Ongame Network in focus at the World Poker Congress
December 7th, 2007As representatives of many of the leading online poker brands gathered to discuss the future of the industry in Malta at the annual World Poker Congress last week, Ongame Network made sure nobody forgot what game the conference was all about. In cooperation with the local casino “Casino di Venezia”, the hosts of the Congress, Clarion Gaming and the Maltese Gaming commission, LGA the network arranged a night of action-packed poker.
The setting for the event was the stunningly beautiful Casino di Venezia situated in halls dating back to medieval times.
Although the theme of the night was to socialize and have a good time, the initial freeroll tournament was far from a friendly walk in the park. Sporting such guests as WSOP Main Event fifth place finisher John Kalmar, WPT president Steve Lipscomb, reputed casino and poker managers such as Thomas Lamatsch formerly head of Concorde Casino and Swedish Casino Cosmopol’s Tiina Korpela, the competition was fierce.
Representatives of many of the online poker landscape’s most prominent sites such as Betsson, Bet24, PokerLoco, Paddypower.com, Expekt, bwin and PokerRoom.com where also represented, but in the end, noone could match Christer Larsson of pokerevent.se.
Christer definitely earned the title and the splendid Maltese glass ornament trophy sponsored by LGA that came with it. He also won a nice weekend package consisting of two VIP money-can’t-buy football tickets to go see AC Milan take on Sampdoria at the mighty San Siro stadium.
The congress itself, although bereft of some of its key speakers such as Matt Savage and Jeffrey Pollack at the last minute, did give some promising signals that the industry is starting to understand where it needs to head in order to continue to grow - not just market-wise but also product-wise.
And that poker is still the wonderfully entertaining game it has always been.
Winner Christer Larsson receives the trophy from LGA’s Mario Galea.
