The Recreational Poker Writer

For a couple of months now I’ve been aware of an anniversary of sorts coming up on the calendar. No, I’m not talking about me and Vera’s anniversary (although that’s coming up, too). Rather a poker-related one.

It was exactly 10 years ago today I wrote my first article for PokerNews.

I’d been writing on this blog for over a year by then. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I believe that PN article had to have been the first poker-related bit of scribbling for which I’d ever been paid. Which means, in turn, it represents the first, tiny indicator of what would become a big life pivot about four years after that -- away from full-time teaching and into full-time freelancing.

The article was a short one, just five paragraphs -- “Poker Bill Fails to Pass Louisiana House.” Pretty standard stuff, and the kind of thing we’d end up reading (and some of us writing) over and over for the entire decade that followed.

But even if I might look back with ambivalence (and even a little cynicism) at such a slight morsel of reporting, I do remember the excitement at seeing something I’d written show up on the site.

I’d placed some articles in academic journals, wrote columns and book reviews for The Charlotte Observer, and even had some poems published before (no shinola). But this was something new and different.

Like a lot of poker “enthusiasts” then (and now), I couldn’t get enough of poker -- playing the game, thinking about it, reading about it, and writing about it.

Getting paid even just a little for a poker article offered the same sort of thrill as winning those first few real money pots when playing online. In neither case did I think a career was in the offing, but both involved realizing a small profit from doing something that was already fun and intellectually stimulating.

I have Haley Hintze and John Caldwell to thank (again) for having recruited me to write that first article way back when. And a ton of other folks thereafter for giving me opportunities and helping guide me to become more than just a “recreational” poker writer.

Even now, so many years later, it doesn’t seem like a “regular” gig, even if that’s what it has been for quite a while. The constant flux of the poker world -- with people always coming and going -- is one obvious reason for that feeling, I’m sure.

But another is the fact that there’s still a lot of “play” involved when doing such “work.” And that’s a very good thing, whatever your job is.

Photo: courtesy Carlos Monti / PokerStars blog.

A Post About Posting

Just firing a short one here today both to wish everyone a Happy New Year and to make a short announcement regarding the blog and my posting schedule here in 2017 (and beyond).

For years I’ve been hinting here at slowing the pace of my posting, though somehow have kept up the same routine of sharing something every single weekday -- and weekends sometimes, too, such as when doing “travel reports” -- without exception.

Sometimes I’ve fallen behind a little and had to backdate things to fill in gaps. Typically what I’ve done (say, when on a trip) is to sketch a quick draft of a post and save it, then go back later to finish. That has been the case for a good while now.

I started Hard-Boiled Poker way back in April 2006, adding to the list of what was then a fast-growing crowd of other “poker blogs.” Full of enthusiasm about both playing the game and writing about it, it didn’t take me long to work up to that five-post-a-week pace by the start of 2008, which I’ve continued for nearly nine years.

I remember sometimes during the first few years when I’d make lists of topics about which to write each week, often having to whittle the list down to just five. Coming up on the 3,000th post here, which if you divide by 10-and-a-half years you can figure out what kind of pace that means.

Of course, once you’ve written about something once or twice or ten times, the urgency to write about it again diminishes. As I imagine does the desire to read about such things, too.

In any case, the plan going forward is to check in regularly -- at the very least once per week -- and as a result try to give a bit more substance to each post, perhaps making them more like features than journal entries.

That said, I won’t self-impose any sort of formal restrictions, other than the only one I’ve ever followed here which is to make every post have at least something to do with poker, even when it isn’t about poker at all.

Meanwhile, I’ll have much else to share in the coming weeks and months -- including a new novel that is already on its way (no shinola!) -- plus some other writing projects that are already well along. More about all of that soon.

Image: “Found Blur Motion,” ilouque. CC BY 2.0.

Travel Report: EPT13 Prague, Day 5 -- Finished

All poker tournaments have structures which in most cases extend out a few levels beyond where the event actually concludes. It varies, of course, but most of the multi-day, multi-table tourneys I’ve ended up reporting on over the years have by now settled into a predictable pattern which finds them ending somewhere in the early-to-mid 30s, level-wise.

Tournament directors have formulas they’ve internalized that give them a good idea what to expect when predicting when an event will end. A few of my tourney reporting colleagues over the years have similarly come up with their own ways of calculating when, say, the bubble will likely burst, when bustouts will slow down thereafter once in the money, and when a tournament will likely conclude.

Regarding the latter, one rule of thumb I’ve heard has to do with counting the number of big blinds in play once a tournament reaches heads-up, then figuring that once the two remaining players’ average stacks dips below 50 BBs (or 100 BB between them), the sucker should be ending not too long after that.

