Wow, what a night! Summary:

I was the very first player out, on my second hand. Don’t get me started. I had to announce to everyone that I was a big loser with my own megaphone.

World famous WSOP poker champion Annette Obrestad (Annette 15) turned up to kick our asses.

The prizes were awesome. Roy and his staff at the Loose Cannon club were superstars as usual, this time saving us when the casino canceled our venue at the 11th hour. Betfair laid on some amazing sponsorship. The Betfair team turned up mob handed and are really great people. In total 115 people attended the tournament. Surely an indication of the growing popularity of the PokerCoder events. Read on for the details. Read more

So you have a pair of Jacks. The guy opposite you is wearing a cowboy hat, shades and a month of stubble. You can’t see his eyes but you know he’s staring into your head. You start to think that inside he’s laughing because he knows what you’ve got, but on the out side he is cold and calculating. You raise and he re-raises, without hesitation. While he watches you sweat he starts to shuffle his chips with one hand, split the single stack into two and reshuffle them again with one hand. He seems to do it so easily and almost without thinking. How does he do that? It’s really cool, but intimidating at the same time. I wish I could do that. But the chinking of the chips is getting louder in your ears and you start to question your hand. He must be good. Look at the way he shuffles those chips. You fold. He laughs at your weakness with contempt as he starts to take your chips and shows you his 2 7 off suit.

Beaten by a chip trickster. Well no more! No longer will you have to loose the girl because you’re scared of a chip bully kicking chip tricks in your face, and other such crap, shoehorned analogies. We will teach you the ways of the chip trickster. Starting with a great video from a fat bloke called skd1337 who looks for all the world like Mike Jones‘ stunt double. Don’t be fooled, this guy knows his stuff.

Hi all, well despite the crazy late venue change, we have had a massive response to this event, especially from the Flex community. Obviously Betfair are giving away great prizes to the winners and entry to the event is still totally free, so that helps ;), but from a Flex point of view don’t forget you will have the opportunity to speak with Betfair about working for them on their next generation of online Poker apps created in Flex. So a great challenge, doing what you love (Flex and Poker) working for a truly great employer.

We’re going to close registration at midnight tonight as we have more than enough players attending now. If you have been to one of the Pokercoder events before then you are officially a member and you will have received a members early notification and invitation to this event. If you didn’t then please check your JUNK mail folder as we need to get these emails un-junked for future invites to get to you.

If you’re new to PokerCoder events then you should have immediately received an email asking you to confirm your email address (so we can add you to the members list and you will get members advanced invites to future events)

Sorry for the last minute notice, but the Grosvenor Victoria casino have canceled our venue at the last minute. I have spoken with the Loose Cannon club (who have hosted a number of our recent events) and they have been able to rescue the event.

Please see the site for location details. If you turn up at the casino you’ll be all alone.

NEW VENUE : LOOSE CANNON CLUB

TUBE: CANNON STREET

Quite by accident I came across this really nice little poker game on line, which combines traditional poker top-down poker table tournament play games with adventure/RPG/strategy games. Basically you are attempting to become the govenor of Poker and eventually govenor of Texas. To do this you walk round your town, playing poker games, winning money and with that you buy property in the town and eventually own that town and move on to the next town. Once you own property you can even gamble with it at the table to win more property. Your reputation-ometer tracks your reputation based on how well you do and how many gold coin awards you get. You earn the coin awards by executing one of many classic poker plays (All in before the flop for example). It shows you what day you’re playing on and lets you know how many days you’ve played for. It’s different and quirky and kept me entertained for a couple of hours, and if you like it enough you can buy it for your very own at £14.99 from the site.

An addictive little game 8/10

What? That’s not poker! Ok, so I’ve been getting a lot of feedback about not receiving the member’s invitational emails. Quite a lot of those I have spoken with have found the email has gone straight to their junk mail folder. Please check your junk mail folder and mark and PokerCoder emails as NOT being junk. Problem solved.

I would also invite you all to subscribe to our RSS feed (http://blog.pokercoder.com/?feed=rss2) as some days there are regular updates and info being published all day, especially coming up to a tournament, and if you snooze, you loose baby.

Ok, so there will be goodie bags. I know what’s in them but I’m not telling, so you’ll have to wait till the night to see what’s in them and there will only be 50 of them, so get there early as they will go to the first 50 who arrive and ask me for one.

We also have some spot prizes as well. There will be a number of Betfair representatives playing at the tournament. If you are one of the players that knocks them out (through poker play not physical violence), you win a bottle of champagne right there.

Yes, 29th July THIS year. I know, I know. I did say I’d give you all more warning from now on, however, it’s the first time we’ve worked with Betfair and it took a little longer to get everything organised than I had anticipated.

Betfair have laid on some amazing prizes, but their sponsorship is not ALL altruism. They have a need. A need for Flex developers to help them build the next generation of online Poker applications, so the PokerCoder tournament seemed like the perfect venue to find them. It’s full of poker loving Flex developers. What luck So if you’re a Flex developer and you feel like exploring the possibility of working for a bleeding edge Flex development company who recently received Best Companies Accreditation for the ‘The best companies to work for in the UK’ and were awarded the ‘Best places to work in IT’ award by Computer Weekly, then come along and meet the people behind the company. Drink their booze, win their prizes, take their jobs and sleep with their women. We at PokerCoder cannot guarantee the last one on that list, but you will meet new friends and peers, and can talk to Betfair about doing Poker for a living. Sounds like a hell of a night to me. If you want a brief overview about the many extra benefits of working for Betfair look here.

Not only is this an additional sponsor for the PokerCoder tournaments and an opportunity for a bright shiny new job for you guys, but the prizes are fantastic to, so don’t be put off by the short notice. Read more

Pretty soon now we will be launching our membership registration form. This will allow those of you who are not already registered members to register your details (completely privately, as we do no share your details with anyone else). Being a registered member gives you some important advantages.

• You will be notified of upcoming events and special deals first.
• You will be given priority over non members for new events.
• You will be able to register your attendance (or not) by clicking on a link in the email we send you (you won’t need to do anything else).
• You will be invited to play in the upcoming PokerCoder online tournaments (only open to our members)
• You will be given the opportunity to help help shape how PokerCoder events grow through your feedback, so you get better deals, better prizes and better events
• And more as we think of them.