Morning in Barcelona

“It could have been worse” is a phrase we’ve all heard and most of us have probably used. Usually after something bad happens.

(Actually, as I try to start out on that foot, I can’t avoid noting how we have a president in the United States right now who appears intent on proving nearly every single day that yes, it can be worse. But I’ll avoid that digression just now.)

Depending on the context, the phrase “it could have been worse” can have different connotations and thus produce different effects.

In certain circumstances, it can be genuinely comforting to recognize that whatever bad thing has happened, it wasn’t as bad as other possible events. You leave your wallet behind at a restaurant, but when you return an hour later they’ve kept it for you and gladly return it. It could have been worse, you say.

Sometimes, though, it feels trite or hollow to make such a remark, especially when the bad thing that happened is much, much worse than some mundane, easily handled inconvenience. That said, as I sit in my hotel room here in Barcelona this morning catching up with the latest details regarding the terrorist attack that occurred Thursday about two miles from here at La Rambla in the city’s center -- and the subsequent attack occurring in Cambrils about 70 miles away -- it’s hard not to shudder at the thought of how much worse it could have been.

Still, like I say, that rings hollow. Such senseless, deranged horror perpetrated on so many innocents, and for no reason whatsoever other than to serve some mindless, indefensible, inhumane cause. (And frustratingly reprising several other attacks here in Europe, as well as another deranged and deadly decision made for similarly stupid reasons in Virginia a week ago.)

You’re following the coverage, too, so I won’t rehearse all of the details I’m learning both through various news sources and via conversations here where I’ve come to help cover the PokerStars Barcelona Championship series already underway. Suffice it say, the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests more ambitiously cruel plans by the perpetrators failed to be realized for various reasons (including some swift action on the part of Spanish police).

It was sickening to follow the story two days ago from the farm while I was packing for the trip, the chest tightening more than a little at the thought of my many friends and other familiar and friendly poker folks who were already here. Brad Willis provided a thorough and sensitive explanation of this feeling yesterday for the PokerStars blog in a post titled “On terror, fear, and perseverance in Barcelona.”

That post includes a photo my friend and fellow reporter Alex Villegas took yesterday, as well as some by another friend and colleague, Neil Stoddart. (That's another of Neil’s up above.) Catalan officials have declared three days of mourning, lasting through the weekend.

Alex arrived in the morning on Friday, and since our check-in wasn’t until later in the afternoon he spent that time over at La Rambla as we’ve done before on past visits to this beautiful, inviting coastal city. I came a little later (though still too early to get a room), and he and I spent much of the afternoon talking about various things, including those many memorials now dotting the pedestrian path.

We begin work today, the first of what will be nine straight days of reporting. There is some cloud cover this morning, though the usual deep blue is nonetheless gamely starting to peek through up above.

It’s my fourth trip here, and before coming I had plans once more to get out when I can to see the city and its people. I still plan to do so, and will likely get over to La Rambla at some point as Alex and Neil have already done.

It’s good to be among my many friends who like me have been here many times. It’s also good to be among the always friendly and inviting people who live here. I’m glad to be back.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart / PokerStars blog.

To Panama and Back

Am back safely on the farm after a fun, long trip to Panama and back.

I miss a little doing the daily “travel reports” here, although as I’ve mentioned previously especially when returning to a place I’ve been before there ends up being a little less that’s fresh from the road to discuss. Never mind how busy the trips are, which obviously uses up a lot of the mental fuel left for scribbling further about what’s happening.

It was interesting going back to Panama where I’d been twice before for Latin American Poker Tour stops. Both there and elsewhere, the LAPTs were always popular though modest-seeming relative to European Poker Tour festivals or the World Series of Poker.

Usually LAPTs only featured a dozen or so events with a Main Event often featuring a buy-in on the small side (e.g., in the $1,100-$1,500 range). Meanwhile the EPTs would have as much as 100 events or more, including satellites, making for a much busier schedule.

This inaugural PokerStars Championship Panama series had 46 events on the schedule, a $5,300 Main Event (like at the former EPTs/other PSCs), and other elements that made it less like the LAPTs of old and more like the first PSC in the Bahamas and what is coming up in Macau, Monte Carlo, Sochi, and Barcelona.

In the coverage we focused largely on the $50K Super High Roller (won by Ben Tollerene), the $10K High Roller (won by Steve O’Dwyer), and the $5K Main Event (won by Kenny Smaron). Meanwhile there was some time here and there to look upon the city’s remarkable, idiosyncratic architecture, with several excursions by foot around the Sortis Hotel, Spa & Casino and a cab trip over to Old Town for a nice meal and more interesting sightseeing.

Those two photos up above -- and the idea to juxtapose them -- come via Brad Willis of the PokerStars blog who snapped ’em on one such evening out. “Panamanian noir,” he titled them.

Probably the night from the trip I’ll remember the longest was that of the media tournament. There were 30-40 entrants including three Team PokerStars Pros -- Jake Cody, Felipe Ramos, and Leo Fernandez. Tito Ortiz, the MMA fighter who managed to get all of the way to 22nd in the Main Event also took part in the media tournament, and I ended up playing with all four of them before the night was over.

After a slow start in the sucker, I had some good hands come my way and after a while had made the final table, then eventually got all of the way to heads-up before coming up short to finish second (again!). Was kind of a circus by the time we got to the end, with tons of people having stuck around to support both me and eventual winner Melanie.

And heads-up featured some big time back-and-forths with both of us getting close to finishing the other off in preflop all-ins before cards fell on either the turn or river to keep the thing going. Afterwards I knew I could’ve played a bit more aggressively heads-up, but I’ll have to file it away as more experience to draw from the next time around.

The best part of the trip was of course getting to work and laugh alongside my many colleagues and friends there, too. Among them was Carlos, who took that great pic of me just above during the media event, one of several great ones he snapped. “You are the most boring player,” grinned Carlos to me, referring to my lack of animation at the table. But from his photos you’d never guessed that was case.

