Travel Report: EPT10 Deauville Main Event, Day 1a: Déjà Vu

The first of two Day 1 flights is in the books at EPT10 Deauville, with a relatively small turnout of 234 players working their way down to 134 by night’s end. Expect many more to arrive tomorrow, though probably not enough to reach last year’s overall total of 782 entrants.

Been thinking back a lot to a year ago since arriving on Saturday morning. Kind of marveling at how fast the time goes -- it genuinely feels like I was just here -- while also thinking how the more of these trips a person does, the smaller the big, big world feels.

My flights which began on Friday were all relatively stress-free. Both were late by over an hour, but with a day to spare before work began on Sunday I hadn’t much reason to fret. Met up with Chris Hall and Sarah Grant for a nice dinner Saturday night, but otherwise took it easy, catching up on lost sleep from Friday night.

Was fun yesterday working alongside Rick Dacey and Howard Swains for the PokerStars blog where we’re doing various features and other interesting items to complement the PokerNews live reporting. A highlight today was talking to the very friendly Eugene Katchalov about his remarkable transformation via exercise and eating well into an incredibly fit and healthy person. Click and read (and marvel at the “before” and “after” pics, too).

Have a few more Deauville-related feature ideas in mind, the sort of pieces that work better during early stages of a tournament when the movement of chips is less vital to track than is the case later on.

Looking forward to those, but also have to admit I’m missing the farm after two weeks’ worth of helping care for the horses, Sammy and Maggie. Hate not being there, but glad to be helping here.

Check in over at the PokerStars blog to read what we’ve written thus far and ongoing reports from EPT10 Deauville all week.