Perusing Poker’s Precursors

Recently I’ve been spending time learning more about several games often referred to as “precursors” to poker. I’m talking about various card games -- most European -- that appeared just before poker emerged in the early 19th century and that have a lot of the same elements including using a similar deck, incorporating betting and (in some cases) bluffing, and having other common characteristics.

A couple of prompts caused me to go down this road. One has to do with a larger project I’ve begun -- one dovetailing on my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course -- that’s requiring me to do such research. The other came during a conversation from last month while at European Poker Tour Dublin with Howard Swains and Stephen Bartley regarding an idea they once had for the EPT.

Those who follow the EPT know they’ve been pretty open to adding all sorts of out-of-the-ordinary events to the festival schedules, especially since they began expanding those schedules in recent years. You know, events like those “Deuces Wild” or “Win the Button” tourneys and the like. At EPT Dublin they had both of those, plus a “Chess and NL” event, a “Quadruple Stud” (involving four different stud variants), a 5-Card PLO tourney, and other non-NLHE offerings.

Anyhow, the idea involved each EPT stop also featuring an event in which players would play one of these “precursor” games that had originated in the host country.

For example, at EPT Barcelona they could have a mus event, the 18th-century vying game that first turns up in the Basque country up in the northern part of Spain. At EPT Deauville (when the tour still went there) they could have a poque event, the French game often regarded as a direct antecedent to poker. At EPT Berlin they could play poch, at EPT Sanremo there could be a primiera event, EPT London could feature a brag tournament, and so on.

I thought it was a very cool idea, although the more I think about it the more I start to realize some the challenges that would cause it to be difficult to pull off. In some cases I assume local regulations might make it hard to introduce a game that otherwise wasn’t already played (and allowed). It also might be difficult simply to get players to play such events, or to find the appropriate buy-in level that would attract more than just a small handful of curiosity seekers.

Looking more closely at the rules for some of these games makes me realize another significant obstacle to such an idea. At least a couple of the games are so friggin’ complicated it would probably be too arduous for most to figure out how to play them, let alone for the EPT staff to figure out how to deal them and build tournaments around them.

Just for fun (and since I’ve involved myself in this stuff already), I’m going to use the next several posts to discuss some of these games one at a time. I’ll start tomorrow with the Spanish game of mus, for no other reason than that’s the one that seems the most complicated to me at first glance.

Image: “The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds” (1635), Georges de la Tour, public domain.

Nothing Endures But Change

Strange weather here on the farm today, where the skies were constantly going back and forth from dark gray to bright blue as the sun played hide-and-seek. Temperatures varied wildly as well, with winds up around 25 miles per hour at times. Precipitation came and went a few times, too, though we had none of the hail or more severe stuff that occurred all around us, including tornadoes in the Carolinas and surrounding states.

During the late afternoon I was cleaning stalls and taking care of some other barn-related duties. When inside our modest-sized (four-stall) barn everything sounds a bit more ominous than it actually is. Even a medium-strength drizzle gets amplified to a booming drone on the barn’s roof, while the wind whipping through conjures thoughts of the black-and-white scenes in The Wizard of Oz.

While working I thought in passing about where I was just a few days ago, standing amid tables’ full of poker players who together created a different sort of whirlwind as their chips went scattering around and around. There, too, everything is in constant flux, with any snapshot taken at a given moment becoming relatively less indicative of the scene once another orbit’s worth of hands go by.

At one point I stepped outside the barn to refill some water buckets, and was almost taken aback by the breathtaking sight above.

The sky had been dark and slightly menacing-looking just a few minutes before, as shown in that photo up top. Now it was light again, with a brilliant and vivid rainbow splashing down in the woods that run alongside the edge of our property. A double-rainbow, actually:

(Click either of the pics in this post to embiggen.)

That only lasted a few minutes longer, too, as the sun began to dim and dark clouds swiftly tumbled back to fill the skyscape. Later in the evening I talked with Vera’s mother, describing the scene to her as well as I could. She joked that a leprechaun might have followed me back from Ireland and over in the woods had hidden a pot of gold.

Looks like tomorrow there will be clouds but less of the craziness, if the prognosticators are to be believed.

