Pocket Kings hiring 100; EPT Deauville, GUKPT Manchester results

pocket-kings-jobs-ept-deauvillePocket Kings Ltd., the nuts & bolts outfit behind Full Tilt Poker, is creating 100 jobs at its Cherrywood Science and Technology Park location in Dublin. The jobs include fraud analysts for the Italian, German and French markets, as well as customer service agents to handle Norwegian, Japanese, Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Korean clients. The additional posts will bring the number of employees operating out of the Dublin office to just under 800 – almost twice the figure employed at the same location in April 2009. Pocket Kings’ most recent disclosed financial figures (ending April 2009) showed a decrease in pretax profits from €8m to €5.9m, while gross profit fell from €47.1m to €44.7m.

But enough about the #2 poker site, what about #1? The latest member of PokerStars Team Pro, Jonathan Duhamel, has taken the EPT Deauville High Roller event. While the €203k prize probably represents how much interest Duhamel has earned since winning the World Series of Poker in November, every little bit helps, especially with PokerStars reportedly cutting back on its pro roster expenditures.

As for the EPT Deauville Main Event, that honor went to Lucien Cohen. The 47-year-old Parisian pest-control company owner eradicated Sweden’s Martin Jacobson to take the title and the €880k payday. This marks the first time a Frenchman has won an EPT event on home soil, and is also Jacobson’s second second-place EPT finish this season (the other was at EPT Vilamoura last August). You know, a guy could get used to always being a bridesmaid if that honor kept the six-figure checks rolling in. Just saying.

Finally, the stakes pale by comparison, but congrats all the same to Peter McAdams for becoming 2011’s first Grosvenor UK Poker Tour champ. McAdams beat a field of 207 to take the GUKPT Manchester title and the £57k prize.