at the casino, you can phone them up to make sure, they might need some contact details. they will let you know closer to the time but you get a £120 seat gl!

k just looked at the website, looking forward to this!

You playing?

think im away on holiday played last year though and came 30th was great fun! gl's

trip reports?

starting to organise next years tournament.

what's the turnout at societies around the UK this year like?

This all sounds amazing i can't understand why i've never heard about this before.

Where is all the information about the next event?

TRIP REPORT (from my not-so-updated blog, apologies as I had meant to post this for a while, but might get everyone excited for next years event!)


After getting the train down from St. Andrews with the rest of the lot we met up at the hotel, 12 of us from the society we're playing plus Connors girlfriend made 13 in our party, although Connor went missing a lot :P Arriving at the hotel after a long journey and wanted to get down to the casino to sort things out all I wanted was a quick check-in. 40 minutes later it turned out that I had booked the rooms for a day earlier, and that's why they couldn't find it. Fortunately they still had the rooms but It wasn't a great start from my own organisational point of view. Thankfully the group didn't mind too much, and this was a great improvement from the two dumwits (Birkin and matthenearly) who managed to book the rooms for the wrong month last year. Maybe, just maybe next year we might get the correct dates...

Got down to the G Casino in Coventry on the Monday night, I had been here before for Goliath, but it was the first time many of the students had seen it and it was rather impressive. Built inside the Ricoh Arena outside Coventry it was supposed to be a super-casino until the government changed their mind. I had decided to add a "High-Roller" tournament to the schedule. This was on the night before the Main Event started, and was aimed to give some of the more experienced poker players with bigger bankrolls a shot at a decent tournament other than the Main Event. With the same good structure and 30 minute levels it promised not to be a crapshoot either and I was pleased when the final number of 50 runners was announced, after expecting around 30 initially. They could have played the final table the next day, but there was a chop 5 ways around 5am, so congrats to all who made the money then, and the G Casino also added three Goliath seats to the top places.



Then for the Main Event, we had a great set-up at the G Casino with capacity for around 200 each day. We had about 100 registered for Day 1A and 150 for Day 1B, with a few late entries expected. With only two months to plan this due to the lack of organisation from previous sponsors I had single handedly dealt with accepting entries, so there was bound to be a few problems and mistakes.

The reason for the change of venue was that the Broadway charged an extortionate amount per person per day to cover their dealer costs. Usually the sponsor would pick this tab up at the end of the week and add the WSOP package, totalling over $20,000 or £12,500. The sponsor then thought that everyone would play on their not so amazing software after the tournament and they would make all the money back but that just didn't happen. This year they didn't organise anything before Christmas, when things were usually all set up and running, so it was left to St. Andrews Uni Poker Society - do we let it go and nothing happens? Or do we have the balls to give it a shot of running it ourselves? After contacting a few of the bigger societies we decided to give it a go. Not many people cared much for going to the World Series, they just wanted a trip to the UKSPC with their mates. I phoned Mike from d4 events whom I had met previously at Goliath and he said he would try and get us in to the G Casino. They weren't going to turn down 300-400 degenerate students in their casino in the middle of the day in the middle of spring, so the UKSPC was back on. When we had the numbers flowing in from various societies, I managed to strike up a smaller sponsorship deal with BETFRED, who would add in some value to the tournament in terms of Team competitions, Day 1 chip leaders and more. d4 events also kindly added a Dublin Deepstack package for the winner, so they can take on the pros and amateurs in a 500 euro event, and still giving that prestigious prize to go for up top.

I will make a Part 2 of UKSPC and UKIPT later this week. Please link this blog to anyone who played UKSPC who might find it interesting. You can also follow me on twitter @muppet1413. For now here's a video interview I did with d4 events about the event, including bust-out hand . d4 events took loads of videos which you can find on their youtube, and plenty of pictures which are all on facebook.

Muppet x

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=w2tzeXAUjXU

(ps if it wasn't tl;dr and you enjoyed I will post part 2!)