For instance if there are 10 million chips in play, you look for the level where the blinds reach 50,000/100,000 and figure that’s around the point things are going to end. That’s hardly a hard-and-fast rule, of course -- as Tuesday night’s final day of the Eureka Prague Main Event final table proved.

There were eight players to start the day at noon, and with the average stack at around 40 big blinds we knew it wasn’t going to be a super-quick day, but didn’t really think it would last all of the way to midnight as it did. In fact I don’t think anyone did, given that they never even took a dinner break, in part because they’d whittled down to four players by the dinner hour, then got to three not long after that and so it seemed like things might be ending sooner than later.

But three-handed play went on for a long while, protracted further by some attempted deal-making that didn’t work out initially, then finally happened. They got to heads-up a little after 10:30 p.m., with Hubert Matuszweski sitting with about 32 million and Vladas Tamasauskas with just over 18 million to begin. (I was mentioning those long names yesterday -- as it happened, two of the longest lasted the longest.)

The pair made it to the end of Level 39 in which the blinds were 500K/1M, meaning there were just around 50 big blinds total in play. When the tournament clock reached the end of that level, we could help but laugh at how rather than go on to Level 40, it simply read “FINISHED.” Which is exactly how me and my blogging partner Jack were feeling right about then.

“We’re through the looking glass now,” I joked in the blog. “Uncharted territory. Your maps are no good here.”

They soon got a Level 40 programmed in there, and many more small, checked-down pots followed. Somehow they got all the way to Level 41, where the blinds were 800K/1.6M -- i.e., just around 32 big blinds total between them. Soon enough Matuszweski -- a.k.a. “The Hube” (our delirium-inspired nick for him) -- won the thing, and we really were finished.

More exciting for me, though, was the fact that Vera arrived in Prague during that long endgame and will be sharing the next week here with me! Looking forward to enjoying the city some more with her over these next days, when people aren’t carrying poker tournaments deep into the nights.

Am moving over to help with the EPT Prague Main Event, which is already and running. Visit the PokerStars blog to follow that one all of the way to the end early next week.

Travel Report: EPT13 Prague, Day 4 -- Long Day, Long Names

It was another long one today and tonight helping cover the penultimate day of the Eureka Prague Main Event.

There were 62 players left to start today from the 2,031 who began the event (a record for the Eureka here in its very last Main). From that group just eight made through to tomorrow. Interestingly, the guy who led to begin today -- Piotr Romanczukiewicz of Romania -- actually ended the day with fewer chips than he began, making him eighth of eight heading into tomorrow.

There were a few familiar folks among the ones not quite getting to the last day, including Eoghan O’Dea, Tom Hall, Kristen Bicknell, and Team PokerStars Pro Marcin Horecki. The Polish pro finished seventh in this same event three years ago, and this time made it all of the way to 12th.

Alessandro Giordano carries the chip lead to the final table. Like Romanczukiewicz he has a long name, something of which those of us blogging are acutely aware. In fact for a lark I looked at some of the other long names left (Tamasauskas, Bengourane, Matuszewski) and figured out the average length of the final names is 9.375 letters. That’s gotta be on the high side, yea?

When it ended I went to enter my receipts as I try to do after every day of work so as to prevent too much of a pile-up of busywork at the very end. I realized I didn’t have any. We’d had a dinner break, but I had other things to get done and ended up working through it. Gonna have to find something here to eat before hitting the sack. Turns out writing poker hands, which can provide various degrees of intellectual stimulation, actually provides zero actual nourishment.

Visit the PokerStars blog to see how this here Eureka plays out and to follow everything else happening at this last ever EPT.

Photo: courtesy Tomas Stacha / PokerStars blog.

Poker on Pause at the Unibet Open

If there’s one experience all poker tournament reporters have shared, it’s that anxiety associated with not being able to cover everything that’s happening.

No matter how many are assigned to an event, there’s always more going on that can be adequately chronicled. Heck, even if there is just one table left and there are two of you each taking turns watching hands and writing them up, there are often still lots of non-essential-but-still-meaningful details associated with any poker hand that necessarily escape the attention of an observer.

Most get used to this feeling, not letting it bother them too much that while they are at one table watching a hand there’s a lot going on elsewhere that cannot be covered. Even so, there will arise those moments when even seasoned tourney reporters wish everyone would just stop for a moment in order to give them a chance to catch up.

Today the gang at the Unibet Open created what I couldn’t help but experience as a visual representation of that very desire, shooting one of those “mannequin challenge” videos during a break at the Unibet Open Bucharest Main Event.

