The poker world is no stranger to innovation, but every once in a while, an idea emerges that fills a much-needed gap in the industry. Enter Poker Raffles, a UK-based platform co-founded by Des Duffy and Leigh Wiltshire, designed to offer recreational players the chance to win seats to major live poker events for as little as £1. Instead of grinding online satellites or breaking the bank with hefty buy-ins, players can now simply purchase a raffle ticket and hope their name gets drawn.
With over 180 raffles already completed and players winning seats to events like the WSOP, WPT, Irish Open, and more, Poker Raffles is quickly gaining traction. In this interview, Des and Leigh share the story behind their venture, how it all started, and why they believe they’ve created something special for the poker community.
You can watch our video interview below. Also included is a summarized transcript.
Poker Raffles Interview: Summarized Transcript
Hey everyone, I’m Robbie Strazynski and I’m here with a couple old friends of mine, Des Duffy and Leigh Wiltshire. How are you guys?
Some of you watching may remember that Des, Leigh and I worked together as a team on The Orbit, and roundtable poker podcast show that aired 20 episodes during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Des and Leigh’s collaboration long predates that, and now they’re working on a new project called Poker Raffles.
Before we get into talking about Poker Raffles, can each of you briefly give our audience a bit of info on your poker backgrounds and the work you do together? Des, why don’t you go first.
I’ve been around the industry for 20+ years and have worked on the operator side with some of the big rooms. One of my personal proud achievements was being involved in creating the organization called APAT, which started way back in 2006. It was designed to give recreational poker players a competitive, fun, and premium experience for a low buy-in. We’re coming up to 20 years with APAT now, having held many events across the UK and Ireland as well as other places in the world.
And Leigh…
I started as a poker player back in 2003 and was lucky enough to play my first live poker event in the Caribbean – I had won a seat via an online freeroll. I stumbled across an ad for APAT, so I attended the Luton stop during Season 1, which is where I first met Des.
I began volunteering and helping out with some of APAT’s regional events in Season 2, remained involved and now somehow nearly 20 years later I’m the CEO of the whole thing. We’re a close-knit team, with a lovely guy named Tom Brady looking after all our live events.
OK, so now let’s shift our focus to the main topic of this interview, that being Poker Raffles. Can you please describe the concept – what’s it all about?
There’s nothing else quite like Poker Raffles in the marketplace. In the UK there’s an evolving industry that is based around prize competitions: you can buy a ticket and win a house or fancy car, for example. You tune in to the draw and hope to win one of those prizes. The industry is fully legal, it’s advertised in the TV and press, etc.
A lot of our APAT players are older now, with increased demands on their time. So, as recreationals, they have less time to play online poker, but they still have that hunger to play in a big live event. They just don’t have the time to sit and compete online to win their way in via satellite anymore. Plus, those have gotten really difficult!
So, essentially, we thought of utilizing this mechanic of prize competitions to offer the big live event experiences to recreational players at a tiny price point. That’s how Poker Raffles was born.
How long did it take to workshop the idea from idea stage until launch stage, and when did that launch happen? What does a typical Poker Raffles prize offer look like?
We started examining this idea back in 2023. It took about six months to plan it, ensure that it’s all legal and on the up and up. We launched in November 2023, and put up the first seat to see if the idea had legs.
Tickets for that seat absolutely flew out the door! We’ve carried on since then and it’s been smooth sailing and lots of growth over the last year and change.
You guys recently marked a big milestone, offering the first Poker Raffle for an entry to the WSOP Main Event. But naturally one has to start out small. What were the first events you offered? Was there always a roadmap to at some point offer a Main Event seat?
Yes, right from Day 1, we all wondered “how can we send someone to the Main Event?” Last summer we sent two winners to Las Vegas to play in the Colossus at the WSOP + they had a week’s hotel stay.
Pretty much right away, there were a lot of poker tours that wanted to work with us. Within 3-4 months of launch, we sent someone to a WPT event in Amsterdam, for example. People saw this as a new way of engaging with poker players, and the industry understood that this wasn’t in conflict with mechanisms already in place, but rather “filling the gaps”.
We’re 15 months in and have done 180+ drawings. We’ve seen players going all over the world to play in live poker events, including partypoker Tour, the Irish Open, the HendonMob Championship and of course the World Series of Poker. And every ticket just costs £1!
Poker Raffles is currently only open to players from the UK and Ireland. Let’s say I want to participate – do I need to create some sort of account? What steps do I follow?
The process is very straightforward. You visit Pokerraffles.com and it’s exactly as though you were doing online shopping. No need to create an account or anything like that. Ticket purchases need to be made using a debit card, as credit cards are not allowed.
At some point in the future, we may seek to broaden the site’s availability beyond the UK and Ireland, to the US and other markets.
Ideas and innovation in poker are great things. Obviously we all work hard to try and make a few extra bucks – in your case, a few quid – but beyond that, what have been the most satisfying aspects of shepherding Poker Raffles through its journey up until this point?
Frankly speaking, it feels great to have uncovered something new in the market, so to speak, that can better service our APAT players, as well as that segment of recreational players we spoke about earlier. The folks who still want to play in the big live events but don’t have time to grind online and qualify in; now they have another potential way of winning their way towards a live poker experience they’d like to have.
The drawings take place once a week, typically on Monday nights 9pm UK time. Many of our players enjoy tuning in to Pokerraffles.com the live drawings and even if they don’t win themselves, they’re happy to see that one of their friends has won.
We sometimes also get emails from winners after their poker trips letting us know how they fared. They’re always so thankful and say that “if it wouldn’t have been for Poker Raffles, the whole experience would have been impossible.”
The drawing for the WSOP Main Event package, including flights and hotel for two, is scheduled to take place on Monday April 7th unless we sell out earlier. As of this recording, we’ve sold over 4,000 tickets already.
Thanks once again to Des Duffy and Leigh Wiltshire. The website is PokerRaffles.com, be sure to check it out today!
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