Perhaps I might wander over to those woods at some point today, just to be sure no one has left anything.

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 9 -- The Sea and the Seanchaí

When on these trips I try to share my little “travel reports” here, which often amount to hastily-written notes about something or other that stood out for me as unique or at least somewhat interesting amid long days of tournament reporting.

As anyone who has played a lot of poker tournaments or reported on more than a few well knows, as fun and intriguing as they can be, they often produce the same kinds of narratives, episodes, anecdotes, and even characters. After a while they become challenging to write about -- to tell stories about, I should say -- in ways that are interesting both to readers and to your humble scribbler.

My last day helping cover the EPT Dublin festival started out with another very fun and different excursion away from the usual, familiar path. Actually in truth it was a trip down a similar path as my friend Gareth ended up taking me back down to Dalkey, the place we visited a week before.

This time we went for a different reason, although in fact I had no idea what it was. “I promise you’ll like it,” said Gareth, and having had the great experience of the previous trip to the Dublin coast with him, I was ready to trust him regarding our return.

We took the same train down, getting off on the same stop, then took a slightly different path walking along the sea before finally getting to a handsome cottage facing the coast. Gareth knocked and soon we were welcomed into the place by a friend of his, Brighid, introduced to me as Biddy, a Dubliner with some renown as a storyteller, journalist, and folk artist.

The cottage was filled with the distinctive smell of an Irish turf fire about which I received a quick explanation, added to a little with some online searching afterwards. Rather than firewood the fire was made from Irish peat which burns very slowly and essentially is allowed to smolder for days or weeks at a time (or longer). A little incense-y, perhaps, and very nice for adding a layer of cozy, inviting ambience to what was an especially enjoyable visit.

We had Irish tea with milk along with some of her homemade oat cakes while swapping stories of ourselves. Biddy told of a trip she’d once taken to South Carolina where she’d become acquianted with both the good and the bad of the South, filling the story with well remembered details and laugh-out-loud asides along the way. As Gareth would explain to me later, Biddy is rightly regarded as a gifted seanchaí (or seanachaí, or Englished as “shanachie”) -- pronounced “sen-uh-kee” (I think). However you spell it, we’re talking about someone who tells stories, and tells them well.

We’d eventually take our conversation to a place nearby, switching to coffee while also switching from topic to topic while finding lots of common ground in our shared interests in cultures and subcultures and the people and stories they produce.

Before leaving the cottage, however, I hit upon an idea to get Vera a gift of a print of one of Biddy’s remarkable paintings. The cottage was full of them, and there had been something instantly pleasurable and comforting to have walked in from the beautiful view of the Dublin sea upon which the cottage looked to find a room of pictures of that very sea. Maybe a bit like all these little blog posts I keep producing and putting up here, day after day -- things I’ve seen out these two windows and felt somehow compelled to show others -- although as I said at the start some are so hurriedly pulled together they’re necessarily only abbreviated synopses of the more detailed stories to which they refer. (As I’m afraid this post is, too.)

I picked one showing a marriage proposal (with another wonderful story behind it), something I know Vera will like (see at left, and click to embiggen -- as you can do as well with the photo above that also shows Dalkey Island and its Martello tower). The coincidence of it being a belated Valentine’s Day gift adds even further to its just-right-ness.

Gareth’s promise was a good one, and it was more than lovely to meet Biddy and get to know her and Dublin a little better. We’ve got each other’s email, too, and I’ll be reporting back to her soon to share Vera’s reaction to the gift. (It could be I have a new Irish pen pal.)

The High Roller ended early and the Main Event later on -- you can read the stories of both, told in full, on the PokerStars blog. For now I’ll cut this one short, though as I get ready for my trip back home, carrying the print and lots else from a most memorable time on the Emerald Isle.

Photos: Dalkey island (top); “Proposal at Coliemore harbour with jealous dog” by Brighid McLaughlin (bottom).

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 8 -- You’ll Know Them By Their Limping

Bookmarks are pretty ephemeral things. For most of us, anyway. I tend not to use actual rectangular-shaped thin cardboard products specifically designed as bookmarks, but rather whatever odd index card or other scrap is lying around for the job.