Will be sitting tight for a while now, the next trip likely going to be another return visit, this time to Monaco. Plotting the summer as well, which might contain a fun adventure, too -- will update accordingly.

Photos: Brad Willis (top); Carlos Monti / PokerStars blog (bottom).

Travel Report: PokerStars Festival New Jersey, Day 5 -- The Jersey Shore, Dock’s, and Mo

Good morning from the Philadelphia International Airport. Am here plenty early for my flight back home, so thought I’d spend part of the time sharing a couple of notes from yesterday, my last helping cover the PokerStars Festival New Jersey at the Resorts Casino Hotel.

Was a laid back day, relatively speaking, given that the Main Event had finished up a day early and the High Roller was already down to just four players. I ended up following that one to a conclusion -- Jack Duong outlasted Jennifer Shahade heads-up to win the trophy -- and recapping things, then not long afterwards went for a short stroll across the Boardwalk and onto the Jersey shore.

It was another pleasantly mild day, making for some nice, postcard-worthy shots all around. That’s one up above of the Steel Pier, a thousand-foot-long amusement park jutting out into the water nearby, closed currently (it operates from April through October).

A little later on Brad, Jess, Joe, and I took a ride over to Dock’s Oyster House over near Caesars in Ducktown, a district so named for the duck houses built by the Italian immigrants who raised poultry there a century ago. Dock’s has a history stretching back even further to the 1890s, a family-owned high-end seafood place Joe had seen featured on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, and so we had all been looking forward to getting the chance to get over there (and “off campus,” so to speak).

We all commended Joe afterwards on having made a terrific suggestion, as both the atmosphere and our meals were excellent all around. Brad and I started out by diving into multiple trays of the Cape May Salts oysters from a couple of hours south at the southern tip of the Cape May peninsula. Then I had the seared sea scallops over mashed potatoes with broccoli rabe and roasted tomatoes. Just fantastic.

Bourdain refers to Dock’s as “a symbol of what Atlantic City was and could be again.” It did feel a little like a trip back in time to a different Atlantic City, one perhaps more closely resembling the one each of my parents visited back in the 1960s. Hard to believe now, but in ’64 the Dems had their national convention in AC at the Boardwalk Hall just a mile or so away from the Resorts.

After lingering some more in Ducktown at a tavern across from Dock’s, we made our way back to Resorts in time to see our buddy Mo Nuwwarah heads-up in the 8-game event that had begun early in the afternoon. The event had drawn 50-some runners, and in the end Mo had to outlast a couple of very formidable foes in Barry Greenstein (who took third) and Chris Reslock (who finished runner-up) to earn the silver spade.

Was a blast seeing Mo with the chip advantage at the end running especially well through rounds of limit hold’em, seven-card stud hi/lo (which we referred to as “Hi/Mo”), and deuce-to-seven triple draw. Indeed, on the winning hand Mo drew three and just like that he had a 7-6-5-4-2 (a “number four”). After that we hung out some more, celebrating Mo’s victory a bit at the Margaritaville bar before calling it a night.

Got a decent night’s rest, with the extra hour thanks to Daylight Savings Time having ended last night. Was an entertaining shuttle ride to the airport this morning thanks to a very talkative driver, with up-and-down the history of Atlantic City being kind of a running theme around which he opined on numerous other topics.

Overall it was a very fun trip, made more so thanks to getting to work with great folks like Brad, Jess, and Joe and also alongside a number of friends, many of whom I’ve known and worked with for seven or eight years now. Happy to be heading home, though, and very glad to be staying put for a while after these last few weeks of running around.

Talk again soon from the farm.

Travel Report: PokerStars Festival New Jersey, Day 4 -- A First Festival Champ

When we arrived for Day 3 of the PokerStars Festival New Jersey Main Event yesterday, the thought was we’d likely be having a short day as just 23 remained and the final table was scheduled for Saturday. But plans changed and the players decided to push on through to a conclusion, which meant another noon-to-midnight day for those of us reporting on the sucker.

Was kind of a fun finale to follow, as it turned out, with some interesting hands and a heads-up comeback that finished with Jason Acosta -- who’d qualified online for the event on PokerStarsNJ -- outlasting Mike Gagliano. Matt Affleck made the final table as well, finishing fifth.

Brad Willis wrote up a nice recap of the final day of play that includes a little about winner Acosta and gives a good idea of how the day and tournament went.

It was definitely a modest affair, relatively speaking, with only a $200K prize pool and $38K up top. But as I was saying earlier in the week it seemed like all involved had a good time and it worked as a kind of initial step back into the live tournament game in the U.S. for Stars.

Will be looking in the finale of the High Roller today, along with some of the other things going on including a “Run It Up” 8-game event featuring Jason Somerville (who won the Chad Brown tournament, I forgot to mention) and a lot of his followers from here in the area. Check the PokerStars blog as usual for updates and more.

Travel Report: PokerStars Festival New Jersey, Arrival -- From NC to North Carolina Avenue

Hello from Atlantic City. Place looks a bit different from the last time I was here over three years ago.

That’s partly because no less than five casinos (of the 12) on the Boardwalk have closed since then, including the Trump Taj Mahal right next door to the Resorts Casino Hotel where I’m staying for the PokerStars Festival New Jersey.

The trip up was easy-breezy, with the ride from the Philadelphia airport to AC taking nearly as long as the flight from Charlotte. The Resorts is actually on North Carolina Avenue -- one of those Monopoly streets here in AC -- which somehow felt right to this Tarheel. Got checked in mid-afternoon and wandered around a bit, taking in the “vintage” feel of the place.

Am reading that the Resorts first went up back in 1978, and while there have obviously been renovations and new construction -- including the tower in which I’m staying which went up a little over a decade ago -- there’s definitely a bit of a stepping-back-in-time feeling when you turn certain corners of the place.

I found the tournament rooms and media area, reuniting with my buddy Jan of the EPT with whom I was just working in Malta as well as the PokerNews guys, other EPT folks and some from the LAPT, too, and a few others I haven’t seen for some time. It really is going to be a reunion of sorts for me, especially since I haven’t been to the WSOP in a while.

