The day has finally arrived where tomorrow morning I get to hop on a couple planes and travel for 20+ hours. No worries though, my carry on is packed full of Dramamine and Sominex. Aside from the travel part of the trip, I have never been more excited to go to a conference than I am to go to this one.

Even back in the days when I was running PAW, I had always dreamed of running my own poker conference. Nothing feels better than achieving something that has been a goal for several years. And unlike some of my goals, hosting an affiliate conference is no small task.

Luckily our business partners at igaming business are experts in the logistics of these things. There is so much that goes into the planning of an event like this, it is mind boggling.

I am very happy however with the way this event has shaped up. Looking at the attendee list today, we are expecting around 400 people to be in attendance. Of these 400, roughly 250 are affiliates. Many are amongst some of Europe’s biggest poker affiliates as well. My goal with this conference was to provide the maximum value for both affiliates and the exhibitors who will be attending.

Because I love poker, I also wanted to make the ASOP one of the sweetest yet. I picked up the $10,000 diamond bracelet tonight, and part of me wishes I could play in the event just for that. Not too mention the $10K WSOP package we are giving away to the winner as well.

I am set to meet up with Devilfish when we get there, and between him, Greg, myself, Alex, and Caselli, I can only imagine the shenanigans that will take place in the evening on this island. It should be one for the books.

I have to be honest for a minute though, before this I knew nothing about event planning. And even today, it is still a learning process. I often write about “surrounding yourself with successful people“, I am thankful we do just this with Alex and the team at igaming. They have done a kick ass job as always and deserve many props.

I am already thinking about the next poker conference and where to host it. Although Cyprus is awesome, I realize it is very far and can be costly for U.S. and Canadian affiliates. Next year I would like to see 1000+ affiliates there. So with that I need to plan a destination. I love Europe, but for the love of God, we are there for every other conference.

Obviously we cannot do a conference in the U.S., and with Spring Break the same week, we need to be somewhere tropical. I would love to see a conference get back to an area however where more U.S. and Canadians can attend. My initial thought is Bermuda, since it is an easy flight from the U.S. and not relatively far from the U.K.

I’ll try to keep this blog updated if we have good internet access in Cyprus. If not, see you on the flipside bitches.

Jeremy