By 1500 hours tomorrow afternoon, anyone with even a passing interest in poker should be heading towards London’s Hanover Square for Europe’s largest poker festival. Poker in the Park 2011 brings some of the biggest personalities to grace the poker news pages on a daily basis and plonks them down in the centre of the iGaming universe for a weekend of poker-themed fun.
It’s the fifth time that the event has taken place and unlike previous years, there are a number of changes that have taken place. The first that you will notice is the presence of a main stage bringing it in line with all other booze-driven summer music festivals.
The festival’s first night will see the evening opened up by the Rat Pack styled Swinging Little Big Band who will transport everyone back to an era gone by. The world of card sharps take over for the remainder of the evening as the Card Sharks, hosted by Andi Gladwin, host a show of card manipulation for an hour. The evening ends with some more swinging band music before the party moves on to whichever strip joint is closest by.
For the early risers, Saturday opens up at 12 with speed chess from Simon Williams who invites attendees to take the stage and beat his ass. In addition to this and the British Poker Awards, Javier Jarquin the card ninja will be in attendance as well as music from Richard Poyner (you can find the full line-up at this link). It’s the final change to the last four year’s that will have the iGaming fraternity more excited than anything though – YOU CAN GET DRUNK!
Unlike the past four years, alcohol will be available at the PaySafe Card Festival Bar where attendees can enter into the true festival atmosphere by getting increasingly intoxicated as the day goes on. The festival gets underway tomorrow afternoon at 1500 and continues on Saturday at 1200 in London’s Hanover Square and is free to all attendees.
