Poccer - Poker meets football (soccer)

Sometimes we are given the opportunity to help out our Poker Players by sponsoring and supporting some events off the felt.  When we were given a chance to sponsor a SunPoker team for a Hybrid of football and Poker (Poccer) we were excited!

Jimmy Cairns is on team SunPoker and has been kind enough to give us a write up and some pictures from the Poccer events they have been a part of!

Written By James Cairns:

Team Sunpoker at the first ever Poccer series.

What is Poccer? - Poccer is the ideal lads day out for you and your mates that includes a 5-a-side football tournament, some food, No-limit texas hold em and all the beer you can stomach.The idea was devised by a guy many people on the crypto logic network will know and is widely regarded as one of the best poker players around, Mr Clinton Orchard. This new creation has recieved a mass of interest from teams/individuals wishing to take part, at the recent poccer 4 18 teams from across the United Kingdom entered what promised to be the best event yet! many more teams had to be turned down!

So how does it work? - You and five mates (1 sub, he will be needed!) play a 5-a-side football tournament, the better you do at the football determines the size of your starting stack for the poker in the evening.

After the football (and a shower!) Its off to the casino where a buffet is provided before the poker commences.

There are individual prizes for the winning players, whether it be cash or a seat for certain land based poker events, a trophy is also awarded to the winning individual.
The prize that everyone wants however is the opportunity for their team to be crowned Poccer champions and of course there is some nice prize money to boot!!The team winners are determined by your teams top 3 finishers who score points according to their placing. All details can be found at www.poccer.co.uk

We (Team Sunpoker) have been fortunate enough to have taken part in every event so far and although our football skills have slightly let us down we usually put up a good fight at

 the poker tables and have played well enough to currently be sitting in 4th position of the overall standings.

The team has included some of Crypto's very finest, captained by Jimmy (Eyesight) Cairns the squad has included such players as: Clinton (ClintonO) Orchard himself, Matt (CUTEMOFO) Lewis, Johnny (Onny87) McCann, Andy (007APR) Reynolds, Tom (Eyesight) Cairns, Nick (spitroast) Dobson and many more!

As mentioned before, Poccer 4 attracted the largest field yet, and we had been given a bad draw in the football.Our first match saw us face one of the teams we were determind not to lose to (William hill bullies) however within 30 seconds of the start we found ourselves 1-0 down! Thankfully this didnt last long and with some neat football being played between Chris Webb and Clinton Orchard combined with a few good finishes by Jimmy Cairns we ran out 3-1 winners. Great start.

Next up we faced one of the favourites for the footbal (Robbos rovers) and were level at 3-3 with no time left on the clock until from no-where they managed to snick a winner, edging us out 4-3

Finally in the group we faced a new team (Bouncebackability) who turned at to be a very good footballing side beating us 5-1 and leaving us to finish in 3rd spot and thus a place in the bottom half of the knockout stages.

In the quarter final of the knockouts we faced a struggling team (Friendly fives) and found some form giving them an 11-1 thrashing! and once again raising our spirits.

So to the semis and once again we were pitted against one of the stronger footballing sides (Bullens Bullets) who easly progressed to the final beating us 5-2

However we had a chance to redeem ourselves in the losing semi finalists play-off, this was guaranteed to be our last match but the winners would take an extra 500 chips for each player, so all still very much to play for.

We faced (Banana dwarves) a team who had previously won the footballing side of the event and so we knew we had to play well.

And play well we did, none more so than in form Keeper Tom Cairns who held out a barrage of attacks leaving the scores at 1-1 and into a penalty shoot-out. eventually Chris Webb scored the winning penalty for us after we had gone through the team twice! Chris having missed his previous was delighted to have redeemed himself.

We went into the evenings poker carrying 4500 chips each with the leaders starting on 9000, so it really was an uphill struggle and barring some horrific luck im 100% certain we would have put up a better fight in only the 3rd hand of the tournament Jimmy Cairns picked up an amazing read on his opponent to escape with any chips at all when he found A 10 on a board of A 9 10 Q 10 having made a full house on river he managed to suss out (correctly) that his opponent was holding QQ and a bigger full house! around 2 hours later though his chips went all in after the flop only to be caught on the river by a guy chasing a gutshot! the pot was huge too!

Jimmy's brother Tom found no luck either as he managed to get his chips in pre-flop holding AA and find himself in a battle against K 10 which he duly lost for another large pot and any chance of winning.

Another bad luck story was poccer debutant Chriss Webb who found a pair of three's in the small blind, with no action before him he decided he would make a steal attempt only to be called in the big blind by 9 3!!! needless to say the flop then went on to produce a 9

The only moderate success story was Nick Dobson who bubbled the final table after hanging in for around 7 hours and was our teams top finisher with Ben Scott being eliminated shortly before hand and Rachel Orchard (Clintons replacement for the poker) joining the afore mentioned early casualties.

This was enough however to see us finish in 5th position from the 18 and keep the pressure on the top 3 of the overall leaderboard. The main objective was to ensure we finished above the other poker room sponsored sides, which im glad to report we did, these included Rakeswap.com and 2 crypto sites William hill and Littlewoods.

Roll on Poccer 5 and why not get yourselves along! I really cannot compliment this competition enough, the way it has been put together and run is nothing short of genious, its great to meet some of the people you do battle with day in day out online in the flesh. The atmosphere is fantastic and the same can be said for the venues and their hospitality.

All in all, IT TRULY IS THE ULTIMATE LADS DAY OUT!