A triumvirate of talking tales as the Dusk till Dawn owner, Rob Yong, talks about the British Poker Awards, former Aviation Club de France Tournament Director, Nicolas Fraïoli, talks about the loss of his job, and former Winamax Team Pro, Manuel Bevand, gets the opportunity to talk at a Ted conference.
The 2013 International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISTP), held at Wembley Stadium, remains the greatest poker tournament I have ever experienced.
You had to be there to experience the vastness of the operation. Nobody thought they would pull it off. Perhaps, these were the two reasons that nobody voted for it as Best Live Tournament at the European Poker Awards that year?
I’m not the only one who believes the public got that wrong.
“I made a mental note to boycott poker awards after the ISTP Wembley didn’t even win a bowl of rice, or get as much as a nomination at the European Poker Tour Awards.” Dusk till Dawn (DTD) owner Rob Yong wrote in his latest blog post.
Yong finally got over it. Being nominated for a ton of awards usually clears any blocked sinuses.
Yong and the team came away with three awards. He makes no mention of his personal award for Growth and Contribution and instead concentrates his word count on the hard work done by the World Poker Tour (WPT) team for the award winning WPT500 event.
Talking about the event, Yong remembers the voice of the dissenters:
“WTF are you doing, it’s a brand new event and has no track record in the UK. You should ease it into the calendar, £1M is impossible at £500.”
They hit their target. They won an award. Nice job all round really.
Yong is worried about missing guarantees on two more events though. He talks about missing a trick with the £1m Guaranteed Sky Poker UK Poker Championships. A lack of satellite qualifiers is giving him a sweat on that score, and he has also sung the virtues over partypoker’s decision to increase the guarantee on their Sunday Major.
Sunday, 1st March, the partypoker big one will carry a $500,000 guarantee, and Yong thinks is a bold, brave but brilliant idea.
Nicolas Fraïoli Talks to PokerNews
PokerNews reporter, Giovanni Angioni, managed to track down the former Tournament Director of the Aviation Club de France (ACF), Nicolas Fraïoli, to gain his somber feedback on the loss of his job.
The ACF was officially placed into liquidation by the local authorities after a five-month fight by Fraïoli and the 212 other employees who relied on the club to pull a salary.
“It left a bitter taste in my mouth, but at the same time it came as a relief as it brought five months of fighting to an end. Finally, someone made a decision.” Fraïoli told PokerNews.
Fraïoli had worked at the ACF for the past decade, and told PokerNews that he was taking the opportunity to work on a ‘new concept of poker tournaments that will drastically reduce the luck factor.’
Manuel Bevand Talks Ted
Former Winamax pro Manuel Bevand has got me all green with envy.
After officially retiring from the game, many people wondered what would come next for ManuB?
A career as a public speaker?
That’s not what I had on my list of possibilities.
My envy comes from the fact that Bevand is due to take stage at a Ted Conference (a bucket list goal of mine). The Frenchman will be lecturing at TEDxÉcolePolytechnique. His topic of choice will be how to use the rationality of the game, man and artificial intelligence to problem solve (pardon my use of Google translation), and I for one believe he will deliver a top-notch performance.