I have a memory, though, of having had and used repeatedly a laminated bookmark at some point during my college days, one that had an old, familiar Irish blessing written on it in some sort of calligraphy. Or was it a curse? You’ll no doubt recognize it:

“May those who love us, love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping.”

That one suddenly came back to me today amid another long one of racing around the tournament floor, and realizing it was an eighth straight day of doing so and I’m more or less starting to limp to finish. I speak figuratively, of course, referring to a kind of slowness of thought and creativity that tends to creep up toward the end of one these jaunts, especially the longer ones.

That’s not to say I don’t feel like I can think or be creative, it just takes a little longer. Just as walking with a limp doesn’t keep you from your destination, it just makes it a little more arduous getting there.

Gonna go ahead and put a bookmark right here for now in this ongoing story of my Ireland adventure. Got one more fun excursion planned for tomorrow, another venture with my friend Gareth who carried me to Dalkey earlier in the trip. We did a ton of hiking that day, and I imagine we might do a little more tomorrow. We’ll see.

We’ll also see how well I manage to limp to the finish of the High Roller tomorrow. Check the PokerStars blog for updates and reports on the conclusions of both the €10K High Roller and the Main at EPT Dublin.

You can watch the live stream of the Main final table on EPT Live, too. Look in the background as you do and you might see some of the reporters, whom of course you’ll know by their limping.

Image: Old Gaelic blessing.

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 7 -- Pub Talk

Was focused primarily on Day 1 of the European Poker Tour Dublin €10K High Roller for the afternoon and early evening today, an event drawing all the usual suspects and since it featured a single re-entry there was a decent amount of action through the first several levels. Shaping up to be a big event, perhaps to produce another of the star-filled final tables these HRs often do.

Managed to get out before it got too late, though, and so made it over to a place not far from the venue, Searsons of Baggot Street, for what turned out to be a long and relaxing dinner full of fun conversation, not to mention a good dose of Irish pub ambience.

Had the lamb shank which was tender and delicious and came with braised carrots, asparagus, and a small Shepherd’s pie on the side. Then as my mates were all ordering more Guinness and I was having water, I went for the cheesecake afterwards and went back to the home-away-from-home mightily satisfied.

While there I enjoyed hearing more from Howard and Stephen about the early years of the EPT, kind of a sequel to our conversation from a couple of nights before. I’d heard some of the stories earlier, but our new colleague Jack had not and I didn’t mind hearing them again.

From there we got onto a number of other topics, including a lot about sports as Jack is a big NBA fan and Stephen a lifelong baseball obsessive. I always kind of delight in talking American sports with non-Americans, and it was again fun going over favorite teams and games and stories with a couple of Englishmen.

Another theme of the evening was the important place games have in people’s lives, with poker naturally coming up as an example. We swapped stories about ourselves and others illustrating the point in different ways.

Going back in tomorrow and likely sticking with the €10K High Roller for what will prove a more interesting day as the re-entries end, the money bubble will burst, and the serious contenders for the title will emerge.

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 6 -- Picture This

Spent the greater part of the day at the RDS again in Dublin, helping to cover Day 3 of the European Poker Tour Dublin Main Event where they managed to play down to 45 players by the end of the night.

Nothing especially out of the ordinary to report from today. I suppose one of the funnier moments for me came some time after the bubble burst.

Having covered poker tournaments for many years now, it’s been a long time since I’ve been at all inspired to take a photo from inside the tournament rooms. When I get home from these trips, I usually have a few dozen photos taken as a tourist of the city I’m visiting, and perhaps just one or two snuck in there that provide evidence that I was actually at a poker tournament.

However the one time it occasionally occurs to me to snap a pic at a tournament is on the bubble, usually during an all-in-a-call situation. The scene is just interesting enough -- probably more because it simply looks differently with players standing and media gathered around -- that I might pull out my phone and snap one.

That’s what happened today (as shown above). Of course that’s a moment when there are usually a lot of other folks taking pictures, too, namely those who are being paid to do so.

