The Hendon Mob website becomes The Hendon Mob Championship, a €250 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em event, during the Malta Poker Festival held at the Portomaso Casino in November.
It began as a one-page fanzine. A way for Barny Boatman to scribble down his thoughts on poker. It was never meant to become the largest poker results database in the world. Like me, it was an accident.
The Hendon Mob.
I once asked Barny if the guys had ever considered adding a fifth member. He reminded me that The Hendon Mob wasn’t a ‘made up thing’ it was what it was – four mates who all loved the game and travelled together.
As a Brit, Barny, Ross, Ram and Joe were an essential part of poker’s heritage. It would be nice, one day, to see them all enter the Poker Hall of Fame, but with them not being America there is more chance of it raining gold.
Five years ago, the legacy wilted.
Alex Dreyfus acquired the website and the brand name for an undisclosed sum, and as a result of the transaction, The Hendon Mob were no longer allowed to be called The Hendon Mob.
2013.
A vintage year.
Barny even won a bracelet.
In November, there will be a new chapter in the life of The Hendon Mob website after President Eric Danis struck a deal with the Malta Poker Festival to host the €250 buy-in The Hendon Mob Championship.
The three-day event takes place in the famous Portomaso Casino, alongside the festival’s main attraction, a €550 buy-in Grand Final.
Danis said that the festival was the perfect place to launch ‘our live product’ intimating that the event may be the first of many. Roland Boothby, GPI/THM Poker Content Manager said the HM Championship would be a ‘grassroots initiative catering to the very fans who have formed the cornerstone of the community from the outset.’
I am one of them.
The Hendon Mob is home to the results of over half a million players, and that’s 2.5 million results taken from 22,000 festivals spread amongst 2,000 venues worldwide.
Not bad, Barny.
Not bad.
Malta Poker Festival
The Malta Poker Festival takes place 1-6 November at the Portomaso Casino and is not to be confused with the €1m GTD Battle of Malta (BOM) taking place 25-30 October at the Casino Malta.
In February, Net Gaming sold the BOM domain name, concept and trademark to Casino Malta Ltd for €300,000. The Malta Poker Festival is a fresh new concept created by some of the very people who helped grow BOM into the award-winning tournament it eventually became.