Later on met up with Brad, Jess, and Joe for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. The place where we’d originally planned to go was closed, and indeed the whole Boardwalk was fairly quiet without a lot of foot traffic on a mild, breezy Monday evening. Nick (with whom I also was just working in Malta) had a delayed flight and so missed dinner, but we’ll get up with him tomorrow.

Got up very early this morning -- I’m still somewhat on European time -- and after a bit went down around 7 a.m. to the Dunkin Donuts, trekking through the casino to get there. Always a somewhat grim scene, seeing patrons of the slots and table games that early, and uncanny, too, as the lack of windows, noise, and smoke all conspire to make you forget it’s not dusk, but dawn.

Not too sure what to expect in terms of the tournaments, but it ought to be a fun one, I think. The $1,100 buy-in Main Event starts today at 11 a.m. ET, so don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, and head over to the PokerStars blog a little later to see what’s happening.

Photos: “North_Carolina_Avenue,” Mark Strozier. CC BY 2.0; “Resorts Casino Hotel,” tripadvisor.com.

A Captive Audience

Did something kind of unusual on the plane ride back from Barcelona yesterday.

It was about a nine-hour flight, perhaps a little more, starting in the morning and ending around dinner time. Sleeping wasn’t an option, really, although I don’t ever do that well trying to sleep on planes. If it’s a redeye I’ll usually can at least rest my eyes for an hour or two, but in truth I never really zonk out, even if I happen to have a row on which to stretch.

I started out watching one movie -- David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence -- which I hadn’t seen before. I’m up on practically all early and mid-period Cronenberg, and also being a noir fan I ended up enjoying this one, even if it turned out to be a little awkward watching certain scenes there in an aisle seat where those behind me could watch as well, if they wished.

Against Cronenberg’s earlier stuff, of course, it played as a little more restrained. Meanwhile when compared to the noir tradition the story, situation, and characters followed, it read as a modern, more graphic update. Certain elements of the latter act (in particular William Hurt’s character) seemed over the top, but by then that fit well enough in the somewhat stylized world being presented.

Finishing that as well as the in-flight meal, I scrolled around and dialed up another movie to watch -- The French Connection (which I have seen, long ago) -- but within 10-15 minutes I couldn’t keep focused on it and switched it off, opting for some music instead. Then after sitting there a bit I pulled out my laptop.

During a conversation with Jack (my buddy and blogging partner) early in the two-week poker festival I’d brought up this draft of a novel I have. Same Difference had been essentially written well prior to my getting into poker (and starting this blog in 2006), and I only published it in 2009. Meanwhile this new novel was written subsequently, the first draft of which was completed around three years ago. I revised it a couple of times -- the file is marked “3rd draft” -- but hadn’t opened it back up since earlier this year.

I opened it there on the flight and began reading. Got through the first several chapters and kept going, then eventually was approaching the midpoint. Finally at some point I realized I was ready to read the whole sucker, and doing some math realized I’d be able to finish it before we landed which I did. Was perhaps seven hours of reading, I think -- the book’s novel-length but on the shorter side (around 70,000 words).

I don’t think I’d ever read it through in one sitting like that, and it was satisfying to do so. Like the first novel it’s essentially a murder mystery, although not a detective novel and draws much more on my own experiences than did Same Difference which is set in New York City in the mid-1970s. This one is also set in the past, with the story starting in 1979 and ending in 1980, but takes place in a setting essentially pattered after my hometown with a boy protagonist/narrator of my same age then.

I tinkered just a little as I went, but not much as the draft had been pored over many times already. I remembered certain sections I’d cut, glad they were gone in this version. A couple of plot points have been altered from the initial version, too, though a lot of it is still there.

The experience made me eager to begin the process of publishing it, something I’d like to before the year ends. In fact, I have another creative project of sorts I’m going to “publish” (so to speak) later this week, in fact, that falls under the same heading of me wanting to share something I’ve done rather than keep it to myself. For a couple of reasons, I’ve been feeling a lot of this “life-is-too-short-to-wait” pressure over the last few weeks, which is partly why I want to move ahead with these things.

Traveling will inspire that feeling sometimes. While in Barcelona I had a conversation with Brad (also my buddy and also my blogging partner) about watching movies on planes. On the surface, it seems less than ideal to watch these things on relatively small screes on the backs of passengers’ seats. But as Brad pointed out, the audience is uniquely captive, free from the endless distractions that mark our lives when we aren’t 30,000-plus feet in the air.

Coupled with being away from loved ones (if you’re traveling alone), that can make viewers especially receptive emotionally (we agreed), causing us to be more readily affected by certain films -- something both he and I have experienced before.

I can’t say A History of Violence moved me too deeply, although it had its moments. Meanwhile it might have been that being on the plane, all alone and in a relatively unique state of mind, affected me as I read through my novel again.

Doesn’t matter, I guess. Same difference, as they say.

Gonna get moving on this thing. More to come.

Image: “Plane” (adapted), Alper Çuğun. CC BY 2.0.

Slow Down… Brad Willis Has Some Stories to Tell

We’re already a week-and-a-half into December. Wait a minute... it’s already December!?! I guess so, as we’re careening toward the holidays and the new year and wherethehelldoesthetimego?

I got back to the farm from Brazil on the last day of November, but in truth I feel like I’m just looking up now to see we’ve reached the 10th already. In fact, here in the kitchen I’m realizing we haven’t even turned the last calendar page up yet on November. Gotta take care of that next time I pass by it, if I have time.

Part of it is just getting older, I know. It happens to all of us that with each passing year our temporal awareness (for lack of a better way to refer to the concept) alters by another degree or three. Could be because each new year necessarily represents a smaller fraction of our lives, or maybe it has more to do with the brain refusing to keep growing once we reach a certain point not long after young adulthood.

Then there’s “poker time,” with which I think most reading this blog are plenty familiar. So much is happening all at once, the weeks and months tend to fly by as a result. I was just recently tasked with making another one of those “top poker stories” of the year lists, something which I swear feels like I was just doing.

