Going Full Tilt for a flutter in Galway

Full Tilt Poker's new owners are heading to Galway Races in the latest round of the brand's rehabilitation.

The company, now owned by the Isle of Man-based Rational Group, which took it over almost a year ago, is organising Europe’s biggest ever poker festival in the city on dates that match the seven-day mauling of punters at Ballybrit.

The poker festival will run from July 27th to August 12th in a “custom-built village” in the centre of Galway. The company says that this alone will bring €2.5 million to the local economy, and it has already booked more than €400,000 worth of bedrooms in the area.

There will be a variety of events and games, according to Full Tilt. The main attraction will have a prize fund of at least €1 million. Buying into a lot of games will be cheap, presumably with an eye on players who take in the racing and back all those “certainties” for which Galway is famed.

Rational rescued Full Tilt last August, repaying $730 million to the website’s clients, after a year of troubles that saw its executives charged in the US courts. The Isle of Man-based Rational Group kept on Full Tilt’s Irish hub in Cherrywood, Dublin, and now employs more than 200 staff there. Since it re-launched the site, the company reports that it has been trading well.