It’s fantastic, really, involving 300-some people, and like I say does a neat job dramatizing the reporter’s dream to freeze the action in order to get a look at everything that’s happening.

I think my favorite moments are Frank Op de Woerd’s best supporting actor cameo and the one-outer at the end. Take a look and enjoy:

Photo/video: Unibet Open.

On the Move to Malta

Writing a quick one here from the airport where I’m waiting once again to begin another tourney journey. Heading to Malta this time for the European Poker Tour festival which has already begun there on the tiny archipelago just off Italy’s boot.

This’ll be a new destination for your humble scribbler. I’ll admit I don’t know a heck of a lot at present about where I’m heading.

Back during my full-time teaching days I had a colleague swing a year-long sabbatical to Malta, although I never really talked much with him afterwards about his experience. Of course, Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel The Maltese Falcon is one of my fave reads, although that book has about as much to do with Malta as it does falcons.

In fact, toward the latter part of my detective novel Same Difference -- which is pretty deliberately meant as an homage of sorts to Hammett, Chandler, Cain, and other hard-boiled greats -- characters joke around a little about that novel’s story and how the Maltese falcon at the heart of it turns out to be a fake. (There’s a similar reference to the even more elusive postman in Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.)

We’ll see what comes of this new poker plot I’m embarking on, and will try to sort out the important from the trivial. As always, I’ll try my best to keep in touch here as it goes.

More later from the Mediterranean!

Travel Report: EPT13 Barcelona, Day 7 -- Knowing Where to Look

Moved over to help cover the Main Event today at the European Poker Tour Barcelona festival.

It was the very big Day 1b which ended up creating a total turnout of 1,785 players (a record for EPT Barcelona) and a €8,657,250 prize pool (also a record).

I’ve written here many times before about covering Day 1s of multi-day poker tournaments (i.e., three-day or longer), and how the big field events in particular make it both impractical and unfavorable (I think) to cover things the same way as you do later on in the event. That is to say, the individual hand reports and chip counts that are important later on -- say, after the money bubble bursts and (really) once the sucker is down to just a few tables -- simply don’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things during a tournament’s initial stages.

In fact, I was thinking today when walking around the tournament how the reporter is often better off on a Day 1 looking up rather than down -- that is, at the faces rather than the chips and cards. See who’s there, listen to what they’re saying, get a sense for the “characters” (so to speak) that will begin rounding out the cast of the narrative you’re creating about the tournament.

Eventually you begin to move your gaze downward -- namely, to the chip stacks. Of course, you’re always counting chips, even from the start. But it really isn’t until play gets a few levels in and even into the late stages of Day 1 and the start of Day 2 that the stacks matter much at all -- except, of course, to the short stacks and endangered players sitting behind them.

Later you move your focus still further downward to the table -- specifically the cards and the chips that are going in the middle, which at some point take over the narrative as the most meaningful motivator of plot. Sure, “color” will crop up here and there, and adds greatly if noticed and shared, but you can’t avoid talking about hands anymore.

By the very end you’re looking at payout schedules and filling blanks showing where players end up. You could say you begin looking away from the table entirely, toward the cashier’s desk and that last transaction made by those participants who manage to be around for the story’s final scenes and denouement (not always a “climax” to the story, as sometimes -- even often -- that’ll happen earlier than the end).

Enough abstraction. Check out the reports on the PokerStars blog where some of these high-falutin’ ideas can be shown being put into practice.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart/PokerStars blog.

On Not Giving It Away

Some time back -- oh, five or six years ago -- a fellow poker scribbler pointed out to me something about this blog, something I had been aware of but hadn’t necessarily thought about too closely before.

His point was an obvious one, really. By writing a lot about the big poker tournaments and series -- posts which I often tag as “High Society,” even when the buy-ins aren’t so big -- I essentially give free promotion to those events. “They should pay you for it,” he said half-jokingly, noting how at the time I’d been writing every single day about a certain lengthy poker festival for several weeks.

Now even if I hadn’t specifically thought about that particular festival and series of posts to which he was referring, I had previously given some thought to the idea that I was essentially “giving it away” here on the blog. By that point I had also been writing about poker for other sites frequently, too, and getting paid to do so. That necessarily had gotten me thinking about the relationship between time and money and how whatever time I spent writing posts on HBP wasn’t translating into a tangible monetary reward as happened when I wrote for other sites.

But I decided early on there was a different kind of reward that came from writing here “for free” (so to speak). I liked engaging with the poker community this way -- and still do, even if poker blogs have moved over to the periphery as many have gravitated toward other ways of engaging with each other. I never worried too much about “monetizing” the blog, and grew to covet having this personal space to write and share ideas without any restrictions other than the ones I chose to impose upon myself.

