APAT Supports UK Deaf Poker

The Amateur Poker Association & Tour (APAT) are pleased to announce it’s support for the upcoming UK Deaf Poker Main Event to be held at Star City, Birmingham on 15th June 2013.

The winner of this annual event will receive entry into the National Main Event of their choice for upcoming APAT Season Seven.

Alongside this, APAT will also provide a similar added value seat for the online version which will be held on APAT Online on Sunday 21st April 2013.

Players can dowload the APAT Software now via APAT.com and take advantage of the current sign up bonuses.

History of UK Deaf Poker

Back in 2007, Oliver Westbury worked on varying charity projects for his North Pole Expedition backed by National Deaf Children Society.  One of his charity projects was to set up UK Deaf Poker as a one-off self-dealt event in Febraury 2008.   Seventy Five runners attended and half of prizepool went to his charity.

Stephen Draper had just started taking a serious interest in poker around this time and approached Oliver to propose to run annual events using his www.deafpoker.co.uk web site that would take place at private member poker clubs or casinos to give deaf players absorbing real poker experience using professional dealers and 100% prizepool to be awarded to at least top 10% players.

Steve Hedger who ran his own pub poker league called BLAPO in London at the time gave a lot of valuable consultion about how to run poker tournaments etc.

UK Deaf Poker events are open to Deaf or Hard of Hearing players and sign language must be used to dictate their actions instead of traditional spoken english, since about 10/15% of our players are coming from abroad so International sign language are also accepted. All event results are published in Hendon Mob.

Over the years UK Deaf Poker has seen new regional events start in Manchester, Stoke, Walsall, Newcastle & Bristol with Liverpool, Cardiff and Glasgow Deaf Poker Clubs having their inaugural event this year.

141 runners turned up for UK Deaf Poker main event 2012 which was a new european record for high number of runners!

2013 will see UK Deaf Poker propose a league format for some eligible regional events and at least top three players would be awarded in the grand final in June 2014.

Players can get further details about either the live main event or online tournament by clicking through to UK Deaf Poker