That said, there are little pockets here and there within the poker world -- and the world at large -- where we really can slow down and think a little more deeply about what is happening. During these first 10 days of December I’ve found a couple of them, both connected with my friend and colleague Brad Willis who heads up the PokerStars blog.

Brad is in Prague at the moment with the EPT festival, producing (as usual) interesting features related to the events that have happened thus far along with Nick Wright, Stephen Bartley, and Howard Swains.

Speaking of features, after getting back from Brazil I finally had a chance to read through Brad’s lengthy four-parter he wrote for the Bitter Southerner website titled “BUST: An Insider’s Account of Greenville’s Underground Poker Scene.” It’s a gripping narrative -- really a novella -- that takes as its starting point a relatively peaceful underground poker game in South Carolina from 2010 interrupted by a police raid and some jarring-by-contrast violence.

Brad tells that story while also filling the broader context of poker’s past and present in the Palmetto state, and by extension the game’s often paradoxical place in American culture, generally speaking. He weaves in stories of other poker players of varying levels of ability and dedication, and toward the end also incorporates his own life in poker, kind of taking a seat at the table himself among the characters he has sketched for us.

It’s an enlightening tale, and one well told, too. For anyone with an interest in poker (and good writing), it’s worth slowing down for a while and enjoying. I’m realizing how it could actually could fit on my “Poker in American Film and Culture” syllabus, and in fact I might slip it in there the next time I teach it as it complements (and builds upon) some of the ideas we discuss in that course.

I also found some time last weekend to hear Brad appear as a guest on a recent episode of the Thinking Poker Podcast hosted by Andrew Brokos and Nate Meyvis. They’re all the way up to 150 episodes, which is quite an achievement, and I’ll admit to vainly enjoying the memory of having appeared on TPP way back on one its very first shows more than three years ago. (Wait a minute... three years -- already!?!)

If you don’t already know Brad, listening to the show will work as a good introduction, I think, although even though they talk for over a half-hour there’s obviously a lot more to his story. Besides sharing a lot of common interests with Brad (poker, reading, writing, music), I feel another kind of affinity with him thanks to the parallel way his life took a detour from a “normal” job (as a news journalist in television) to become a “poker guy.” When he describes how he experienced that change on the show, you can imagine I’m doing a lot of nodding in agreement.

Thanks to Andrew and Nate’s thoughtful questions, Brad also delves into nature of poker reporting as it has evolved over the last decade or so, giving listeners a lot to think about when it comes to the reasons why a lot of us came to love poker in the first place.

Check out the show to hear what he says and decide for yourself if it is indeed the people and the stories that make poker a special game. And if you agree, definitely read Brad’s story on Bitter Southerner and get to know how poker shaped the lives of a number of interesting people (including Brad himself).

And if you don’t think you have time... well, try to figure out a way to slow things down a bit and enjoy these stories, anyway.

Ten Thousand Tweets

Was noticing over the last several weeks that the total for the number of tweets I’ve sent from @hardboiledpoker was approaching 10,000. Today I got there, with the tweet I sent to announce this post being the one.

It actually has taken me a while finally to reach that milestone after first noticing I was getting close. It took me a little over a month to get from 9,900 to 10,000 tweets. I first opened my Twitter account on April 9, 2009. That was 2,304 days ago which means I’ve been averaging sending out a little over four tweets per day over the last six years-plus.

Went back today to find my first tweet, pictured above. You can see before I even get to the end of that one how I’m distracted by the medium itself, self-reflexively counting down the characters at the end.

Seeing my reference to an article about Twitter by Otis (Brad Willis), I was curious to track it down once more. I headed over to Rapid Eye Reality, the blog Brad started way, way back in 2001 (about five years before I began Hard-Boiled Poker), and found his post dated April 9, 2009 titled “Much Atwitter About Nothing.”

He begins engagingly -- as he always does -- suggesting “Twitter is the Keanu Reeves of the internet.” Then he proceeds to list by category those who were then complaining about Twitter:

Advertising and branding people who can’t figure out if it’s important

Hipsters who have to hate anything a lot of people like

Companies that feel like they have to use it but don’t know why

People who don’t know what a Twitter is and are afraid to put one in their pants

“My favorite criticisms,” Brad continues, “are those who use Twitter to talk bad about Twitter,” following that with a list of examples I won’t cut-and-paste here, because you’ve been reading the same kinds of statements about Twitter on your feed for the last six-plus years, too.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Brad says, “you’re better off wringing your hands about Keanu Reeves.” That is to say, in his estimation, Twitter was hardly something to get too worked up over. Sure, like Reeves (then), it was a conspicuous part of our cultural landscape, something hard to avoid if you wanted to. That said, it was (at least then) something more or less innocuous -- an occasionally entertaining diversion.

“I use Twitter the same as I use the blog,” he concludes. “It’s a way to communicate. If you’re in the business of communication, you should know Twitter. If you don’t, you’re behind.”

I feel like over the years I’ve mostly thought of Twitter in a similar way, simply viewing it (and using it) as another way to communicate, although I’ve always been more inclined to express opinions here on the blog than over there. Even though I agree Twitter is real, actual communication, it still feels ephemeral to me, despite the fact that I can search back through all 10,000 of my tweets if I wish, as well as the tweets of others. And while I generally like Twitter, I do sometimes experience a kind of Twitter weariness such as I was describing a few months ago in “Time for a Twitter Break?”

If you’ve read any of those 10,000 tweets of mine and looked at the photos and other silliness I’ve broadcast there, you’ve perhaps gotten to know me a bit, much as have those who’ve read what I’ve been posting on this blog over the years. And if that’s the case, thanks for following and responding and communicating with me along the way.

See you on Twitter, then. And definitely not on Facebook. Speaking of, the occasion of tweet #10,000 is reminding me of tweet #5,000 (pictured at left).

More for Hellmuth

As you’ve no doubt heard, Phil Hellmuth has won another WSOP tournament, outlasting a field of 103 to win the $10K Razz Championship (Event No. 17).

