I'm Gareth and I am an experienced amateur Tournament Director have been involved in running poker events since 2012.

I started playing poker in 2006 after watching Late Night Poker on Channel 4 and began by just playing in my friends home games and trying my luck in the occasional casino trip, but quickly found that I was missing some basic knowledge of poker etiquette of what not do at the tables and I found this a little embarrassing and costly so I looked at getting some more experience and found a local pub league to join. 

My first impressions was that it seemed quite popular with around 15-18 players waiting to play even though it was free to play and a very good atmosphere with friendly players. I'd eventually go on to win a few league titles and qualify for the Regional Finals at the casino, I'd even managed to make a few final tables and win some money, I even finished 2nd but just missing out on the top prize of a weeks trip to Las Vegas.

After a few seasons the league needed a regular player to run the night by setting up the tables, chips, and cards as well as record the scores and communicate with the league provider. I stepped forward and began to read and learn the proper rules ( I couldn't believe how many things we were doing wrong! ), I also changed starting stacks to be more in line with proper games, adjusted the blind structure, got a tournament timer to display on the large TV's so everyone could see the timer and slowly introduced penalties for rule and etiquette violations to help create a closer casino-like experience for the players so they knew what it would be like in the casinos and we went from around 12 players each week to nearly 27 every game.

I had been to other games as well and saw how basic and chaotic things were, equipment not set out in time for the game start, playing under night club lighting and music, no-one knowing the rules, people showing each other the cards during a hand, the person using the timer function on their phone getting knocked and going home so some-one else had to take over and so many other things that made me no want to return to that game again.

I have now run weekly league / rebuy games, monthly games and annual Christmas tournaments, all through the professionalism, consistency and popularity of how my games are organised. I also advise new leagues on how to set-up and get the best out of their night, which I've done in Chelmsford and Hornchurch last year.

 

I'm now looking to move back in to running my own games again as well as private home games and improving my equipment.