To be honest, the fact that the blog did indirectly serve as a kind of online “portfolio” that helped get me some notice and eventually some actual paid writing gigs made it easier to think that way. Sure, I wasn’t being paid directly over here, but the time spent was “worth it” in the mundane, literal sense, while also providing all those non-monetary benefits, too.

Recently in poker a popular site made a decision to stop “giving it away” without getting something in return. No, the site didn’t put up a paywall or anything, but figured out a way to prevent most users from freely accessing what they were producing. (I say “most users” because work-arounds are pretty easy to come by, for those who look into it.)

The idea is to get contact information from site visitors in order to be able to market other products to them before allowing them to proceed. It’s a small hassle, this request to get something first before the site gives anything up. However, what it says about the way the site views its relationship with those who visit it isn’t small at all.

Most won’t mind the hurdle, though some may not wish to try to jump over it, thereby making the content somewhat exclusive rather than freely given. The justification -- as reported by those who looked into the matter a bit further and asked questions about it -- was precisely what I’m describing, namely, a decision to stop “giving it away” and instead trying to realize some sort of payback for the content that is being provided (and for which there is some cost to produce).

There was some immediate criticism here and there, including some good arguments for why in this particular instance the decision to restrict access is especially lamentable given the centrality of the site to the community. I decided to stay out of the debates (mostly), although I have complained in private to several folks as I, too, see the decision as unfortunate for a variety of reasons.

I enjoy poker. I enjoy writing about it and giving others who like the game something that might add further to their enjoyment. I also like the way nearly all of the poker community -- especially those who run tournaments and series -- tend to think similarly about the overall positive that comes from freely-distributed promotion and reporting that excites players and fans alike and (importantly) nurtures the game in a broader sense.

It’s my blog and I’ll write about what I want to, and I’ll never ask anyone to give me something first before “giving it away” here. But remembering what my friend said to me five or six years ago, I’m not so enthused right now to use this space to promote those who don’t believe there’s any benefit to be had from being part of a community unless you get something tangible back for everything you give.

I get it -- business is business. But the poker community isn’t a poker game -- i.e., a “zero sum” situation in which no one can win unless someone else loses. We both can give and receive and still come out ahead.

I mean, I’ll write about other things. Not getting paid anyway... right?

Photo: “Please Pay Here 3-14-09 19” (adapted), Steven Depolo. CC BY 2.0.

Don’t Egg Me On

More than 10 years ago, I picked the name of this blog along with a pseudonym -- “Short-Stacked Shamus” -- and at the time both the blog and the persona resided firmly within a poker-only world.

As such, most who came across either “Hard-Boiled Poker” or that nom de scribble at least had some idea what they meant. “Short-stacked” was a clear enough adjective for poker players, and while not everyone knew what a “shamus” was, it wasn’t difficult to bring up the genre of hard-boiled detective novels and films as a kind of thematic inspiration.

Now both the blog and the “Shamus” name exist outside of poker, too, which means I find myself in spots where I’m explaining the name of the blog (or “SSS”) to people who aren’t familiar with either poker or detective stories. The fact that I (crazily) use “shortstackedshamus” as part of my primary email address doesn’t help matters, either.

It all can be a little humorous, sometimes, especially when the “hard-boiled” adjective is first understood as having something to do with eggs.

It is a weird adjective, if you think about it, meant to convey the “hardness” or tough-natured quality of the characters populating those stories of crime and corruption. The protagonists -- guys like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe or Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and the Continental Op -- are forced to deal with the worst examples of humans behavior while remaining somehow unmoved or impervious.

Thinking of eggs, though, couldn’t be further removed, in terms of what they suggest. Even hard-boiled eggs are pretty easy to smash, and when you get to the jelly-like whites and crumbly yolks they are kind of the opposite of hard.

Eggs don’t have a lot to do with poker, either. Unless, of course, we’re talking about eggsposed cards. Or eggspected value.

Okay, those were both pretty bad. Rotten, even. Really laid an egg there. Boy, do I have egg on my face. But hey, you can’t make an omelet without....

Travel Report: LAPT9 Panama, Day 1b -- Do What You Do

The second Day 1 flight of the Latin American Poker Tour Panama Main Event went smoothly yesterday. Having fun with Will O’Connor, my blogging partner-in-crime at this one.

I was joking with him about my idea that “once I get out of blogging, I’m going to start coaching blogging,” something that Remko Rinkema and were laughing about back in Monaco recently.

I shared with Will my tweet to Remko approximating coach-speak for bloggers:

“Get out there… blog. Blog! Do what you do. Keep countin’! And stay cool even when it heats up!”

