New Poker Ranking Site Puts Up €1,000,000 Prize

17 Feb 2012 - by Josef Rantamaki

To celebrate its launch a new poker-ranking website will award a prize of €1,000,000 to anyone who claims five wins at ten poker tournaments to be held in Ireland this year.

Briefne Early and Chris Griffin set up SharkRankings.com to show a player’s placing, whether he or she is a professional or a casual competitor. Early already has experience in starting up new companies having launched Challengeten.com in 2010, which has been taken up by players in the US, Australia and New Zealand.

They want SharkRankings.com to be the primary poker-ranking website in Ireland. It will list all the poker tournaments on offer in the clubs and festivals, along with selected ranking events. Early said the idea began after discussing who was the best Irish poker player, and commented “We decided to establish a mechanism by which that argument could be settled once and for all.”

SharkRanking.com will look at every poker tournament in Ireland, and the player who comes top of the rankings at year-end will take the top prize. “We recognise the talent that is required to capture a title at any single event and so we are prepared to award a cash prize of €1,000,000 to any individual who can secure five victories at the top 10 Irish tournaments this year,” added Earley.

To help the launch SharkRankings.com held a playful ‘poker face’ poll. People were asked if they ever pull a poker face and the site looked at celebrities who are thought to pull poker faces, with the politician Gerry Adams coming top of the list.

Below are the ten tournaments in which players have to participate and take the five titles to win the main prize:

• UKIPT Galway.
• Super Europe Event.
• Irish Open.
• UKIPT Dublin
• International Poker Open.
• Irish Winter Festival.
• European Masters of Poker.
• SharkRankings.com Club Champion.
• SharkRankings.com Online Champion.
• SharkRankings.com National Club Champion.