Clocking in from Panama

Hola from rainy Panama City where I’ve been since Friday, having arrived in time to help cover the PokerStars Championship Panama series for the next week-and-a-half.

Had a chance this morning to get out and about a little, then again at lunchtime when my friend Nick and I were able to find a very busy local establishment to enjoy a Sunday brunch of Panamanian fare. The temps are warm and the air humid, and right now as I write a thunderstorm is pouring down sheets of rain outside. (Meanwhile, check out what happened back at the farm this morning -- nuts!)

Inside the Sortis Hotel and Casino the PSC continues with the $50,000 Super High Roller, a “shot clock” tournament in which players have 30 seconds to act, unless they want to use any of their three “time bank” chips that give them an extra minute each to be a decision.

I’m not sure if I ever have covered a tournament using a shot clock before -- if I have, I don’t recall it -- but yesterday made it seem an awfully attractive addition to tournament poker. My sample is a bit misleading, given that the players (all high rollers) are pretty much without exception both experienced and skillful, and the dealers are also top notch, making the incorporation of the clock (a hand held time piece) seem not at all intrusive.

From a reporter’s standpoint, the shot clock is very welcome given the way it obviously sets a limit on the amount of time any one hand will take. It’s nice to know something is going to happen relatively soon whenever you get involved watching a hand, and to avoid ever getting lost in those endless tanks that end in folds and little to report.

These guys (the regular participants in SHRs) generally act fairly quickly, anyway, of course. I could see how the shot clock wouldn’t be so welcome among more varied fields. Then again, I can also imagine everyone getting fairly used to them, and don’t necessarily see their introduction as being that much different than other experiments with structures designed to make events play out more quickly. I’m remembering not being so crazy about such an idea three years ago or even more recently, but I could warm to it.

Get over to the PokerStars blog to see how the $50K SHR is (rapidly) playing out and everything else happening in Panama.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart / PokerStars blog.

Back from Paradise

A quick one today to report I’m back home safely from a week-and-half in the Bahamas on Paradise Island, a trip which as I mentioned before was timed in such a way that I missed entirely the Great Snowstorm of 2017 here on the farm.

Eight inches dumped down on us the day after I left, and by the time I returned on Monday it was all melted, very likely the only snow we’ll see all winter here in NC.

“Well played, Shamus,” said Vera on my return.

The trip was fun, and as has been the case these last three years the series in Nassau tends to operate as a kind of annual reunion for many players, media, and staff, so it was good again to see friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen since last January. Good to get home, though, where I’m expecting to stay put for at least the next couple of months.

That pic up above was one taken by the great Carlos Monti of a group of Selene Vomer fish, better known as “Lookdown” fish, just one of more than 250 species of marine life one can see in the aquariums and around Atlantis. I love looking at the Lookdown, which have such expressive faces and uncannily appear two-dimensional.

Poker-wise, the trip was a bit more entertaining than average, I’m going to conclude. My time was split between three big events, the $100K Super High Roller, the $5K Main Event, and the $25K High Roller. Jason Koon, Christian Harder, and Luc Greenwood won those (respectively).

In the latter, Luc actually knocked out his brother Sam just shy of the final table, and indeed the win represented a breakthrough for Luc, the biggest cash of his career by tenfold (nearly $800K).

Incidentally, prior to this first ever PokerStars Championship, I had a chance to interview a number of people for a piece that appeared on the PokerStars blog just as things were getting going in the Bahamas, something called “Anatomy of a PokerStars Championship.”

These things are such huge, complicated undertakings, and it was kind of fascinating to talk to some of those involved with putting them together. Because of space limitations I had to cut out a lot, but hopefully it at least comes across how much goes into the planning and staging of these things.

Relatively speaking, farm life is a lot more simple. That said, as I’ve noted before, every time you look up there’s always something else to do around here.

Photo: courtesy Carlos Monti / PokerStars blog.

Slides, Celebs, and Likes

Been in the Bahamas for more than a week now, having left the farm just a day before the Great Snowstorm of 2017 hit to cover the place with eight inches of the white stuff. Vera and our four-legged friends all managed okay, though I felt more than a little guilty not being around to help deal with it all.

Quite a contrast down here, weather-wise, as you might imagine, with temps in the mid-to-upper 70s, the cloudless skies baby blue, and the water an even darker, more brilliant shade of blue. It’s been busy, but I did manage to goof around on the water slides on two separate occasions already, including daring to plunge down “The Abyss.” It only lasts a few seconds, but it’s still long enough for all manner of existential doubt to overwhelm a dude before splash landing at the bottom.