(There’s a relevant image illustrating the tweet and explaining that last line, if you click through to see it.)

After enduring a much-too-long wait for lunch at the sports bar early in the afternoon, Will and I managed to run well at the dinner break and get a quick, good meal at Fenecia. He had the risotto (which he reviews highly) while I had sushi (the spider roll), also good.

Forgot to mention yesterday how a friendly player from Argentina, Arthur “Cacho” Korn, came up to say hello and let me know he was a Hard-Boiled Poker reader. Neat to find that out, and fun as always to think about how small a world it really is.

Yesterday’s turnout ended up bringing the total field up to 553 entries, which I think is probably a good number all things considered. The Spring Championship of Online Poker is a focus for many players right now -- in fact some of those playing in this event are focused on SCOOPs as well (as shown above). There’s also the WSOP right on the horizon, for which many players are resting up.

In fact, of all the places the LAPT goes, Panama is the longest trip for the South American players, and so that’s always going to affect how many can come. More Central Americans can get to it, though, and a few more U.S. players, too, than usually make it down to Chile or Uruguay or Brazil.

Cutting it short to get back downstairs to Day 2. Check the PokerStars blog for more evidence of us doing what we do.

Photo: courtesy Carlos MontiPokerStars blog.

A Decade of Hard-Boiled Poker

Ten years of blogging?! What kind of applesauce is that?

It’s true. Ten years ago today, inspired by other poker bloggers, some podcasts, and a love of poker and writing, I decided on a whim to begin this blog. No shinola.

I write today from the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo. I suppose ten years ago I could have imagined coming here for some other reason, perhaps. Vera Valmore and I did spend a whole year in France once before, during which we loved visiting Nice. But I couldn’t have then pictured a scenario where I’d be here writing about poker.

Nor would I have imagined going other places to do the same, as I’ve done a lot over recent years. And all because of this here blog. Amid my other posts on Hard-Boiled Poker, I’ve been submitting dispatches from tournaments all over the globe, including from Las Vegas, Ukraine, Peru, Morocco, Atlantic City, Uruguay, Macau, Pennsylvania, France, Connecticut, Florida, Spain, Niagara Falls, Chile, Canada, Panama, St. Kitts and Nevis, the Bahamas, Monaco, Brazil, Ireland, and even my home state of North Carolina (at Cherokee).

Such “Travel Reports” have been just part of the story, of course, among the 2,750 posts (including this one) that have appeared here. For the first five years (up through Black Friday), a lot of the focus was on my own low-limit poker adventures, mostly online. Other topics -- film, literature, music, television, politics, law, business, history, science, math, philosophy, psychology, and (more recently) life on a farm -- have been the focus of all of this relentless scribbling, too, with all of them somehow having something to do with poker the blog's leitmotiv, poker.

It was around Black Friday most of the other poker blogs all started going away. Their fading began a couple of years before, really, mostly in direct correlation to the rise of Twitter. I got my @hardboiledpoker account in 2009, and it was then most of the seats at the blogging tables began emptying in earnest. Still a few of us grinding along, though, for some reason finding it necessary to communicate in chunks lasting more than a sentence or two at at time.

The blog started as a hobby, then quickly became an unexpected entry into a large, fun, exciting community of others also enthusiastic about poker -- and about writing and reading about poker. Then came other opportunities and eventually a second, unexpected career for me, a life twist I described several years ago in a post called “Detour.”

The title of that post was an homage to the 1945 hard-boiled film starring Tom Neal as a down-on-his-luck hitchhiker. Neal’s character takes an unforeseen turn in that story, as did my own. I certainly didn’t see such a change coming ten years ago, back when I invented this “Short-Stacked Shamus” character and borrowed Neal’s image to use as a kind of avatar for it.

A “shamus” is a detective. And his being “short-stacked” suggests a down-on-his-luck context for his sleuthing, as though his situation mirrors in some way the desperate one Neal’s character (who becomes kind of a detective) endures in the film.

None of that really describes me or the adventure on which this blog has carried me. No, I’ve run especially well here, and it’s all thanks to those of you who have stopped by now and then or perhaps even more consistently. Friendly and generous responses kept me writing in the beginning. Continued good feedback kept me going in the middle. And the knowledge that some are still coming around even ten years on has kept me at it still today.

Thanks to everyone for making all of this traveling around -- both out into the world and the inner traveling that necessarily happens with every post -- so enjoyable for me. No shinola.

Tracking Travels

The year is nearly done, and I’m again recalling other end-of-year posts including many from the first several years of the blog that spent a lot of effort measuring (or at least summarizing) what had happened over the previous twelve months.