One of them today was my friend Danny Maxwell here shooting for PokerNews. (You can see Danny in the photo above, taking pictures along with Jules Pochy and Neil Stoddart.) I’ve had a few conversations with Danny this week about Ireland (his home country). A little later he tweeted a picture, noting how he could spot me in it. Can you?

(You can click on both of the photos above to embiggen.)

Will be back at it tomorrow, this time moving over to help with the first day of the €10K High Roller. Check out the PokerStars blog for coverage of that and the Main Event. You might see me around the edges of some of the photos, although I doubt I’ll be taking any pics myself.

Photo (bottom): courtesy Danny Maxwell/PokerNews.

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 5 -- Gutshots

We had a somewhat shorter day yesterday with the EPT12 Dublin Main Event as Day 2 only lasted six 75-minute levels, meaning we were done before 9 p.m. or so. The rest of the evening was also short for me before getting back to the hotel around 11:30, although the time spent in between was very enjoyable.

First came a delicious dinner at the Italian restaurant called Belluccis which is just across the road from the Royal Dublin Society. Went over with my colleagues Howard Swains and Stephen Bartley and had a terrific caprese salad followed by a ribeye steak while listening to the two of them share stories about the Gutshot Poker Club.

Open from 2004 through 2007, the Gutshot was essentially an illegal poker room in London that purposely challenged the Gaming Act, eventually losing the case brought against it and closing thereafter. Howard and Stephen spoke of a brief revival of another club with a different name, though that, too, only had a short run before getting shut down.

Was fascinating to hear about the various characters associated with the Gutshot and to compare how the club, Late Night Poker (which originally ran in the U.K. a few years before), and other details of the explosion of poker’s popularity in London paralleled the “boom” in poker that happened in the U.S. during those same years. As both Howard and Stephen played at the club and in fact helped chronicle it by writing about it at the the time, I told them they needed to compile an oral history of it (or some kind of narrative about it). They’d surely be the best to do something like that, if they wanted to.

As entertaining as the conversation was, I couldn’t stick around long post-meal, though, as the media tournament was scheduled at 10. I ran back across Merrion Road and soon was seated along with around 40 others for the tournament, among them Lex Veldhuis of Team PokerStars Pro Online and Friend of Team PokerStars Felipe “Mojave” Ramos.

We played in the cash room which has actually been set up inside the Royal Dublin Society library. Was kind of a comfortable setting for your humble scribbler, the walls around us all lined with shelves full of books from floor to ceiling. (That pic above taken by Mickey May is from the tournament, although you can’t see the books over to the side.)

I know Felipe pretty well from covering LAPT events -- in fact, most recently in the Bahamas I talked to him at length about poker’s growth in his native Brazil. He and I ended up playing a somewhat memorable hand in which he raised under the gun, got a caller in middle position, I called from the button with K-J, and someone from the blinds came, too.

The flop came 9-10-J, giving me top pair and a gutshot straight draw. Felipe jokingly asked the dealer if king-queen made a straight before continuing with a small bet that only I called. I called another slightly bigger bet after a blank came on the turn, then the river brought another jack and a check from Felipe.

I’d made trip jacks and thought I was probably best. I’m sure I would’ve called a bet again, and perhaps even for all of my relatively short stack (given that we were playing lightning-quick 10-minute levels). But after he checked I thought about it for a few seconds and decided just to check back. He turned over K-Q, and when I showed my cards the table was surprised I’d escaped without losing more. But I couldn’t see him calling any bet from me on the end there with worse.

Anyhow, felt a little like I was freerolling after that, but soon lost my short stack in a hand that saw me pushing with A-10 and getting called by K-10. If I wanted to be dramatic -- or press forward with some sort of leitmotiv here -- I’d call the king that came on the flop a “gutshot,” but that would be misleading. Was a fun hour or so of poker, and I didn’t mind that much having an early night of it for once.

Ending up having to walk back to the hotel through a pretty steady and cold rain, but I wasn’t soaked too badly and am glad to get to sleep at a decent hour.

Back at it on Wednesday for Day 3. There are 127 players left from the 605 who entered the EPT Dublin Main. Check the PokerStars blog for more today.

Photo: courtesy Mickey May/PokerStars blog.

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 4 -- The Girl from Kilkenny

Was another long one at the Royal Dublin Society today helping cover a couple of different events in the EPT12 Dublin festival.

