Hi I'm Gareth and I am a experienced Tournament Director have been involved in running poker events for the past 8 years

I started playing poker in 2006 just playing in my friends home game 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, which was a bonus, and played for points each game and played over 13 weeks for the season. If you finished in the top 3 at the end of the season you get to go and play a Regional Final at a casino and try to win a trip to Las Vegas! What a great prize but a long way off for me at that point.

A few years later and after somewhat of a good progression in my game (I'd won some games, a league title and competed in the regional finals) the league needed a regular player to run the night and record the scores and communicate with Redtooth Poker (the league provider) and from there I read all the rules I could find, change starting stacks, adjust the blind structure, and introduce penalties for rule breaches, created a Facebook group to display results and keep the players up to date with all that was going on to make sure that it was the best run game I could produce. We went from 12-15 regular payers to having 3 tables each week and a good percentage of returning players.

I have now run 3 weekly leagues, 1 weekly Rebuy game, a private charity home game and I run an annual Christmas pub game all through the professionalism, consistency and popularity of how my games are organaised.

I want to help to encourage new players into the game but equip them with a good starting knowledge of what to do and not to do at the poker table especially for those that have not been to a casino before.