That’s 14 total (including one WSOP Europe win), and two in razz after he won the $2,500 razz event three years ago. He finished runner-up in the $1,500 razz to Ted Forrest last year, too.

Besides having the most WSOP bracelets (by four, ahead of Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan each with 10), Hellmuth has 109 cashes at the WSOP and enjoys a healthy lead on that list, too, ahead of Erik Seidel’s 90. (Seidel finished 11th in the $10K Razz.) He’s also made 52 final tables, with Men Nguyen the nearest challenger with 39.

That means of the times Hellmuth has cashed at the WSOP, he’s gone on to make the final table 47.8% of those occasions. When he makes the final table, he has won the tournament 26.9% of the time. And he’s finished second 10 times (19.2%), meaning he has gotten to heads-up 46.2% of the time he’s made the final table.

He’s also now -- with last night’s win his first cash of the summer -- 29th in the WSOP POY race, which may or may not make sense, depending on how you view such things.

Watched some of the stream of the razz final table last night and very much enjoyed hearing the strat talk of Calvin Anderson and Nick Schulman. Hellmuth had the lead and was continuing to build his stack when I watched, so it wasn’t too surprising to wake up and hear he’d won.

For something more thoughtful than just marveling at Hellmuth’s results, Brad Willis penned a good response to last night’s events at the WSOP today in which he covers both Hellmuth winning and John Gale taking down Event No. 18, the $1,000 Turbo NLHE event.

Reaching back to 2006 (when both Gale and Hellmuth also won bracelets), Brad explains “Why we should thank Phil Hellmuth and John Gale.” Check it out.

The PokerStars Blog Turns 10

This week I’ve been enjoying all of the posts on the PokerStars blog commemorating the blog’s 10th birthday which has at last arrived today.

PokerStars Head of Blogging Brad Willis was there at the very start writing that first introductory post back on April 24, 2005. He has this morning posted an article thanking many of those who’ve contributed to the blog over the past decade while also linking to other posts from this week sharing a lot of fun stories and anecdotes.

I’ve been lucky enough to have contributed a few posts to the many thousands that have appeared on the PokerStars blog over the years, having first been recruited to help out with some reports on the WCOOP back in September 2008.

After that came more reporting on various online events and tournaments, as well as the chance to travel and write about several live events, too, starting with the Latin American Poker Tour, then the North American Poker Tour, then eventually the Asia Pacific Poker Tour and European Poker Tour. (That pic above of bloggers in action is from LAPT Peru in 2011.)

Speaking of the latter, I’ll be rejoining the EPT crew next week as I’m heading to Monaco to help with the coverage of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final. Vera and I once had the chance to go to Nice long ago, but I’ve never been over to Monaco and so am greatly looking forward to that trip.

Am grateful, obviously, to have had those opportunities. I’m also appreciative of Brad and everyone else who has helped make the PokerStars blog into not just an enjoyable and informative source of information about PokerStars-related activities specifically and the poker world in general, but also a place that inspires and challenges those of us who love poker to think more deeply about the game and its place in the larger scheme of things.

Once some time ago I recall Brad sharing a mnemonic developed early on as a kind of shorthand guide for those reporting on the PS blog -- “ACE” -- indicating a desire to be accurate, comprehensive, and entertaining. Stephen Bartley slipped that in again yesterday in a post titled “What’s next for the PokerStars Blog?” in which he referred to those three goals as comprising an “unofficial maxim” for the blog.

All three of those goals have been consistently met over the years, in my view. And as someone who has been involved in the reporting on the PS blog, I know there have been other, more specific goals, too, as well as a lot of behind-the-scenes brainstorming to introduce new possibilities and ideas. Again, it’s all been great fun to be a part of, and satisfying to have contributed occasionally in a small way to the PS blog’s decade-long achievement.

Check out Brad’s post for more. Meanwhile, I’m reminded -- another blog birthday is coming soon.

Gonzo Gareth

Writing hastily today from the Philly airport, taking advantage of a pause between flights to France where I will be helping cover EPT Deauville next week. I had to take the opportunity to pop online to read one particular tournament recap from last night, one I hadn’t had a chance to call up yesterday.

The report was for Event No. 3 of the just-begun Tournament Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) on PokerStars, a $215 buy-in turbo “knockout” event which attracted just under 5,000 entrants. I’d railed the end of the sucker once I’d become aware that a fellow blogger, Gareth Chantler, had managed to find a seat at the final table.

I follow Gareth on Twitter and so had seen his occasional updates regarding the event in which references to his “running hotter than the sun” began to pick up the deeper he got in the event. Being someone who has watched countless tourneys online, it was fun to observe one with a genuine rooting interest for a change.

Just yesterday I was mentioning what is essentially my most remarkable achievement as a “writer-player” in poker, namely luckboxing my way to winning a media event in Ukraine several years ago. Another third-place finish in a WSOP Media Event remains memorable to me as well, thanks largely to my having claimed a trophy for the effort which I just repositioned on my bookshelf at home following a recent move.

But really, as someone unlikely to enter even modest-sized buy-in events any time soon, such trifling finishes will likely together represent the pinnacle of my own tourney triumphs. Thus do I get an especially big kick out of seeing my poker blogging brethren breaking through for big scores, which is why I followed the end of TCOOP Event No. 3 intently last night as Gareth pursued the footsteps of James McManus, Change100, and Chad Holloway to take a turn at becoming the subject of a tournament story rather than the author.

Gareth ended up making it to three-handed and then agreed to a chop that guaranteed him more than $97K -- even more than Chad earned for his bracelet win last summer! He’d make it to heads-up before being bested for a second-place finish. Exciting stuff.

Then I saw Gareth send the above tweet. Sure, he was going to be featured in the tourney recap... but he was also going to be the one writing it!

This morning Brad Willis who heads up the PokerStars blog tweeted “Gave ‪@GarethChantler assignment to cover poker tourney last night. So, he PLAYED it, finished 2nd for nearly $100,000 & then wrote the piece.”

