Of pubs, poker promotions and English eccentrics

On a recent holiday to cloudy Devon I visited a rather eccentric pub. It was originally the home of a seventeenth century card-playing gentleman, Squire Ley. George Ley had a sizeable gambling win in 1690 and decided to spend the cash building a house–we must assume that he had mastered ye olde nosebleed stakes! The house was designed as a shrine to card gaming and had four floors to represent the four suits, thirteen rooms for the number of cards in a suit, fifty-two windows, fifty-two stairs, and was built on a ground area measuring exactly fifty-two feet square. The architect took inspiration from the card constructions children like to build, so the building was designed to look like a house of cards. Thankfully the construction was not as flimsy as a playing card tower and this fascinating building has survived for more than 300 years.

I was taking a week away from my work for PokerStars Women, but while I enjoyed a drink in the Pack o’ Cards beer garden, my mind turned to work and I wondered how things were going back at the office. Numbers mean a lot to poker players, and just as Squire Ley had insisted on fifty-two steps in his building I got to pondering the number of Steps that PokerStars Women were going to award in August.

The Pack o’ Cards (Photo: www.combe-martin.net) PokerStars Women’s WCOOP promotion means that WCOOP Step Ticket prizes are added to the final tables of women’s tourneys this month. The plan is to encourage the best female players to get involved in the World Championship of Online Poker, so any woman who makes a final table in the Women’s Poker League or Women’s Sunday will receive a Step Ticket prize. As I sat in the Pack ‘o Cards beer garden I never did figure out exactly how many Step Tickets PokerStars Women would hand out, but it had to be more steps than the 52 at Squire Ley’s old place.

I didn’t have my calculator with me on holiday, but now I’m back in the office I can do the maths. I can tell you that 855 Step Ticket prizes have been awarded at women’s final tables this month so far. The Women’s WCOOP promotion is running throughout August, so that’s 297 tickets still to be won. Perhaps you’ll try to claim one!

The Women’s WCOOP promotion will also acknowledge the best woman of WCOOP with a Woman of the Series prize. The highest placed female on the WCOOP leaderboard will win herself a trip to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) in January.

The World Championship of Online Poker has $30 million guaranteed. It’s nice to dream of some WCOOP women stepping up from their Women’s Poker League final tables to claim themselves a share of that cash. Perhaps some card playing woman might even win a WCOOP fortune and build herself a new house? Perhaps it could have four floors, thirteen rooms, fifty-two windows, and fifty-two stairs…