The PokerStars Championship Bahamas festival is now heading into its home stretch, with the High Roller and Main Event both ending tomorrow. The poker’s been fun to follow, as I was on the $100K Super High Roller to start, then the Main Event, and now the $25K HR.

That first event saw the actor-comedian Kevin Hart take part, livening things up quite a lot for the first day-and-a-half before he finally busted a second time. Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame then played in the Main, so there was a lot of star-gazing going on between those two.

Speaking of poker-playing actors, Jennifer Tilly is here, too, and in fact took runner-up in a $5K turbo event this week, one where the final table included David Peters, Benjamin Pollak, and Mustapha Kanit.

I’d met her before but finally had a chance to talk with her a bit more this week. She’s a great follow on Twitter by the way -- @Jtillathekilla2 -- and one of the things we talked about were the folks we follow on there.

I also confessed to her that I never have gotten in the habit of favoriting tweets. I’ll retweet ones I like occasionally, but I just never got around to start “liking” them. For example, I liked one she sent a few days ago sagely observing: “Poker tournaments are like life: We're all gonna die, just some of us last longer than others.” But I just had to tell her I liked it as I didn’t “like” it on Twitter. (She assured me that was fine.)

(That reminded me of something similar I’ve been known to utter around poker tournaments.)

Vera kids me about not “liking” tweets. I’ll tweet something and get a bunch of likes, then mention it to her. “And how does that make you feel?” she asks with a grin.

“I like it,” I reply.

One more day of poker tomorrow and then back home to the horses where the snow has already melted. There’s a pic to the left from the day after that I tweeted before. It’s totally okay if you didn’t favorite it.

Safe and Sound

Back on the farm at long last. Have already reunited with the horses and cats, all of whom seem to be doing well after having endured a colder two weeks here than was the case in Prague. That's Maggie (standing) and Ruby (sitting) to the left, both relaxing on a mild winter’s day.

Alas for Vera, there was a mix-up with her flight resulting in her journey back taking a little longer. She’s having to stay an extra night in London on the way back, which is a pain but all things considered could be worse.

Spent the flight watching various stuff on the Lufthansa menu of entertainment offerings. Started with a pretty good documentary about Freddie Mercury (The Great Pretender), focusing mostly on his non-Queen stuff.

Then watched the 2011 political drama The Ides of March that George Clooney directed and co-wrote and starred in (along with Ryan Gosling). The mildly twisty plot was not at all convincing, I’m afraid, nor were the characters that compelling. Meanwhile the version of presidential politics it presented seemed especially naïve, probably even more so in retrospect (i.e., post-Trump).

Filled in space with some television, including trying an episode of Magnum P.I., a show I never really watched much back in the day. Tom Selleck is fine, but good golly the episode was dreadful.

I’d have been much better off having read instead, but after so many days in a row of traveling and working I was just too damn tired to do so.

Speaking off, I’m signing off. Looking forward to a little down time here over the holidays, to rest up and recharge before the crazy poker-coaster cranks up again in the new year.

Trumpster Fire

There’s something kind of unusual going on around here. I smell smoke.

No, nothing in the house is burning. Nor is anyone burning leaves or anything nearby, at least not today. But the smoky smell is lingering. Everyone is starting to notice.

It comes and goes. I’ve smelled it more often in the mornings when feeding the horses, while in the afternoons it seems to die down. Then it’ll come back later as the sky darkens and night falls.

We’ve been aware of the smell for several days, perhaps a week. The longer it lasts, the more worrisome it becomes. In the last day or two I’ve started to think of it as symbolic, too, representing a similar kind of vague threat that recently started to hang over us.

Our farm is located in the western part of North Carolina, a couple of hours away from the mountains. It’s up there that around 15 different forest fires have been burning up something close to 50,000 acres over recent days, forcing more than 1,000 people from their homes.

Firefighters have had difficulty controlling the fires thanks to the drought conditions we’ve been experiencing in this part of the state. And there’s no rain at all in the current 10-day forecast, which doesn’t bode well.

I’ve been staying inside mostly. Yesterday I noticed our county had been colored in “red” on the map, designating the air quality as “unhealthy.” There’s a worse color -- “purple” for “very unhealthy” -- although none of the counties have been shaded thusly just yet, I don’t think.

