Chip Race Festival Set to Start at Unibet Poker

The online poker spring season is about to get underway at many poker sites, with the big gun sites setting off on multi-million dollar adventures that will last throughout May and for some sites, well into June. GG Poker’s World Festival features an extensive 1,600 tournaments spread across four buy-in tiers. SCOOP at PokerStars comes with $75m of guarantees on its 128 event schedule, divided into three tiers. WPT Global and iPoker have also set off on spring voyages of poker discovery, with their respective Spring Festival and Elite Series Spring Edition each weighing in with $7m in guarantees.

But that’s not all, as there is one more spring festival taking place in May, at Unibet Poker, a much smaller site than the ones offering multi-million dollar mega series. However in the same vein as a caring partner who puts on their best poker face to tell their less than well-endowed other-half that “size doesn’t matter,” the €200,000 guaranteed Chip Race Festival on Unibet Poker is all about technique, it’s a sprint, not a marathon.

The Chip Race is a podcast sponsored by Unibet Poker, presented by David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney, who are both sponsored pros and Ambassadors for the site. Barry Carter presents the news segment, filling the shoes of former Chip Race news hosts Daragh Davey and Ian Simpson. 

It is one of the best poker podcasts out there and is an interview based show which drops every two weeks (on average), with varied guests from the poker world, including the occasional A-lister. Both Dara and David travel to international poker events several times a year and The Chip Race podcast reflects this with reports of their participation in major live poker events, such as the WSOP and the WPT.

It’s not the first time that the show has hosted online events at Unibet Poker. They have held several one-off Chip Race tournaments, but this is only the second iteration of the longer format Chip Race Festival.

The festival starts on Unibet Poker on Sunday 5th May and concludes Monday 12th, with a total of 26 tournaments with buy-ins ranging from €10-€100. The tournament schedule has been cleverly devised to resemble an episode of the Chip Race itself, for example the first tournament is called ‘The Opening Monologue’ and others include ‘The Strategy Segment’ and the ‘Turbo Outro.’ The festival’s main event is a two-day affair starting on Sunday 12th May, with a €100 buy-in and €25,000 guaranteed.

There is a festival leaderboard, with €6,000 in prize money, awarded to the top 15  players, with the best performer taking the top prize of €1,100. This is what they’re playing for:

But the leaderboard is not the only value that The Chip Race Festival is offering, as the player who bubbles in each tournament will receive a digital copy of ‘Endgame Poker Strategy: The ICM Book’ by Dara O’Kearney and Barry Carter. The only bad thing about this prize is that as it’s a digital copy, the authors can’t sign it for you. 

And if that wasn’t already enough added value, the winners of each tournament will also be treated to a special freeroll called the ‘Winners Showdown Tournament’ where they will compete against the Chip Race presenters Dara and David, but sadly (and erroneously) not against Barry.

PokerWired spoke to David Lappin to ask him which of the three presenters he thought would do the best in the series, predictably also asking him why the answer to that question was going to be Barry? He replied:

The opinion that the Chip Race is one of the best poker podcasts in existence isn’t just me blowing smoke up their asses in hope of a free ticket to one of the Chip Race Festival events, it’s also the opinion of the wider poker community. The Chip Race won Podcast of the Year for the second time at this year’s Global Poker Awards, in an open voting category. It is the only poker podcast to have won the award more than once. 

If you only listen to one poker podcast, it comes as no surprise that The Chip Race is the one I’d recommend you to tune-in to. If you like it and want more, they’ve already produced over 150 shows in the nine years they’ve been broadcasting. 

Not only does the Chip Race regularly secure top guests, such as Chris Moneymaker, Patrik Antonius and Unibet’s bingo and poker marketing supremo Kat Arnsby, it also has a news section hosted by the delightfully sardonic poker journalist and author Barry Carter. 

Did I mention that they are also really generous about giving away free tickets to tournaments on Unibet Poker? If you follow David, Dara or Barry on social media, you will regularly get a chance to compete in some kind of inventive competition like 'tell us your worst bad beat without telling us your worst bad beat’ type of thing. I asked David whether the Chip Race is going to be giving away any tickets to this festival, to which he responded:

See you on the final table!

For more details about Unibet Poker and information about the new player welcome bonus, check out PokerWired’s detailed review of Unibet Poker.