Anyone happening by here who happens to scroll down and look along the right-hand column will notice how I’ve been scribbling away on a constant basis since April 2006, meaning I’m more than halfway through a tenth year of all this chronicling of my poker-related thoughts. And thoughts that aren’t necessarily poker-related, yet I’ve found a way to relate them to poker, anyway.

One personal benefit of having carried on at such length with a blog is the way it helps me remember details of things I myself have done, as well as sometimes helping me track down particulars of various stories or events from the poker world over the last near-decade (if, of course, I happened to have written anything about them).

For example, to highlight a personal item, I was trying this week to recall how many poker-related trips I’d taken in 2015. Given enough time, I could probably do so on my own, but a quick check through all my “travel report” posts here helped me find the answer a lot more quickly.

I took six trips altogether -- to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in Nassau, Bahamas, LAPT Chile in Viña del Mar, the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo, LAPT Peru in Lima, EPT Barcelona, and the LAPT Grand Final in São Paulo, Brazil. It’s a good number for me -- enough to be out and about a lot, but not so many that I’m away from the farm more than I’d like to be.

I know in previous years I’ve had more trips. And of course those years when I’d go to Vegas all summer for the World Series of Poker I’ve been away from home more days total, though for the last couple of summers I’ve stayed home.

I’m suddenly mindful this week of this sort of counting exercise -- and of exercise, generally speaking -- thanks to Vera Valmore’s mother giving me a FitBit for Christmas. The stats I’ve been most intrigued by so far have been the ones related to my sleep (how long I’m sleeping, how restless I am, and how many times I’m waking up), what my heart rate is and how it goes up and down during the course of a day, and the number of steps I’m taking and miles I’m covering each day.

There’s more I could be tracking with this sucker, and perhaps I will eventually. Reminds me a little of the endless stats produced by PokerTracker and Hold’em Manager when playing online, measuring and tabulating every last movement you make.

It’s also making me remember how sometimes I’d become conscious of all the measuring going on, knowing whenever I would three-bet (or perform any other action) how that would affect the percentage for the session. So, too, with the FitBit it’s easy to be encouraged to walk a few extra steps to reach a particular number and the like.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to think about my next trip when I’ll be going back to the Bahamas next week for the 2016 PCA. Kind of curious to see how many steps I take and miles I cover in a typical day of tournament reporting. Yet another way to track my travels.

EPT12 Barcelona, Day 1: Barceloner

After heading over to the Casino Barcelona around dinner time yesterday, I ended up sticking around until late -- after two a.m., in fact -- in order to see through to completion the first trophy event of the EPT Barcelona series, the Neymar Jr Charity Home Game.

Steve O’Dwyer happened over just before registration closed for the tournament, was encouraged to play by Team PokerStars SportStar Fatima Moreira de Melo, and ended up taking down the sucker to win a seat into the EPT Main Event that starts this weekend. Halfway through the final table (where O’Dwyer knocked out all but one of the others), he estimated he’d knocked out about 15 players along the way -- not a bad clip for a 59-player event.

After several hours of sleep and a largish breakfast at the hotel, I’m back over at the casino readying for a more standard long day of work. Today things pick up in earnest for the 71-event series, with eight different tourneys going on including the start of the €1K Estrellas Main Event. Last year they had a ridiculous 2,560 entries for that one -- the first big buy-in event of the EPT season -- so we’ll see how many come out for the three starting days this time.

I’m kind of on my own, blogging-wise, here at the start of the series, with the rest of the PokerStars blog team arriving later in the week along with all the PokerNews guys and a bunch of others once the EPT Main and them high rollers roll around. I’m not really alone, though, as plenty of seats in the media room have already been filled. My buddy Carlos Monti, the LAPT photographer, is here already, too, and the two of us enjoyed each other’s company as we worked late into the night.

I guess despite all of the camaraderie during the long workdays on these trips, there’s a lot of time spent on my own, too, when traveling and the hours spent in the hotel room. That I already miss Vera and all of our four-legged friends on the farm doesn’t help too much with that, either. But I do pretty well with the alone time, all things considered.

One day is in the books, and another dozen are left to go. Check over at the PokerStars blog today for more from your soloist scribbler.

Work Space

Kind of randomly made a decision today to move over into the “office” to work rather than do so on the living room couch as has been my habit for a good while now.

Vera and I spent a long time -- years, really -- looking for the right combination of elements before we finally bought the farm. (Even over a year-and-a-half later, it’s still funny to say that.) One challenge was finding a reasonable-sized non-mansion (good for just the two of us) that was situated on enough land to have plenty of pasture space for multiple horses.