I mentioned the symbolism suggested by the smoky smell and the vague feeling of anxiety it inspires. I refer of course to the flashpoint of last week’s election, and the gradually building apprehension caused by the president-elect’s quizzical movements and proclamations, stress-causing tweets, and hazy plans to make over the country in ways even his ardent supporters have to regard as troubling.

And there were plenty of supporters, including around here. I mean if you look at a different map of the state, around three-fourths of the counties were red on that one, too.

I won’t recount all of the many whiffs of trouble we’ve been noticing. For that you can read Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker who provides a catalogue of items in a new article titled “Donald Trump’s First, Alarming Week as President Elect” -- kind of like hand histories, you might say, from a series of inexpertly played hands.

Recounting much from the election winner’s two interviews, the half-dozen press releases from his transition team, his “several important personnel and policy decisions,” and his 23 tweets, Lizza concludes the “first week was marked by seeming chaos,” suggesting that “what we’ve learned so far about the least-experienced President-elect in history is as troubling and ominous as his critics have feared.”

We don’t know what’s coming next. Most of us like to think whatever changes the future might bring won’t be destructive or hurtful or otherwise for the worse. But we don’t really know. Depends on a lot of things, including things we can’t control. Not unlike the wind, or the rain (or lack thereof).

The smell persists in a threatening way. Sometimes, after being exposed to it for a while, we become less aware of it. But then it hits us again -- bitter, a little pungent, even stinging.

And we wonder how close or real the danger really is.

Photo: Citizen-Times.

Travel Report: EPT13 Malta, Day 2 -- Back at It

My second day of reporting here in Malta involved my helping cover Day 2 of the Italian Poker Tour Malta Main Event, a €1,100 buy-in tournament that saw 775 enter and now just 31 advancing on to Saturday’s penultimate day of play. The work has really begun.

A decent number of recognizable folks still left in this one, including Dominik Panka, Rasmus Agerskov, Ismael Bojang, Stean Jedlicka, and Cate Hall. Ole Schemion, Martin Staszko, and Pierre Neuville were among those cashing today. I’ve mentioned before how the EPTs generally speaking often feature a high percentage of good tournament players, and such can even be the case in these relatively lower buy-in prelims or “side events,” even though this one is labeled a “Main” by the IPT.

There were a lot of semi-unusual hands (runner-runner saves, straight flushes, quads, etc.), as we highlighted a little at the start of the end-of-day recap. As happens with players, though, after many years of doing it’s hard not to look on such out-of-the-ordinary happenings with a somewhat clinical eye. Which is probably a good thing, from a reporter’s point of view, as you are better able to keep track of it all.

We got out early enough to take a stroll a couple of blocks over to have a fantastic dinner at the Lore & Fitch steakhouse here in Saint Julian’s. Had a filet mignon which was excellent, and my buddies sampled some Italian beer which they liked a lot. Have already experienced some way above average eats as well as some very hospitable service, too, which has made everything more comfortable.

Still, I miss being on the farm and find myself getting bit a little earlier than usual by the homesick bug. Maybe it’s all those cats meowing that I sometimes hear even up in my hotel room, making me think of our Freckles and Sweetie, both of whom like to meow a lot, too. Was a little frustrated over the last couple of days as well knowing I couldn’t be at home to help out with things when a little bit of trouble arose on the farm here at week’s end -- nothing too major, but felt a bit helpless being five thousand-plus miles from being able to do anything.

I sometimes will refer to whatever digs I end up in while on the road my “home away from home,” but that’s just a phrase. It’s never really “home” out here -- just more or less accommodating while I’m away.

As always, head over to the PokerStars blog to follow along with this IPT and the other events happening on this here archipelago.

Photo: courtesy Manuel Kovsca / PokerStars blog.

Something in the Wind

Took some time this Labor Day to take care of something I’d been meaning to do for a long time.

Ever since we moved to the farm a little over two-and-a-half years ago, we’ve been gradually making improvements to the property, including the barn. It’s a constant process, and it always seems like something needs added to or repairing.

You’d think perhaps you could just set everything up from the start and have a routine you can follow that takes care of everything, but there are always unexpected obstacles or challenges forcing you to do things differently. Or, more often, forcing you to learn how to handle something you haven’t had to deal with before.