The first half of the day I spent with the 10K Single-Day High Roller, then after that I moved over to help out with Day 1b of the Main Event. Went for a longish walk beforehand and again during the later dinner break, seeing a couple of rugby stadiums nearby and even watching part of a practice. All that added up to 18,000-ish steps by night’s end, so I’m pretty beat.

The most memorable part of the day, however, had to do with an exchange of emails I had early on with a person living here in Dublin. I’m afraid fatigue is going to force me to make a long story short, but hopefully I can convey the gist well enough here.

Way, way back when I was just eight or nine, I had a pen pal in Ireland, a girl of my same age from Kilkenny. Perhaps some of you experienced something similar, too, when you were younger. My elementary school set it up. I remember most everyone else got pen pals in France. I think the idea was for the French kids to practice their English (although we weren’t studying French). But for some reason mine was from Ireland. Actually I might’ve chosen that, perhaps just to be different.

For a few months or maybe a year she and I wrote letters back and forth to each other. Some time after that -- late teens -- we picked back up our correspondence and wrote each other a lot more, probably up until we were 19 or 20.

My memory isn’t very clear, but I think we probably wrote back and forth for at least two or three years during that latter period, and quite frequently. Not only did we write each other a lot, but we shared a lot about ourselves, too. Somewhere we trailed off writing, though, and while I’ve thought about her off and on I’d never really spent any time looking for her online or anything.

Now I’m in Ireland, my first ever visit. And I suppose it was inevitable I’d think about my pen pal again and wonder where she might be. So I searched a little and found someone with her name who just happened to be right here at Trinity College, a place I visited my first day here.

From details about her on the college’s site she seemed about the right age, and interestingly we seemed to have a lot in common (academics, teaching, writing). Could it be...? I couldn’t resist sending a note just to see if she perhaps might be my friend (whom, of course, I have never met in person).

She wrote back right away, sending a very nice note letting me know she wasn’t my pen pal. I may search around a bit more while I’m here, although I’m not too optimistic given that it has been over 25 years and chances are good that my friend has married and has a different name today.

I was kind of caught off guard, though, by how emotional that exchange of emails was for me. Just the act of writing her again (even it it turned out to be someone else) -- of addressing her by name in the greeting -- made me think all sorts of thoughts about being young, getting older, and the people who give our lives meaning as they pass in and out of them.

Only about a half-hour or so passed before the reply came. During that brief period I became filled with a kind of nervous hope, and then afterwards felt a strange sort of sadness. I miss my friend.

I’ve said before how I have always had an affinity for Ireland even before coming here. Studying Irish literature had a lot to do with it, and I do happen to have a great-grandparent or two from Ireland as well. But I’m realizing now it was the girl from Kilkenny who really drew me here, who made me want to see some of what she described to me so many years ago.

Photo: “Ireland,” John Flannery. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 3 -- There Is Only One Mustapha, and There is Only One Kanit

Checking in here at the end of an especially lengthy day at the European Poker Tour Dublin festival where Day 1a of the Main Event played out. Also finishing up was that €25K High Roller, won by the entertaining and talented Mustapha “lasagnaaammm” Kanit.

There was a funny moment at the end of Day 1 of the €25K involving Kanit when players were bagging up their chips. There was a slight delay getting the bags out at his table and he was growing impatient. I think he had a couple of friends there ready to leave, and so was wanting to get out the door as soon as he could.

Finally he got a bag and quickly grabbed a pen and began hastily jotting down his name and chip count on the front. As he did, the dealer said something to him about the need to write clearly. After all, he was going to have to transcribe all of the players’ names and counts onto a sheet, and so needed to be able to decipher who they were. Kanit looked up to respond.

“There is only one Mustapha... and there is only one Kanit!” he said, and the other players erupted in laughter. Kanit was grinning, too, as he inserted his chips, sealed the bag, and skedaddled.

The Italian loves to talk at the table (that’s him on the right above chatting with Igor Kurganov). And if you read through the live updates of an event in which he plays, you often find lots of references to his banter. His English is quite good, and his predilection for adding “bro” at the end of sentences -- especially when joking around (which he often does) -- tends to add a degree of levity at the tables that is sometimes missing among more serious-minded players.

