Travel Report: EPT11 Grand Final, Day 9 -- Election Day

We’re careening toward the finish here, with just one more day to go in the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final. Was another interesting day of poker between the side events and seeing both the Main and High Roller play down to set up Friday’s final days for both.

Meanwhile one of my blogging colleagues, Stephen Bartley, was sweating a different competition happening about 800 miles northwest of here. As he’s been chronicling on his blog “Whitstable... not the West Wing” over the last few months, Stephen has been a candidate for councillor back in his home near Canterbury. As even those in the U.S. might well have heard, yesterday was Election Day in the U.K., so while Stephen was here with us people were at the polls all day voting either for or against him.

Calm for most of the day, the first outward sign Stephen was a candidate for office came shortly after 11 p.m. our time when those initial exit poll figures were announced, numbers which were quite different from what had been projected. My position as an outside observer both of the U.K. political process and of my friend who was personally involved in it kind of resembled where I stand when watching a poker tournament, save for my having much more of a rooting interest.

I left him and the various events still going on around midnight, going back to my hotel where I watched BBC 1 and followed more of the commentary about it all. Meanwhile Stephen was up all night following the returns gradually coming in, then a little bit before play started today he received the good news that he’d won his race.

Pursuing the poker analogy a little further, from what I gather regarding his campaign, there was probably some luck involved regarding the outcome of his race, by which I refer to anything outside of his control including regional and national trends and their affect on a local race such as the one in which he was involved. But clearly there was skill, too, under which heading we might include the management of his campaign (with which he had help from others) and the quality of the candidate, who clearly was running for all the right reasons.

Stephen’s helped me a lot during my turns working at the EPT and in other respects, and I know many others have benefited from his generosity, too. And I’m thrilled he’s now earned the chance to help still more people, which was clearly the reward for which he took this risk.

To see who else wins today besides Stephen, check over at the PokerStars blog.