The poker analogy is probably obvious -- I’m referring to the need always to work on your game and be ready for unexpected tests and situations as they arise at the tables. There’s also that feeling of just trying to break even and “stay in the action,” making sure everything is working as it should and -- most importantly -- the horses are all comfortable and getting what they need.

Anyhow, as that picture up top suggests, we’ve been missing something from the barn ever since we moved in -- not an essential item, but one that now that we have it makes the barn seem somehow more complete.

“Presently trying to find some direction,” I tweeted when sharing the above pic.

“I think your search is in vane,” quipped my buddy the Poker Grump in response.

Boom-Boom-Crackle

Coming off a busy weekend here, having traveled 300-plus miles and back by car for a wedding, getting home yesterday evening.

As I’ve noted, our horse farm is located in a fairly rural area. Our neighbors aren’t that far away, but we’re still pretty well isolated, with nice views in every direction and the big, big sky to enjoy each day and night.

Being out in the country, it wasn’t surprising at all to hear fireworks last night, although as the evening wore on Vera Valmore and I marveled a bit and just how relentless the various amateur shows were.

We could hear them better than see them, although occasionally a burst would flare up over the tree line. They seemed to be coming from all four sides of the property, and were quite loud and intense at times.

Of course, that was only the third of July, and tonight the boom-boom-crackle has started up once more. We are fretting a little about the horses, although they seem to have dealt with it all without much problem last night and are doing so again tonight.

You get used to the noise after a while, but it does make a person think about how nice the more typical calm and quiet can be. I was just now thinking how it reminded me of “poker Twitter” a little, in particular the constant chip updates and mood swings that noisily burst up through the usual chatter, catching your eye for a moment before dissolving into the past without trace.

Happy Fourth, all.

Image: “Fireworks,” Andy Rogers. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Cutting to the Chase

I have a birthday coming up, although it is still just over two weeks away. Meanwhile last weekend Vera and I hosted a party here at the farm -- something I mentioned here a week ago we were about to do.

While it wasn’t really a birthday party, it sort of was treated as one given the proximity of the date. By which I mean there was cake and some singing, and my seven-year-old nephew hilariously yelling out with incredulity when he learned just how old his uncle is going to be. There was also a gift for your humble scribbler, a really nice one -- a big, commercial grade zero turn riding mower.

We have 15 acres here, and while we mow the pastures with the tractor (attaching a mower), that still leaves more than half of that to take care of in other ways. I’d been using a John Deere riding mower, a fine machine but not really enough for so much mowing.

I sometimes joke that I have to mow “the whole nine yards” because there are almost that many yard-sized areas that need taking caring of, and with the John Deere I basically was always having to start over again every time I got to the end of mowing everything.

Anyhow, the new mower -- a Ferris -- was a complete surprise, set up by Vera with practically everyone except me knowing it was going to be delivered at the party last weekend. The timing (three weeks before my birthday) helped with the surprise, as I surely wasn’t expecting anything.

This week I’ve already mowed most of the property with it, with the increased speed, the wider cut, and the ability to make that turn-on-a-dime reducing the time at least in half, and in fact probably more than that.

I realized after finishing up one of the large sections yesterday how the new mower made it so easy it also (almost) cut into that sense of satisfaction that would come after having cut the lawn before (something I wrote about here once a while back).

Almost feels like looking up the answer to some problem -- say, a poker-related query -- rather than figuring it out on your own. Or watching just the highlights of a game rather than the whole thing, cutting to the chase (as it were).

Then again, even with the big mower, it’s still work. And frankly, it only frees me up time-wise to do more work on the farm, of which there really is no end. Which isn’t such a bad thing -- more problems to solve, things to get done, satisfaction to be had.

On the Grind

Was a pleasant enough day of traveling yesterday, starting early in the morning and ending with me back home at not too long after 10 p.m. So glad to be back on the farm again, and to be looking at what should be a stretch of staying put for the next several weeks, too.

Between the EPT Grand Final in Monaco and LAPT Panama, the last 24 days have involved me working 16 of them and traveling another five, only being home for those three full days in between last week. That’s probably the longest, most involved stretch of tournament reporting I’ve been on for the last couple of years at least -- surely since we got the farm in late 2013.

As I was writing about last week, though, that’s nothing, really, compared to the schedules most of the others who report on and/or help staff and run these events go. Over on his blog, Will O’Connor, with whom I had the chance to work in Panama, mentions at the start of his last post how he’s already worked 100 days this year. (I believe I’m somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of that.)