The house we ended up with is a good size, with an extra guest bedroom and one other room we designated early on as my home office. That’s where we set up the desktop computer (and accessories), lined the walls with bookcases and filled them up, and provided good lighting so I could spend many hours a day scribbling away in there.

Thing is, I mostly work on my laptop. And thus almost always I would sit in the living room on the couch, at the kitchen table, or perhaps outside on the back porch if it weren’t too hot. Which means the office wasn’t really being used all that much. The space we’d designating for working was just sitting there -- it wasn’t a work space, it was just space.

Meanwhile working was filling all the other spaces.

It only took me a day of actually working in there, though, to realize how liberating it felt to go back out into the living room and, say, read a little, watch a little teevee, or just have a snack and chill -- especially when the evening came and I wasn’t really working anymore. I didn’t feel the pull to check emails or do any of the other work-like things it’s hard not to do when my job (in the form of the laptop) is sitting right in front of you.

I mean, even the laptop will shut down, going to “sleep” when not in use. Why shouldn't I?

Anyone who has ever worked at home well knows the challenge of not allowing your “workday” grow and grow, taking over practically all of your waking hours. It’s great not to have to “punch in,” but it’s not good at all never to feel as though you’re getting to “punch out.” Such is a phenomenon you sometimes hear the full-time online grinders addressing -- that is, the need to draw a clear line between playing and not-playing (with “play” meaning “work” for them).

Gonna stick with this routine for a while and see how it works. Or plays.

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).

Revolution 9

On the left are two photos I recently took.

Up top is one snapped a couple of days ago at the farm supply store located not too far from where I live in western North Carolina. Those are little baby ducks, all huddled together over on one side of the box.

Underneath is another I took this morning as my plane descended through the clouds above Munich, Germany, a stop on my way eventually to Monaco where I’ll be for the next couple of weeks at the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo®Casino EPT Grand Final.

Lots of green, reminding me of all the grass that is growing by the hour back home and which I’ll have to do something about on my return. The houses built close to one another also reminded me of the baby ducks, and how pretty much all of us -- animals, too -- prefer being closer to one another than far apart.

Our horses demonstrate that same characteristic, of course, being herd animals. They’ll whinny and whine whenever we separate them, even momentarily. I also felt like whinnying a little when leaving Vera and them yesterday.

From Munich I flew to Nice, and from there got a ride to Monaco where I’ve now checked in, had a shave and a coffee, and feel more or less ready to explore a bit before going to work tomorrow. Still in that alone phase of the traveling, although soon others will be arriving and we’ll all gather close together at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel, huddling around circles of others grouped together playing cards.

Gonna be doing a lot of blogging here in the near future, so I’m gonna do less of that today and stop for now.

Speaking of doing a lot of blogging, the earth has made nine full revolutions around the sun since the first time I posted something here. For fun I put “Revolution 9” on the iPod during that initial descent this morning, its Karlheinz Stockhausen-influence seeming vaguely appropriate as Munich rose up to meet my plane’s wheels.

Think I’ll listen to “Birthday” and head out for a bit.

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.

HBP Greatest Hits of 2014

Is it really 2015? Was talking yesterday to Vera about how our five-and-a-half-year old nephew, should he live as long as our nonagenarian grandmothers, actually could make it to the 22nd century. What kinda science fiction izzat?

Last week I wrote a little about those “end-of-year” lists ranking top stories, then yesterday I promised something today looking back at the past year of posts here on Hard-Boiled Poker. For many years I’ve written lengthy, three-part posts summarizing and highlighting everything covered here, but today I’m just going to post a list of the 20 most-viewed HBP posts from 2014.

Here they are, in chronological order:

“Borgata Brouhaha” (Jan. 17)

“Niagara Falls! Slowly I Turned, Step by Step, Inch by Inch...” (Feb. 21)

“On the Bubble Boy” (Mar. 13)

“Delving into Dealer’s Choice” (Apr. 7)

“Ivey on the Edge” (Apr. 11)

“2014 World Series of Poker Schedule (Day-by-Day)” (May 26)

“Rounders and Roundball” (June 2)

“Couldn’t Have Played It Any Better, Mike” (June 25)

“Dispensing With the Drama: Watching the ‘One Drop’” (July 29)

“Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Nixon Play a Hand of Draw Poker” (July 31)

“A 2006 WSOP Time Capsule” (Aug. 6)

“Here Comes the Flood: Newsweek on Online Poker” (Aug. 14)

“Colman, Chomsky, and Irrational Attitudes of Submission to Authority” (Aug. 18)