Gareth had a ready response for Brad: “In my defense I thought it was a Gonzo assignment.” (For those unfamiliar with the variety of reporting pioneered by Hunter S. Thompson and his ilk, here is the Wikipedia explanation of “Gonzo journalism.”)

Like I say, I was intrigued to read how Gareth would be writing up the story of what is easily the most exciting tournament he’s ever played. And he did not disappoint, including a priceless (and inspired) “brief, exclusive interview” with the runner-up.

Read and enjoy Gareth’s account here: “TCOOP 2014: K_Heaven07 ascendent in Event #3, $215 NLHE Turbo, Knockout.” Impossible to do so without grinning, I promise.

(Talk to you next from France!)

Travel Report: Season XII WPT bestbet Jacksonville Fall Poker Scramble, Day 3 -- Stacks in Jax

Ended a little before midnight last night, which meant getting to bed a little earlier and in fact sleeping a little later, too, as we aren’t starting today’s final day of play at the World Poker Tour bestbet Jacksonville Fall Poker Scramble until 2 p.m.

They’ve reached a final table, now, with Jared Jaffee enjoying a big chip lead among the final six with 3.65 million chips, nearly 2 million clear of second-place Margo Costa who hopes to be the first woman to win an open WPT Main Event. (Van Nguyen won one in an invitational.)

The day went well and involved some extracurricular distraction as that wild Carolina Panthers-New England Patriots MNF game played out on the television screens up above. Have to say after the Panthers’ go-ahead TD drive then the crazy finale with the picked-up penalty flag on the Pats’ final play, I was emotionally exhausted. Don’t even know how to feel after seeing my team win a couple of nail-biters like this after losing so many in similar fashion over the last several years.

I’ve been mentioning here how inviting the bestbet Jacksonville poker room is, which seems especially well run and has been a nice stop all around for those of us reporting. The players in this WPT event have been having fun, too, with a lot of table talk and socializing and a generally positive atmosphere.

Was thinking a little about this whole idea of trying to make sure poker is enjoyable for everyone involved after posting the second part of Josh Cahlik’s interview with 2013 WSOP bracelet winner Calen McNeil over on Learn.PokerNews yesterday.

The focus of their discussion was “checking your ego at the door” when playing, and near the end McNeil tells a great story about playing in a WSOP Circuit prelim and finishing runner-up to an older, amateur player.

McNeil talks about having wanted the victory but also having been truly excited for the fellow who did manage to win, and the whole discussion really highlights a nice thought about poker really can be a social game. The point reminded me a bit of Brad Willis’s opinion piece “Before the Bubble” for the PokerStars blog from the summer in which he was talking about the need for established players to be more inviting and less critical of newcomers.

Check out the McNeil interview and read that last section in particular and see if you agree.

Looks like they are starting to unbag and stack the chips so I’ll sign off now. Again, check the WPT site for live updates of today’s finale and also watch the live stream which will be coming with a half-hour delay.

Leaving for Lima

Still feels like the WSOP has only just concluded, but today I’m heading back out for another long distance trip to go watch people play cards. This time out I’m making a return visit to Lima, Peru for the Latin American Poker Tour Main Event that starts tomorrow.

This makes a third trip to Lima for your humble scribbler. The first was back in June 2010 during Season 3 of the LAPT when Jose “Nacho” Barbero won his second straight title on the tour, for which Brad “Otis” Willis was my blogging partner on the PokerStars blog. Then the following spring I went back for the Season 4 stop, that time with Dr. Pauly.

That second trip coincided with Black Friday, which meant when we left we Americans were all still regular online poker players, but by the time we returned everything had changed. Still seems like such a short time ago, and yet so much has changed since then with regard both to online poker in particular and live tournament poker, too.

Like other tours around the world, the LAPT has been thriving and by now has built up its own tradition with this Lima stop coming midway through Season 6. I’ll be performing solo on the Stars blog this time around, although I look forward to working with my buddies and Reinaldo and Sergio who handle the Spanish and Portuguese blogs for PokerStars, respectively, as well as many others who run the LAPT and whom I’ve gotten to know while reporting from various stops over the years.

Gotta full day of travel ahead and need to ensure I’ve remembered to pack my passport, so I’ll sign off here. I expect to be back, though, to file a few travel reports this week, and to point you to the PokerStars blog for more. See you all on the other side.

2013 WSOP, Postlude: Unfinished Business

I am home again after a thankfully uneventful voyage back across the continent yesterday. Got to sleep around 11 last night and didn’t wake until just a couple of hours ago.

I admit the first few minutes of consciousness this morning were filled with confused thoughts regarding my whereabouts and duties for the day. I wasn’t completely sure at first that I wasn’t still in my room in Vegas, and that I didn’t have another day’s worth of reporting ahead of me.

“Am I really done?” I asked myself. Couldn’t help it.

In 2008 I was first recruited to go out to Las Vegas to help cover the WSOP for PokerNews. I’d signed on in the spring, then a couple of weeks later the announcement came regarding the whole “November Nine” idea. I remember then being disappointed I wouldn’t be there to see the Main Event final table finish and a winner emerge, and as I wrote here at the time, I thought delaying the final table four months was mostly a lousy idea, even if I understood some of the potential benefits of doing so.

Like most, I’ve more or less come around to accepting the delayed final table now. Do anything six years running and it’s hard not for folks to get used to it. As I was saying last week about the Rio having become the WSOP’s new home, what was once novel became custom, and now what was custom has edged over into a kind of tradition.

Thus for those of us who are in Las Vegas every July for the Main Event’s play down to nine, we’ve come to accept the moment when the 10th-place finisher gets eliminated as a kind of climax of the summer. For reporters, that’s the moment when the “end” of the story can finally be chronicled, even if the last tournament of the Series hasn’t really concluded. There’s always some more to do after that last hand plays out, but soon the WSOP fades from view as other business comes to occupy us.

I’ve actually never gone back out for the final table, having always followed it from home. I had a desire to do so those first couple of years, but that’s waned over time. It would still be fun to witness the spectacle in person once, I think, but having seen and experienced so much else at the WSOP over the years, I don’t feel so much like I’m missing out on something I absolutely need to see.