It’s truly a nonstop game, both for the players and everyone else who involved in helping keep this traveling tournament poker circus going. Have been chatting with various folks preparing themselves for the seven-and-a-half-week grind of the WSOP as well, which presents its own special kind of psychological and physical challenge similar to what happens elsewhere but more intense (and, for some, stress-creating).

Unless something unexpected happens, I’ll be home again this summer, not too bothered about not being in Las Vegas although it has been long enough now I’m starting to get an itch to go, if only just to touch base with friends and colleagues whom I know will be there, even after a couple of years’ worth of turnover.

I like the rhythm of going on the road for short stretches then being able to stay home long periods, too. I suppose it resembles the rhythm of play (for many), say, at a full ring game or in a tournament, where you find yourself occasionally involved a lot but folding and watching others a decent amount, too.

For me, though, not always “grinding” allows me to miss it enough when I’m away to look forward to it when I go back.

Photo: “World Alarm Clock - Grove Passage, London,” Bob Bob. CC BY 2.0.

My Biggest Buddy

Living on the farm with our horses has taught me a few things. One is that the sight of a horse rolling on its back is one of the funniest, happy-making occurrences there is to see. Unbridled hilarity! (Pun intended.)

Another is that the sight of a horse getting back up after rolling around is equally fascinating and delightful to witness. There’s something uncanny about it, like watching one of those films of a building being imploded in reverse or something. There’s an awe-inspiring grace to the action, too, the way the legs and body and head move together, almost like an unseen puppeteer has pulled the horse up somehow by invisible strings.

Last night I learned something else, something I’m very sad to report today. One of the most heart-rending things to witness is seeing a horse who wants to get up, but cannot.

I got back from Monaco Saturday night, in time for our nightly feeding of the four horses we keep. Sunday I visited with each for a short time, then set about doing some yard chores. Unfortunately Sammy, our eldest, found himself in some unexpected distress during the afternoon -- something entirely natural for a horse of his age to encounter -- and several hours later we were faced with a decision that was really no decision. We had to let him go.

Vera got Sammy many, many years ago, even before we were married, and so he’s been an important part of our family since even before it technically was a family. Living on the farm over the last two-and-a-half years gave me an extra chance to spend even more time with Sam, whom I have always called my biggest buddy. He’s actually the only horse I’ve ever ridden, always cool and calm when carrying an amateur like me around, much as he’s done with countless others over the years.

The suddenness of losing Sam made it especially tough to bear, and we’re still reeling. It was the best possible way for him to go, honestly, with relatively minimal pain and not too much of a prolonged struggle.

But man, oh man, did he want to get up. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I wanted him to as well.

Poker taught me a lot about patience. Living on the farm has taught me even more about the subject. Nothing gets done right away, and in fact most things end up taking twice as long as expected.

Sammy was such a laid-back, good-natured creature, he rarely showed any kind of impatience. That photo up above is a bit of an exception, and one of my favorites of him. He’s waiting by the fenceline for Maggie, our older mare. She’d left with Vera for a lesson, and he was whinnying and watching for her return.

I’ve joked that I act the same way when Vera’s away. We hate to be apart from those we love.

So another test of patience begins. It’ll take a while -- probably twice as long as we think -- to come to grips with having to move on without my biggest buddy. We’ll get there, though. Eventually.

Three-Handed Horse Game

I think I’ve mentioned here before how we have a new “yearling” on the farm -- that is, a horse who just turned one year old back in January, whom we’ve named Ruby.

She’s kind of hilarious to watch, acting very much like a young child the way she races around the pastures sometimes, then curls up on the ground as though taking a nap at others. Quite a contrast to our older horses Sammy, Maggie, and our friend’s horse Shakan (who boards with us).

That’s Ruby, Sammy, and Maggie pictured above, looking like a power trio on an album cover. Ruby is the one coming toward the camera, of course, being by far the most curious of the three.

I remember writing a post here before about the interesting dynamic caused by the several barn cats, noting how it resembled the kind of thing you might see at a poker table with multiple personalities playing off one another. There’s something similar going on with our three horses who share a big pasture while Shakan usually has a smaller one to himself.