“Rambling, Gambling Willie’s Card Trick” (Aug. 21)

“His Side on the Edge Sorting: Ivey To Appear on 60 Minutes Sports“ (Sept. 30)

“Spinning and Going” (Oct. 1)

“With No Warning, Fifth Third Bank Closed My Account After Nearly 11 Years (And They Won’t Tell Me Why)” (Oct. 8)

“Ivey Loses, Spin & Go Spins, and Johnny Carson’s Poker Game” (Oct. 10)

“Not Watching Poker” (Oct. 28)

“Railbirding RAWA” (Dec. 10)

As I say, those were the 20 posts (out 275 total) that were viewed the most this year, a criteria that technically favors earlier posts than later ones, although I think works well enough to highlight a decent variety of topics.

Older posts continue to get a lot of views, too. In fact, a post I wrote about Bret Harte’s 1869 short story “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” was the most viewed page of any on the site this year. Not what I’d have predicted (were there a lot of junior high students writing papers on Harte’s story this year?).

Anyhow, click above if you missed any of these “greatest hits” and the titles are at all curious to you.

Thanks Again

Have the usual obligations today to feasting, football, and family, and so just wanted to drop a quick note here to express my thanks once again to all who find reasons to stop by.

Speaking of other obligations, it has become increasingly obvious to me that they’ve evolved to a point where I shouldn’t be able to post here at the same frequency (i.e., each weekday, at least) for much longer. I know I have said as much every few months for some time now. But there’s an impending poker-related project on the horizon I might have to devote myself to more earnestly very soon, at which point I know I’ll have to scale things back here once and for all.

As I’ve written about here before, the routine of regularly posting has become so deeply engrained for me it is hard to imagine not doing so. That said, I can easily picture the potential benefits, including perhaps an increase in quality as resulting from the decrease in quantity.

We’ll worry about that and everything else later, though, as today’s “obligations” are in truth all about setting the real obligations aside and relaxing. Hope it’s an enjoyable day and weekend for you and yours, too, and that you’re able today just to sit back and chill some as well. And thanks again for coming around.

What’s Four Plus Four?

Had a terrific weekend here on the farm as we had another family visit, this time hosting Vera’s mom, sister, and our five-year-old nephew for a couple of nights. It was their first visit since we moved here at the start of the year, and we all had a ton of fun.

It was especially cool to introduce our young nephew to Sammy (pictured) and Maggie, our horses. He was fascinated -- riveted, even, while watching Vera ride.

Such was one of several highlights of a weekend that included playing lots of War, flying kites, playing putt-putt on the back deck, goofing around in the riding arena (a.k.a. the world’s largest sandbox), sitting on the tractor, playing with the barn cats, playing in the creek, enjoying “the best spaghetti ever,” and lying on our backs outside to look at the stars.

My nephew has his own iPhone, and we actually played War on an app that lets two players play via connected devices. He’d run into the next room while we played, and cried out either with glee when winning or with consernation when losing.

“I looove kings, Unca Martin,” he declared during a post-game analysis of our play. Then after thinking for a moment, he had an addendum to add.

“But I love aces better.”

Kid’s got starting hand selection down. Needs to learn more about handling variance, though.

At one point my nephew got caught up in one of those cycles into which five-year-olds sometimes successfully trap older relatives, asking a series of addition questions that proved difficult to avoid answering.

“What’s one plus one?” he’d ask. “Two,” I’d say. “What’s two plus two?” “Four.” “What’s four plus four?”

And so on. That sequence would end shortly thereafter, only to be followed by another.

“What’s one hundred plus one hundred?” he’d ask, eyes wide. "Two hundred,” I’d say. “What’s one hundred plus one hundred plus one hundred?” he’d counter. “Three hundred.” “What’s one hundred plus one hundred plus one hundred plus one hundred?”

And so on. We’d get up to about 1,600 before we both would lose track. Then a half-hour later -- just when I thought he’d finally dropped the subject altogether -- he’d circle back around to his earlier line of questioning.

“What’s one hundred plus one hundred?”

Speaking of precocious youngsters -- and things that go on and on and count into the many hundreds -- the blog turns eight years old today. Actually I remember a couple of years ago someone telling me that “six is like a hundred in blog years,” so it’s probably better to think of Hard-Boiled Poker as by now more senior citizen than elementary schooler.

While other projects -- the management of the farm being one -- have begun to crowd in on my time, I’m still motivated to continue this sucker. I see my nephew doggedly continue with something well beyond what seems an appropriate length of time for a given pursuit, and can’t help but think we’ve got something in common.

So I’ll keep on running, and thus keep this thing flying. Thanks again, everyone, for looking in.