That said, each year when I have come home from the WSOP and finally woken up in my own bed again every mid-July, I do so with a sense of incompleteness. Part of that feeling stems from the Main Event being artificially paused as it is, but there are other factors, too, that increase the sense of work left undone.

I’ve written here before about tournament reporting and how in the end no matter how comprehensive one is -- or a team of reporters are -- there’s always so much left unsaid. Even doing the hand-for-hand reporting as we did that last day leaves out a lot. All of the bets and raises and folds and cards are there, but as anyone who’s ever played a hand of poker knows, there’s a lot more happening every single hand than can be seen and passed along.

I was chatting with Mickey after all was over early Monday morning (around 3:30 a.m.), and he was still thinking about the night and wanting to go back over everything to make sure all was finished. So was I.

Mickey likes to be as accurate and exact as possible, his famously precise chip counts being just one example of this trait. During the short break before the start of the 10-handed final table night before last, he took on the task of counting Carlos Mortensen’s creatively stacked chips and I wasn’t the only one taking a picture of him doing so. His work ethic has inspired many of us over the years, but I think a lot of us also share his same wish to be as complete as possible with what we do.

There happens to be a construction company based in Las Vegas the name of which coincides with mine. One sees the name around here and there, and in fact on a few occasions when introduced to Vegas-based folks I’ve had them react by mentioning the company. It’s not the only time I’ve experienced such coincidences with my name.

For the last several years, those going to the WSOP have been seeing a building going up near the Rio on Twain Avenue. Construction on Wyndham Vacation Resorts Desert Blue (a 19-story, 281-unit timeshare) began about five years ago and was originally scheduled to be completed by 2010. But they’d only really gotten started on the project when construction was shutdown. Some recession-related reason, I think.

So the building has been standing there within view of the parking lot for years now, and the fact that my name has been emblazoned on a large banner attached to the side of the edifice has inspired a long-running gag. “When are you going to finish your building?” I’m asked, and I usually respond that I’ve been so busy at the Rio I haven’t been able to find the time.

After something like three years of no movement on the project, construction finally resumed a couple of months ago, and so this summer some have commented to me about perhaps my building being completed sometime soon.

The last few times people mentioned the building and my name hanging on it, I’ve responded by saying that by now it had evolved into a kind of symbol to me. For weeks I’d park my car and walk into work, and every time I did I’d glance over to see this large, conspicuous reminder of the many unfinished projects in my life.

In his piece about Doyle Brunson last week, Brad “Otis” Willis touched on the problem of getting older and this feeling that increases with each year that we aren’t accomplishing what we should. “I look at what I’ve done and know it’s not enough,” writes Brad. “I look at what I’m doing and know it’s not enough.” I’m probably not the only one who reads such lines and thinks “I know what you mean.”

And so another summer in Vegas ends, and once again things still aren’t finished. There was so much more to write about this summer than I was able to do here on the blog. There always is. In fact, I still intend to write one last post here about Carlos Mortensen’s amazing run that also ended with him not quite finishing what he set out to do.

I’ll get to that eventually. But I’ll post this today as a kind of final postlude to the summer’s reporting, realizing again that this sense of incompleteness is just something I have to accept, just as we never really get to finish all that we set out to do.

2013 WSOP, Day 45: The Past, The Future, and Doyle

Was kind of a manic day yesterday at the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event with the cash bubble arriving quickly after less than an hour of play, the drama of hand-for-hand play lasting another half-hour or so before the final two eliminations before the money arrived (Yuri Dzivielevski in 650th and Farzad Bonyadi in 649th), then about 400 more players busting out over the course of the day.

With the field getting smaller, tables were broken down as usual to create more space in the Amazon Room, although the ones that remained were still positioned very close to each other which meant the space in between them became increasingly crowded with all the tournament staff, media, cocktail servers, and massage therapists.

Today that congestion should clear up some, I imagine, as tables will likely be moved farther apart to start the day. Just 239 players are left, meaning there should be 27 tables’ worth of players, including the main feature table (in the “mothership”), the secondary feature table, and the four tertiary feature tables separated out from the others in a row down the middle of the big ballroom.

At one point yesterday I was standing smack in the middle of the maddening crowd among the outer tables when I began to hear people clapping from the main stage, and I knew even before I looked up why they were. I peered into the distance to see the leaned over figure of Doyle Brunson rising from his chair, his wide-brimmed cowboy hat gleaming under the lights, and knew he’d been eliminated. (The photo above is by Joe Giron for PokerNews/WSOP.)

Brunson cashed in the Main Event yesterday for the eighth time, finishing in 409th. His cashes have been spread out enough for him to have made the money in the ME at least once each of the last five decades (1976, 1977, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1997, 2004, 2013).

At the previous break some of us had been discussing a few of the storylines emerging in this year’s Main Event, and we all agreed the further Brunson went, the more exciting it would be. Indeed, I think we all were carrying in the back of our minds the same thrilling thought all day right up to the point of his elimination -- Doyle is still in!

The applause began to spread from the main stage throughout the Amazon Room as Brunson moved slowly from the table and off the stage, and play stopped for a moment as players stood from their seats around me to join in the spontaneous standing ovation.

It was a genuinely moving moment, weirdly providing a brief, calming respite amid an otherwise chaotic day. I realize the moment concerned a particular poker player having achieved something in a poker tournament, but it nonetheless had the effect of recalling to us all how there are more important things in this life than winning or losing money at cards.

While I quickly became occupied with gathering hands being played at the tables around me -- and dodging the occasional horde of ESPN crew members dashing back and forth to catch hands in progress -- I thought a little about what Brunson represents to the poker community, part of which includes that connection back to the early days of the WSOP I was mentioning yesterday.

The connection to the past goes back even further than the WSOP’s origins, as far as Brunson is concerned. His days of “fading the white line” during the 1950s and 1960s to play underground games in the South mark one era of poker’s history preceding our own, while he and the characters belonging to that time harken back even further to the Old West and the many deep-rooted connections between poker and American history.

