For once in my five and a half year igaming industry career, I crashed a conference for fun…well, just one night of it. Now I see why some of these big affiliates (and some of you operators!) have such a nice time at these shows. No booths to set up, no pressure to close deals, no obnoxious wake-up call, no strict schedule to follow, just eating, socializing, partying, gamblin’, drinkin’, and carryin’ on. Wait a sec, that kind of sounds like my job…
This year I was unable to attend the Budapest Affiliate Conference in its entirely because Alex Pratt choose the ONE WEEKEND OF THE YEAR when I was unavailable due to a wedding in the US that I just could not miss. Being the international socialite that I am, I could not resist popping in for a night to spend time with my closer friends in the industry that I don’t see very often, such as Aleksi of Pokerisivut and Shenaz of Victory Poker.
I spent the day gallivanting around the conference hotel lobby and terrace lunching and catching up with industry favorites, took a jog along the Danube, and arranged a dinner for 20 at Tom George, a popular Italian restaurant in town. Of course I did. The 20 person dinner ballooned into 30 and we took over the restaurant’s terrace and drank bottle after bottle of red wine, ate pizzas, antipastos, and all things Italian while having the best time for five hours straight. Notables around the tables included team Victory Poker, the blinged-out Poker.org boys, newly wed Michael Caselli, team SportingBet, Jasper and Aleksi from Pokerisivit, Margaret from PKR, Jodie from Lyceum, and the list goes on.
Following dinner, Jasper kindly booked the VIP section of the happenin’ Thursday night spot in Budapest, Dokk Cafe, a local club situated on the second floor of a mall of all places. Throughout the night pretty much all the affiliates known for their valuable poker traffic and extraordinary boozing skills made an appearance and this, of course, turned into a rather messy situation. There may have been some ladies that needed to be escorted home due to excessive intoxication, there may have been some dancing, some drink spillage, a little making out, even food poisoning (!) and the best part about it all is that none of the misbehavior was documented on video…you literally had to be there to see it. 😉
Checkout the Picture Gallery & the DAF award at the VIP BAC Party – Tom George and Dokk Cafe.
