Raising a glass to Matchroom

I remember reading an article that Barry Hearn wrote a couple of years ago, I think it may have been in a Sunday newspaper to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. I really didn’t take any notice of it at the time, but something happened after the Premier League Poker in Las Vegas that brought it back to me. It’s why Barry and now Katie and Eddie get the best out of their employees.

After the Premier League had finished and all the photos and the red tape had been cut, we headed for a bar whose name eludes me because we could have been in the Matchroom office or our own front room. We sat around chatting like you do at Christmas or at a birthday party. We spent hours telling stories, drinking beer and laughing. The time just flew by. Any problems that we had just disappeared with the beer. It was brilliant. Just to be a part of it made me feel ten feet tall.

And when we finished, Barry Hearn went to the roulette wheel and he smashed them with an amazing run. He also did it on my player’s card, which he doesn’t know about, and that got me two hundred and fifty dollars worth of free credits! This was truly a night to remember and to recall. I felt like a family member and not an employee. So next time anybody asks what is the secret to success is to take a leaf out of the Hearn’s book. So I raise a toast to Matchroom, who have taken poker to a different level. And they also took me to Vegas for two weeks and paid for it too. It doesn’t get any better than that, does it?

Posted by : Marty