Fled Is That Tourney:----Do I Wake or Sleep?

Utterly swamped at the moment with various assignments, and thus without a lot of time for posting here today, I’m afraid. Indeed, after enjoying a day or two of rest upon my return home from the WSOP, I have been just about as busy during the days since as I was while there.

In fact, it looks like I am going to have a few different trips coming up over the next several weeks, including a return voyage to LAPT Lima a few days from now.

I’ll surely be sharing details about all of those trips here as they come up. All of the many different tours are ramping back up now that the WSOP has finished for the summer, and so suddenly after weeks of focusing on Las Vegas the game goes global once again as events play out all over.

I am still occasionally dreaming about watching and reporting hands. Usually we’re talking mundane stuff -- like most hands in poker tournaments, or like most dreams often go -- although occasionally weird, panicky moments will arise in which something strange happens in the hand or with the reporting, and I’ll wake up glad none of it was real.

As a sports fan, I’m realizing I’m kind of glad still to have poker first and foremost on the agenda here during this relative down time for sports. Am waiting on the NFL to start, still my favorite sport to watch and follow. Basketball will also occupy my attention once it comes back around later in the year, too, but baseball simply doesn’t work for me anymore, with the multitude of scandals having seriously damaged the game beyond a point where this fan cares to go.

The whole A-Rod saga has become a kind of emblem for the sport, bringing together all of the problems related to high salaries, PED use and abuse, and absurd attempts to self-legislate into a single pathetic package.

That’s not to say poker doesn’t have its share of problems, too. But for the most part the game tends to provide plenty of entertainment for those who play and watch. Can’t say I was overly moved by ESPN’s presentation of the WSOP Asia Pacific final table earlier in the week, but that’s probably more a consequence of my being a little overfed with poker of late than the presentation of Daniel Negreanu’s victory not being compelling.

Anyhow, back next week with more and like I say I’ll be talking further about the LAPT Lima trip and subsequent adventures soon.

Meanwhile, for those with an interest in hearing people talk about reporting on poker tournaments, check out the latest episode of the Thinking Poker podcast on which Gareth Chantler comes on to talk about his upcoming trip to cover UKIPT Galway for the Full Tilt Poker blog. There is also some interesting talk about that unique situation from the WSOP Main Event involving David “Doc” Sands you might have heard about, namely a strange hand Sands played that has evoked the issue of “the ethics of accepting an unsolicited chip dump” (to employ the Thinking Poker guys’ phrasing).

While you do, I’ll see if I can’t get a little more rest before these trips come up. And if I can keep these poker-related dreams from returning me to consciousness.