That said, Kanit is seriously skillful as a player, and proved it again tonight. We’ll see if he can add anymore silver spades this week before the festival is over.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

Travel Report, EPT12 Dublin, Day 2 -- Ineluctable Modality of the Visible

Woke up on the tired side this morning -- internal clock is still not quite adjusted from EST to GMT just yet -- and after getting some breakfast got some work done with an idea I’d be taking it easy for a few hours. I wasn’t due to go back to help with coverage of the €25K High Roller until later in the afternoon, and so was thinking mainly of resting in the room.

That’s when my friend Gareth Chantler shot me a note to see if I might be up for some further touring of Dublin to see some literary-related sites. I jumped at the opportunity, and before long we were on the train headed down south to Dalkey, a hilly seaside resort that looks over the Dublin Bay.

Upon arrival we started out with a great lunch at Finnegan’s of Dalkey, an excellent restaurant made well known a couple of years back when Michelle Obama and her daughters met Bono and his wife there for lunch. It was also a favorite place of the novelist Maeve Binchy who was born in Dalkey and is one of its most famous residents.

From there we passed through a few streets as Gareth told me some of the history of the Dalkey Quarry and we looked upon the remains of the Norman Castle (pictured up top). We then took a turn and began working our way up a hill, and soon Gareth pointed out a house that was in fact the schoolroom described at the end of the second chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses (pictured at left).

Was kind of uncanny to see, in part because I’d picked up Ulysses a couple of weeks ago and reread the first two chapters, so the scene involving Stephen Daedelus and the headmaster (the ironic “Nestor” figure of the episode) was still very fresh in my mind.

We continued climbing, surrounded by greenery and high-reaching rocks. Eventually we circled back up through Killiney Hill Park where there was a lot of activity with children playing and a lot of dog walking on a crisp Saturday afternoon. We stopped briefly by the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel, a site Gareth suspects might be the inspiration for the Majestic in J.G. Farrell’s novel Troubles (which after hearing Gareth’s summary I’m now going to have to read).

Soon we were high and clear enough to enjoy some breathtaking views of the sea on one side and the city on the other. It was cold and the wind whipping up top added to the chill, but such was a minor price to pay to enjoy such sights.

That line up top by the way is the first sentence of the third episode in Ulysses (“Proteus”), one that I think for many readers ends up being the one that forces them off the path entirely never to finish the book. It leads into one of the more opaque-seeming chapters in the book, where the stream-of-consciousness style already exhibited in the first two chapters is let loose even more experimentally.

To me the line has always generically referred to the preeminence of sight over our other senses, although I know it is a more complicated allusion to Aristotle and an involved, philosophical explanation of the process by which vision works. In any event, to me it works as a signpost of sorts highlighting the kind of sight-seeing I was able to enjoy today. Or is it site-seeing? Which is correct, and which is the Joycean pun?

We went back down the mountain, stopping at one point to marvel at how high the waves were crashing against the wall barrier along which we walked -- some 30-40 feet. I snapped a few more photos, then suddenly another rush of water leaped over the barrier and doused myself, Gareth, and a couple of others standing nearby. Was kind of hilarious, actually, as though nature itself was dotting the end of our journey with a loud, cold, and wet punctuation mark.

Got back to the hotel in good shape and over to the Royal Dublin Society venue where for the next 10 hours or so I helped with the €25K High Roller coverage. The always entertaining Mustapha Kanit carries the chip lead to Sunday’s finale (you can read a Day 2 recap here).

Very grateful to Gareth for guiding me through another fun excursion through a different part of Dublin. Gonna try to sleep late on Sunday and recharge a bit before going back in to help with the start of the Main Event. As always, head over to the PokerStars blog for updates throughout, and remember you can watch the High Roller final table on EPT Live (starting at 8:30 a.m. EST/1:30 p.m. GMT).

Travel Report: EPT12 Dublin, Day 1 -- Something Wilde

That’s Oscar Wilde looking especially relaxed on a rock there in Merrion Square Park, not far from Wilde’s childhood home, actually. Saw that and much else during the bike-riding excursion yesterday about which I was telling you. A suitable enough pose for that whole “life is too important to be taken seriously” point of view, yea?

