2008 WSOP, A Reporter’s Notebook

Left Vegas on Tuesday, but the body clock still ain’t quite reoriented itself.

Each night the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. have been quite restless. Frequently find myself stuck in that limnal space between waking and sleep, still occasionally churning out posts about hands. Player completed from the small blind, and player checked his option. The flop came. Player checked, player bet, player called. The turn was. Both checked. The river brought. Player checked, and player thought a moment before checking behind. Player turned over. Player mucked.

Then I turn over, stubbornly renewing my awkward quest for blissful slumber.

The hours between 7 a.m. and noon have been the opposite. Somewhere around dawn I, too, hit the muck, and am dead to the world for those several hours.

After a couple of months’ neglect, I have now gone back through and updated my archival pages: On the Street, The Rumble, Shots in the Dark, High Society, and By the Book. I know when I check my stats that occasionally readers will hunt around in those for old posts, so they are all up to speed now.

I’ve also been going back and working on properly tagging all of the 500-plus posts. I didn’t really use tags until a year ago or so, and so there’s a healthy-sized chunk of old posts that still need ’em. If I ever get them all done, I’ll add a list of those tags somewhere on the main page. (Incidentally, that search box over on the right works pretty well for finding particular terms or names in old posts.)

These last two months probably saw me cranking out more words per day here than at any other time in Hard-Boiled Poker history. I did manage to post at least once every day of the World Series of Poker, plus a few other items here and there along the way.

Thought I’d compile links to all of my WSOP posts here for easy reference later. One post -- “On Covering the WSOP” -- is not included in the list, as it wasn’t so much a daily report as reflective detour. Am not including descriptions of the posts here, but the titles are all at least somewhat suggestive, I think. Here are them links:

Day 1: Dawn
Day 1: “We're In For Six Solid Weeks of Poker”
Day 2: Time Flies
Day 2: Live from the Rio
Day 3: First Final Table Delivers
Day 3: Who Will Wear the First Bracelet?
Day 4: The New & Improved Mixed Hold’em Event
Day 4: Into the Fire
Day 5: Five for Five
Day 5: Storytelling
Day 6: Lights, Camera, Action!
Day 7: Last Night’s Final Table
Day 7: And He Rested On the Seventh Day
Day 7: Mixed Event Look-In
Day 8: Shootout!
Day 8: Keep Up the Pace
Day 9: Running Well
Day 10: Final Table Fun
Day 10: Let’s Make a Deal
Day 11: Escape!
Day 12: Omadraw!
Day 12: Buffets, Bustouts, and Bullsh*t
Day 13: Birthday
Day 13: A Big Hand for the Little Lady
Day 14: Reporting from the Eye of the Hurricane
Day 14: Postscript
Day 15: R & R
Day 16: Year of the Pro?
Day 16: Rebuy!
Day 17: Laughs & Lightning Bolts
Day 17: Brasilia
Day 18: Bluffs & Boasts
Days 19-20: Catching Kings, Z’s, then a Break
Day 21: No Expectations
Day 21: Tigers & Grizzlies
Day 22: Be the Ball
Day 23: Sweat
Day 24: Lowball
Day 25: More Clichés Than You Can Shake a Stick At
Day 26: Cowboy Hats, Cigars, and Draw Poker
Day 27: Cheers
Day 28: Horsin’ Around
Day 29: Love
Day 30: Long Night’s Journey Into Day
Day 31: Kafkaesque, It Was
Day 31: Tell Everyone You Know and Duplicate
Days 32-33: The Beginning of the End
Day 34: Three Tales
Day 34: The Last Final Table
Day 35: The Big One
Day 36: Starting Again
Day 37: Pop Stars, Sexual Puns, and Magic Swords
Day 38: Living the Dream
Day 39: Taking Shots
Day 40: “Seat Open!”
Day 41: Chuck Norris Doesn’t Dodge Bullets; Bullets Dodge Chuck Norris
Day 42: Bubble Go Pop
Day 43: Whirlwind
Day 44: IGHN
Day 45: From the Bleachers
Day 46: Whoopee

Gonna move back to my usual weekday posting schedule now, so have a good weekend everybody. (It is Friday, ain’t it?) Try to get some sleep.