Travel Report, EPT13 Prague, Day 9 -- The Maze of Life

Today the European Poker Tour Prague Main Event continued apace, playing down from 65 players to just 18. There are a few familiar folks still in the running, including David Peters and Team PokerStars Pro Felipe “Mojave” Ramos.

Of course, they’re all pretty familiar to us by now after four days of this tournament plus seeing most of these folks in other events over the last week-and-a-half. One player coming back to a short stack is one such example, the Czech player Martin Kabrhel who talks at the table as much as any player I’ve covered in a while -- more than William Kassouf, even, who was making noise as part of the €10K High Roller field on Saturday as well.

For your humble scribbler, however, Saturday’s highlights all came away from the Hilton Prague Hotel as Vera Valmore and I were able to make a couple of excursions, one in the morning before play began and another in the evening once things had wrapped up.

The morning one involved joining our friends Howard, Stephen, and Gareth for a subway ride down to Vysehrad, the historical fort built on the Vltava River a thousand years ago (or more) where are located a few of Prague’s oldest buildings.

Indeed, one of the first sights we saw as we made a loop around the hilly “city within a city” (as Howard advertised it) was the Rotunda of St. Martin, a chapel built in the 11th century said to be the oldest Christian house of worship in the country.

There was the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul and other old, Gothic structures at which to marvel. We also walked through the famous Vysehrad cemetery where many of Prague’s most famous are buried, mostly painters, musicians, sculptors, and others responsible for the country’s considerable contributions to the arts.

The Romantic composer Antonin Dvorak is buried there, whose Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), commissioned while he was in the U.S. during the 1890s, is one of the more famous symphonies ever composed (and was played during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969).

So is the poet and journalist Jan Neruda whose collection of short stories from the 1870s were famously translated into English during the 1950s as Tales of the Lesser Quarter. Playwright and novelist Karel Capek who wrote science fiction and is often credited with having coined the word “robot” (in a 1920 play) is there, too, along with about 600 others, I believe.

The various shapes and sizes of the headstones well suit the creativity of those resting underneath, creating a kind of crazy quilt of different designs that are fascinating to look upon and even inspiring. Hard not to think, also, about the many paths life can take a person, all of which end similarly.

The entire fortress is a bit like a maze, actually, with various paths all winding and criss-crossing through it. Appropriately, on the way out not far from the Rotunda of St. Martin is a circular maze on concrete. We watched as Gareth chose to negotiate his way through it, and I snapped a few photos as he did.

Reading around online, I found a reference to this “magical maze” and how those who enter it “while ruminating over an important task or urgent issue... will find the solution upon reaching the exit.” While we weren’t aware of this story at the time, we nonetheless had fun making an emblem out of Gareth’s circuitous journey, applying it more broadly to the human condition.

After the poker, Vera and I grabbed dinner at the hotel and then took another, more direct walk straight over to the Christmas market to see it all lit up at night. We’d each been there separately during the day, but it was fun to return together and be among the crowds enjoying a festive Saturday night filled with lights and music.

We’re angling toward a museum visit or two here during our last couple of days, if we can manage it. Meanwhile wind your way back over to the PokerStars blog for more from the last EPT festival.

Travel Report: EPT13 Prague, Day 3 -- Time, Time Hear the Bells Chime

Writing here at the end of a long workday -- more than 13 hours, all told -- preceded by two-and-half hours or so of walking around Prague, and so forgive me for being a little fatigued here with this brief report.

The Eureka Prague Main Event has now played down to 62 players from a record-breaking starting field of 2,031. Ended crazily with a final, two million-chip pot hand in which a player raise-shoved the flop with top pair of nines and the other talked himself into calling with bottom pair of fives, thus giving the former a huge chip lead to begin today’s Day 3. (You can read about it here, if curious.)

Besides sweating the NFL games during the evening, the most exciting part of the day came early on, though, when Howard, Gareth, and I made the journey to “Old Town” in Prague to see the Christmas market, walk over the Charles Bridge to the other side of the Vltava River, peek at St. Vitus Cathedral, and see other sights.

Lots of people out on a Sunday morning, most of whom were clearly tourists with their phones out at all times. I got mine out once as we happened by the famous Prague astronomical clock -- a.k.a., the “Prague Orloj” -- which I’m reading was built in 1410 and is the oldest astronomical clock in the world still operating.

It was just about 10 o’clock when we approached it, which meant we were able to hear the clock sound the hour and run through its show of the apostles appearing in the little windows up above and other moving parts. (Since my phone’s camera isn’t so hot, I’ve included a better photo of the clock above -- click the pic to embiggen.)

Speaking of time, the hour is late and so I’m going to turn in now and try to rest my bones for Monday. I expect I’ll get back down to Old Town for some dining, souvenir shopping, and more sightseeing over the next week. The Christmas theme was in evidence, of course, with lots of decorated trees and a generally festive mood all around.

Meanwhile, check the PokerStars blog for more on the Eureka and that €50K Super High Roller that began yesterday and drew the usual suspects.

Image: “Prague astronomical clock,” Steve Collis. CC BY 2.0.

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 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).

Go Feed on These Good Reads

Today I wanted to sign off for the week by pointing you to a few interesting articles that recently turned up in the strategy section over at PokerNews. All three are genuinely interesting and present evidence of some impressive brain work by the authors, I think.

The first is from Monday, another one by our friend Robert Woolley, a.k.a. the “Poker Grump.” It is titled “‘Gut Feelings’ in Poker -- What Do They Mean?” and explains how there is actually a meaningful link between that tightness you sometimes get in your stomach at the poker tables and what’s happening in your head as you try to make a decision. It’s kind of a fascinating observation Robert is sharing.

A second article I very much liked came from Gareth Chantler, one called “Obsessed With Your ‘All-in EV’? It’s a Negative Freeroll.” Gareth talks about that stat available in tracking programs showing your “all-in expected value” that allows players to see whether they’ve been “running good” or “running bad” in all-in situations. It’s is an irresistible stat for many, but as Gareth points out it’s hardly helpful and in fact can be potentially harmful.

Finally, today Nikolai Yakovenko shared the first of what will be a three-part discussion of artificial intelligence systems and “bots” in poker titled “Artificial Intelligence and Hold’em, Part 1: Counter-Factual Regret Minimization.” He brings us up-to-date on how far researchers have gotten with their efforts to “solve” limit hold’em and start working on the much more difficult case of NLHE. It’s lengthy, but very readable and gives a great overview of where things stand at present. (Looking forward to the rest next week.)

If your stomach for interesting poker content is rumbling and you’re hungry for some food for thought, go feast on those links.

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!)