Travel Report: EPT12 Grand Final, Day 5 -- Cracked

“That should be some sort of art installation.”

So suggested Remko Rinkema, speaking of the cracked window there to the left. One of a few looking out the media room onto the Mediterranean Sea, it has been cracked in this way for as long as anyone can remember, and there are a lot of lengthy memories among those who have been covering EPTs over the last dozen years.

Was a little overcast today, making for a less stunning view through those cracks. More often the sky is a light shade of blue and the water a deeper one, with cruise ships typically passing to and fro to create an animated postcard constantly in motion behind us as we work.

The window takes on a symbolic significance with each passing day, too, as everyone tries to hold it together while the festival unrelentingly marches onward. In truth, aside from a few sore throats and a cough here and there, everyone seems to be managing just fine as we approach the halfway point of this year’s European Poker Tour Grand Final.

Five days are done, and six more are left. Today’s fifth day was a long one for your humble scribbler who again was helping cover the France Poker Series Monaco Main Event. Meanwhile the EPT Main got started, the €100K Super High Roller finished up (won by Ole Schemion with Mustapha Kanit part of the heads-up chop, natch), and a myriad of other side stuff was going on as well to make for another crowded time at the Sporting Club.

Our tournament started with 1,261 runners, 60 of whom returned for Day 3. From that bunch just six are left to play tomorrow, with France’s Stephane Dossetto the leader just ahead of the often entertaining British player Niall Farrell. They’ll be streaming “cards up” coverage of the final table on Sunday, so if you tune in over at EPT Live starting at 2 p.m. Monaco time (that’s 8 a.m. ET), you can watch this one play out to a conclusion.

None of the players seemed to crack up today, at least not in observable ways. A decision made near the end of the night to keep on playing down to six players (rather than stop at eight) was met with approval. It’ll make for a shorter day on Sunday, for certain, which I think also will make things a little easier for these final half-dozen if they wish to jump in the second Day 1 flight of the Main.

Check out yesterday’s coverage of all the big events over on the PokerStars blog, and tune in today for some FPS final table fun as well, as I’m sure James Hartigan, Joe Stapleton, and Matt Broughton of EPT Live will have viewers cracking up.

Browsing the Global Poker Index

During the World Series of Poker this summer one of my PokerNews assignments was to compile the weekly column reporting on the updated Global Poker Index rankings. I picked that duty back up back in September and have been delivering that news each week for the last several months.

Has been kind of interesting to pay a little closer attention both to the 2014 Player of the Year race and the overall GPI rankings.

The current standings show Daniel Colman leading in the 2014 POY race, a spot he’s held for six weeks running. Ole Schemion -- who won the 2013 GPI POY -- picked up a couple of big finishes at the Master Classics of Poker in Amsterdam recently to surge up to second behind Colman. With EPT Prague and the WPT Five Diamond Poker Classic still left to go, there ought to be more movement in that race before the calendar reaches December 31.

Meanwhile in the overall rankings Dan Smith has led the way for 16 straight weeks. He just lost some points, though, after his victory in last year’s WPT Five Diamond Main Event (which I helped cover) became more than 12 months old and thus now counts less for him points-wise. Schemion is number two in those rankings as well, now just a small cash or so away from surpassing Smith.

The GPI has been around since the start of 2011, and some may not even remember it was created along with the ill-fated Epic Poker League as a means to decide which players would qualify for EPL events. From the ashes of that dumpster fire arose the GPI, surviving as not only an interesting discussion-starter but also as an increasingly relevant part of the poker tournament circuit.

I was thinking today how the GPI should perhaps go back into the past and apply its formula -- or a modified version of it -- to pre-2011 tournament poker. Records are fairly complete for a lot of the tours going back at least into the early 2000s, making it possible perhaps to perform a kind of retroactive ranking of players and naming of POYs.

Obviously there are pros and cons to the ranking system as far as its worth as an indicator of players’ ability. I also understand well the cynicism of those who are not on board for the whole campaign to “sportify" poker (as the GPI rankings could be said to attempt to do). But the lists are still quite diverting and if anything help bring some publicity to a lot of players -- and the game, generally -- that might not otherwise happen.

Racing to Year’s End

The year is coming to a close, which means we’re starting to see lots of “best of 2013”-type features popping up all over. Was reminded of that fact a couple of times over recent days.

Once was when watching NFL football last night and hearing the news that Peyton Manning had been named “Sportsman of the Year” by Sports Illustrated, a choice that seems to have been met with a chorus of shrugs by most. Manning is certainly having a fine year, although his selection seems to have more to do with a kind of “lifetime achievement” recognition than with his specific accomplishments this particular year.

I will say I like Manning a lot both as a player and as a spokesman for football and sports, generally speaking. Heard him interviewed again today and was reminded how effortlessly he seems to communicate all of the usual “player-speak” clichés while also coming off as astute, entirely self-aware, and even witty. His self-deprecating instinct also reminds us that when it comes to sportsmanship -- which may or may not be a criterion for “sportsman of the year,” I don’t know -- Manning is definitely a model.

Meanwhile, the player of the year races in poker are about to be decided, too. The World Series of Poker POY has already been locked up, of course, by Daniel Negreanu, but the last few tourneys of December will affect things in some of the magazines’ POY standings as well as the one kept by the Global Poker Index.

Saw some tweeting yesterday and again today regarding how the German phenom Ole Schemion -- who only just turned 21, I believe, but already has three years’ worth of big tourney finishes under his belt in numerous European events -- still has a chance of catching Negreanu in the 2013 GPI POY race if he were to finish 17th or better in the EPT Prague Main Event where Day 4 just finished a little while ago.

It looks like 22 players remain from the starting field of 1,007, with Schemion third in chips going into tomorrow and thus primed to pass “Kid Poker.”

Speaking of the shrugs that came following the announcement of Manning as the SI Sportsman of the Year, Allen Bari had a funny response to some of the tweets yesterday about the finale of GPI race and Schemion’s prospects for passing Negreanu: “Wonder if less than 4 people care.”

I suppose I find the GPI rankings and these other POY charts intriguing insofar as they do contribute additional storylines to tournament poker where the traditional narratives are so familiar it is somewhat welcoming to have some subplot to divert us now and then. The significance of such races can certainly be debated, though, as can the various criteria used to create the rankings which fuel them.

Anyhow, whoever wins the poker POYs that person could do a lot worse than to follow Manning’s example when it comes to humility. And to handling possible questions about mustaches, check offs, and/or horse mascots.