Things got relatively serious today as far as the EPT12 Dublin festival goes with the start of the €25K High Roller event, the continuation of the UKIPT Main Event, as well as a number of other side events including a “Chess and NL Mixed Tournament.” That latter one caused a bit of a double-take as I walked past and saw chessboards and pieces, not cards and chips.

And of course the work of reporting began in earnest today, and we all know the importance of being earnest. That said, I think everyone -- players, staff, media, and others -- who together make these EPTs run so smoothly well knows how to have fun, too, amid the seriousness.

The arrangements for reporting are fine, and in fact the food at the venue is above average (at first taste, anyway), which is always nice. As Algernon says in Earnest, “I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”

I greatly enjoyed reuniting with friends and colleagues today while reporting on the event, which as expected drew a lot of big names as it is the highest buy-in tournament on the 67-event schedule.

Gonna cut it short today as it is late and I’m already tuckered. Check the PokerStars blog for updates, features, and more regarding everything happening at the Royal Dublin Society.

Had thought I might sign off with another Wilde allusion, but I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

Travel Report: EPT12 Dublin, Arrival -- Ballad from Kilmainham Gaol

Checking in here at the end of a very, very long day for your humble scribbler. In truth it was a night plus a day plus part of another night, as that’s what has transpired for me since my last post from the Charlotte airport Wednesday afternoon.

From there I flew up to Philadelphia early last evening, then after a longish layover took the redeye across the ocean to Dublin, Ireland where I landed around breakfast time here. Took a taxi into the city, and despite being a little fuzzy-headed from a lack of sleep on the crowded, narrow-bodied 757 that American Airlines chose to fly me over the Atlantic, I greatly enjoyed the conversation with my amiable driver who taught me a great deal about the current tram strike (“53% pay increase they want!”), the upcoming elections (“They serve one year then get lifetime pensions -- a sham!”), and the identities of those piloting other stop-light-ignoring taxis we witnessed (“Not Irish.”).

Got to my hotel -- my home-away-from-home for the next week-and-a-half -- where I thankfully was able to check in early and rest up a little. Soon, though, my colleague Howard Swains arrived and he recruited me to accompany him on a sight-seeing excursion that wound up carrying us all over the city.

We rented bikes for the purpose, and pedaled clear across to the west side of Dublin where we arrived just in time for a fascinating hour-long tour of the famous Kilmainham Gaol. First built in 1796, the prison was the site of public executions while housing men, women, and children throughout the 19th century. It became a flashpoint during the 1916 Easter Rising as the site where leaders of the revolt were executed almost exactly 100 years ago. The prison closed in the 1920s, then in the 1960s became a museum.

Kilmainham has been used as a location for a number of films, including The Italian Job, In the Name of the Father, and Michael Collins. U2 shot an early video there, too, in which they run about the panopticon-style jail and in the famous prison yard where the executions occurred.

It was an eerie place to walk about, with the tour guide doing well to evoke some of the horrors experienced by those who long ago had tread the same paths through the narrow hallways, in and out of the small cells, and around the yard. (That’s Howard below, serving a sentence of a moment or two in one of the cells.)

We saw a lot else and I managed to take a lot of photos, too, some of which I’ll try to share over the next several days. By the evening I managed a quick trip over to the venue to meet up with Gareth Chantler during the dinner break of the UKIPT Main Event which he’s playing, and we had a very enjoyable visit talking about his many travels, James Joyce, and Jonathan Swift. Then after that Howard, Stephen Bartley, and I had a nice dinner at the restaurant located at the Schoolhouse Hotel not too far from where we are, followed by a visit to the adjacent pub.

I’m a little disoriented but I think that added up to about 24 hours, close to 4,000 miles of flying, around 10 miles’ worth of bike riding and walking, and well over 20,000 steps (says Fitbit) since I was sitting in the airport terminal.

Too tired to scribble more now, but I’ll be back again with more tomorrow, likely after having spent a less manic day watching folks play poker at the Royal Dublin Society. More to come.