But as much as Brunson reminds us of the past, I think he makes most of us think about the future as well, with his longevity and perseverance -- and continued success doing what he does (which happens to be playing poker) -- providing tangible hope to many. At the start of the WSOP, Brad Willis wrote a nice piece for the PokerStars blog that touched in part on how Brunson affects us in this fashion.

As my colleagues and I had been discussing during that break yesterday, there are a lot of intriguing stories emerging this year. But I have a suspicion when I leave Las Vegas next Tuesday, Brunson’s Main Event run and the various emotions and thoughts it inspired in others will be the one I return to the most going forward.

Linking Out

Dealing with an overstuffed inbox at the moment, so I thought I’d post something today linking out to a few items worth checking out elsewhere.

Brad Willis penned an interesting op-ed for the PokerStars blog today titled “Before the bubble” occasioned by the anniversary of his playing his first ever WSOP event back in 2005. Brad does a nice job recounting the wonder associated with that experience, then moves into some observations about the current status of both his own poker playing and the tourney scene, generally speaking.

It’s a thoughtful piece that gives poker players much to consider regarding some of the reasons why we got into this game in the first place, and why it’s important now and then to remember those reasons particularly when encountering others just coming into the game as we once did.

Also worth reading is James McManus’s review for The Wall Street Journal of Ben Mezrich’s new book, Straight Flush, which weirdly celebrates the fraudster founders of Absolute Poker.

Last August I wrote about having seen Mezrich pop up on CNBC for a brief segment in which he previewed his plans to write the book, noting then how worrisome it seemed that he apparently either misunderstood or was willfully diminishing the frankly villainous behavior of his story’s principals, people responsible for the first major online poker cheating scandal (and cover-up), who caused the loss of millions by investors, who committed bank and wire fraud, who violated the UIGEA, and who failed (along with UB) to return player funds post-Black Friday.

I’ve yet to read Straight Flush, but from McManus’s review it sounds as though Mezrich has followed through on his plans to champion the “brilliant kids” of AP. As McManus states in his review, it’s “a story of failure, tendered as almost its opposite.” The review is titled “Bluffers and Bandits” -- probably a more appropriate title for the sordid saga -- and ultimately calls out Mezrich for being motivated by an ethically compromised greed not unlike that of his subjects.

Haley Hintze is also working through in greater detail several problem areas presented by Mezrich’s book in a multi-part series over on Flushdraw that is doing a great job explaining both the AP story as it actually happened and Mezrich’s numerous deviations from it.

Finally, BLUFF Magazine this afternoon debuted a new video feature called “Stump the Kevmath” featuring our favorite poker Twitterer doing his best to take on some WSOP-related trivia challenges. Guaranteed to produce a few grins.

Okay, now I have filled your inbox... get to it.

Moneymaker

Today’s a special anniversary in the poker world, one that many have been noting had been coming for the last couple of weeks. I’m referring, of course, to it being the 10th anniversary of Chris Moneymaker’s stunning victory in the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event, an event which many point to as a catalyst of sorts for the subsequent poker “boom” thanks to the way it brought together numerous influential factors -- online poker, newly-revamped televised poker (with hole cards), and the underdog story of an amateur being the pros that further inspired so many to get involved in the game thereafter.

I’ve written many times about Moneymaker and his win here before, including writing posts marking this very date and its significance, and so am not too interested in scribbling yet another, similar one today. Am also kind of running low on mental fuel, to be honest, thanks to having sat up the entire night following and reporting on an online tournament -- one in which Moneymaker himself actually made a fairly deep run, finishing ahead of about 1,500 other players or almost twice as many as he bested in the 2003 ME.

I’ve enjoyed reading some of the other pieces that have been posted this week regarding Moneymaker’s win, most particularly that cool, lengthy oral history of the 2003 WSOP Main Event compiled by Eric Raskin for Grantland, titled “When We Held Kings.”

Nolan Dalla has also been writing a series of entertaining posts over the last several days sharing his memories of that Main Event. As I talked about once with Dalla in an interview for Betfair Poker, it wasn’t that long before Moneymaker’s win that he’d become the WSOP’s Media Director, and he worked for Binion’s then, too, which necessarily put him right in the middle of things when lightning struck 10 years ago today. Check his blog for the series, to which he’s still adding.

Finally, I very much liked Brad Willis’s piece on the PokerStars blog today in which he shares a more personal account of how Moneymaker’s victory affected him both personally and professionally. In “Ten years later: How Chris Moneymaker changed my life,” Brad tells a story that is familiar to a lot of us, and in fact when I look at his next-to-last paragraph, I could almost quote it verbatim as representative of what also happened me (changing out only the original career):

“Ten years ago today, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life working in local TV news. It wouldn't have been a bad career, and I think I could’ve done it with pride. But because of that day in 2003, I’ve seen a big part of the world, been able to report some amazing stories, and met friends I will cherish forever. And, for what it’s worth, I’ve been able to hang out with a poker hero named Moneymaker from time to time.”

All of those statements apply to me, too. Even the bit about getting to know the champ a little, as I’ve had the opportunity to talk to Moneymaker on several occasions, including about what happened on May 23, 2003. Such a friendly guy and truly a remarkable ambassador for the game -- and, if you think about it, a person who has helped define what we mean by that idea of being an “ambassador” for poker.

Of course, when I think back to 2003 I don’t remember anything at all about what happened on this date as far as poker was concerned. Like many, many others, it wasn’t until ESPN began showing its coverage of the Main Event in late August -- and I got hooked like everyone else on the weekly one-hour segments -- that I ever paid any attention to Moneymaker and his story.

If I’m adding up the dates correctly, it would have been Tuesday, October 7, 2003 when the seventh and final installment of ESPN’s coverage was shown for the first time. That was the night it all went “boom,” I’d say, and everyone finally found out about Moneymaker and the WSOP and online poker and everything else.

Still today’s a day worth noting, and enjoying the memories being shared by others regarding a life-changing event for one 27-year-old accountant and for countless others, too.