Picture the scene: A divisive Republican president rules from the White House; the world mourns the death of the Pope; a natural disaster hits at the heart of a major US city, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The year is 2005.
20 years on, has nothing changed, or is nothing the same? It’s not always easy to say. 2005 is a generation ago, and as we reported last summer, marked the end of the debut season of the European Poker Tour (EPT). Back then the EPT culminated in a tournament series in the opulent surroundings of Monte Carlo. In 2025, the same goes.
The principality of Monaco is once again hosting one of the world’s foremost poker festivals, and now, just as then, Barny Boatman is looking to make some moves.
‘The Americans had always had it all their own way’
As action begins to build behind us in the tournament area of the Sporting Monte Carlo, I ask Boatman if he recalls anything from that nascent EPT Monte Carlo, 20 years ago, or whether his decades-long career at poker’s sharp end has dulled his memories.
“I remember my exit hand,” says Boatman, almost immediately. “I’d gotten short and I had ace-rag, I can’t remember what they had but it ended up being better than that.” Boatman finished 23rd of 211 in that first EPT Monte Carlo Main Event, in the money but not by far, yet the experience clearly left a mark.
“It was all very new and very exciting. I think maybe I'd been to Monte Carlo once for the Monte Carlo Millions. I remember thinking that the EPT was a great idea.”
By then, Boatman and his buddies in The Hendon Mob were already hard at work tracking poker tournament results, as well as documenting forthcoming series around the world. The trouble was, the biggest fields, tournaments and prizes weren’t taking place anywhere in Europe, where he and his fellow Mob members were based.
“The Americans had always had it all their own way,” recalls Boatman of those pre-EPT years. “We’d arrive at the World Series, jet-lagged and culture-shocked. Some of the rulings were funny, you’d say something and they’d say ‘English only at the table’; they couldn’t understand you.”
As a result, Boatman was on board at the EPT from the beginning, cashing at EPT London before the season-closer in Monaco. As time passed he would be seen less and less at these events (“I was pretty much off the EPT scene for quite a few years”) but a barnstorming success at EPT Paris last year, followed by a role as a PokerStars ambassador, has seen him return to play a fairly regular EPT schedule.
What a difference 20 years makes!
When Boatman cashed that first EPT Monte Carlo Main Event, there was a field of 211 with which to contend. Yesterday’s first starting flight for the €5,300 Main Event drew 402 entries. Today’s second Day 1 already has 626, and registration remains open for the remainder of the day right up to the start of tomorrow’s Day 2.
The growth of live poker is not a new story, even when comparisons go back to a post-Moneymaker moment such as 2005. But when viewed through Boatman’s eyes, having been present both at the birth and the latest landmark birthday for this long-running poker series, there’s a lot more that’s changed in addition to bigger fields, bigger prizes and better facilities.
“However much the organization, the connection with the online game and everything else has changed over the past 20 years, the play itself — particularly with no-limit hold’em — has changed more," maintains Boatman.
“If a player from that first EPT Monte Carlo were to find themselves in the 2025 Main Event, they’d think they were in a lunatic asylum!” he laughs. “They would think that people weren’t playing right, turning over hands they just shouldn't be turning over, the way the betting had gone; they would find that their bluffs in certain situations would be getting called very light.”
“Back then people would standardly raise roughly pot-sized bets,” he recalls. “Those of us that were making smaller bets were criticized; it looked indecisive. The player from 20 years ago would be baffled by the bet sizing that goes on. Their first response would be, ‘these people don't know what they're doing!’”
‘It can be very brutalizing’
Trends in strategy are constantly changing, and as such, many believe that to survive in poker is to adapt. Is Boatman one of those? Yes, but not necessarily in the same fashion other players may adopt; he doesn’t see adaptability as a process of moving from one set of strategies and beliefs to another but as a core tenet of being a poker player.
“From the start, it’s about adaptability,” he says. “While I don’t study nearly as much as I should — or, perhaps, at all — what I do is study the game while I'm playing it. I'm aware of what people are doing that's different. So, for me it's all about adapting to the people that you're playing with, the moods that they're in and the rest of it.”
And, speaking of change, has poker changed him?
“I’ve always seen it as a bit of a challenge in poker, not to change. It can be very brutaliziing. I’ve tried not to change in the way I deal with people: they’re not enemies, they’re just friendly adversaries in the game.
“I’m lucky in a way, in that I didn’t get into poker seriously until I was already relatively old; I was already kind of who I was. It’s much more of a challenge for people who are young and get a lot of success very quickly to keep their feet on the ground and value the right things about other people.
“I think I’ve continued to value things about people that matter, which is not necessarily how much money they’ve won in poker.”
Finally, I ask what poker can try next to broaden the game’s appeal. Amid a landscape of increasingly short attention spans and more lottery-style mechanics, his answer is at once old-fashioned and refreshingly novel: more mixed games.
“I see no-limit hold’em as this very hardy, successful plant in your garden,” he says. “It’s choked off all the other beautiful flowers because it just soaks up all the sunlight and all the water.
“There are some wonderful, exotic flowers out there, if only they’re given the chance.”
Later on I see Barny Boatman taking his latest chance over in the €1,650 pot-limit Omaha tourney, having busted the Main Event. I’m sure he’ll remember that exit hand, too. Some things never change.
Images courtesy of Danny Maxwell Photography/Manuel Kovsca/Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd.