The older horses are clearly running things, with Maggie the mare the captain and Sammy deferring to her rule. Ruby seems mostly accepting of the situation, although likes to take chances trying to see if she can get away with stealing from the other two horses’ feed. Usually they fend her off with a nip at her withers, like a player in the blinds three-betting to remind a late-position raiser who’s boss. But they get tired of that, too, letting her have their scraps occasionally.

It’s a lot of fun, and a lot to learn, too, actually, as you can’t be quite so free and easy with a young horse as you can with more relaxed older ones. In fact, Vera and I have had some help with training -- both of Ruby and ourselves -- which has been very enlightening for me as far as becoming better educated about how and why horses respond to things as they do.

So we’re learning, but Ruby is learning as well. It’s like she’s first started playing the game, and just can’t get enough of it.

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.

Handling the Unexpected

Happy Christmas, all.

We’re sticking close to the farm today, where it has gotten up to an unexpectedly balmy 70 degrees during the afternoon. Sunny skies, too, for much of the day early on, although clouds have drifted in over the last couple of hours in advance of some more rain. Or so the forecasters are saying.

Speaking of things getting cloudy, the last few days have included some unforeseen “crises” that might’ve made the holiday season even more stressful than it usually is. Started on Sunday with a horse-related emergency, something I was referencing earlier in the week when talking about being pulled away from that Panthers-Giants game. Everyone is fine, but for a short while we were worried it might not be.

Then on Tuesday night we discovered a possible issue regarding our electricity for the house and barn, which when we got an electrician out here Wednesday morning we learned was potentially very serious (and dangerous). I’ll forgo a tedious rehearsal of the details, but suffice to say that, too, could have been a lot worse had we not gotten things looked at and remedied when we did.

Yesterday then provided us with another bit of unanticipated misfortune -- a flat tire coming back from a visit with family. Things were made even more complicated due to the lack of an available spare (and the fact that it was Christmas Eve), but we were able to work things out well enough and got back home to wake up here and spend the day with our four-legged friends.

Added all together, all of that kind of put us in a weird frame of mind here this Christmas day, feeling both a little put upon after the sequence of misfortune but glad as well that we avoided even worse luck.

Before all that happened, we had a fun surprise visit from the poker pro Alec Torelli and his wife, Ambra, who ended up swinging by a week ago while in the middle of their own adventures in travel that involving unplanned-for detour. They ended up spending a few hours with us on the farm last Friday, with Ambra getting a first-ever horse riding lesson while they were here. Was a ton of fun from which we all got to take a away a neat memory.

Earlier this week Alec shared a new “Hand of the Day” video on PokerNews involving a hand someone had sent to him. In the hand the player had gotten himself into a tricky spot having to play a big pot out of position. A not-so-great decision early in the hand coupled with a little bit of misfortune afterwards put the player in an awkward position. While discussing the hand, Alec pointed out how even after we find ourselves in unfavorable circumstances we still have to try to make good decisions going forward (and not worry too much -- or really at all -- about how we got there).

It’s good advice, I think -- to make the best of things regardless of the luck you’ve encountered or the mistakes you might have made. Play each hand well, and enjoy yourself, too, if you can.

Hanging out with Sammy and Maggie (pictured at left) and Shakan (up above) makes it easier to remember that stuff. They’re all three pretty laid back, for the most part.

They don’t seem to mind this unexpected weather too much, either.

Tuning In: A Few Recent Poker Podcasts

Was doing some work in the barn today and listened to a few poker podcasts while I did.

I first went back about a month to hear Bill Chen’s segment on Episode 371 of the Two Plus Two Pokercast. Chen’s always an interesting one to listen to -- very relatable for me, not because of the depth of his analytical thinking, but for the place of poker in his life as something very important but not all-consuming.

Then I checked out the latest PokerNews podcast -- Episode 326 -- which started with some discussion from Donnie and Rich about the recently completed PokerStars Pro Tour in California and then featured a enjoyable conversation with WSOP National Championship winner Loni Harwood. All interesting and fun and a good quick catch-up on recent events in poker.

Finally I dialed up a podcast I hadn’t tuned into for a while -- Ante Up! -- which just last month made it a full decade’s worth of podcasting. I used to listen to these guys -- Chris Cosenza and Scott Long -- constantly back when they first started out and wrote about their shows here fairly frequently, too. Tuning in again, I had to grin at how much the show had remained the same with the familiar mix of personal anecdotes about their own play, a run-through of news items, and some strategy talk.

They aren’t numbering their shows, but 10-plus years’ worth of weekly podcasts must add up to well over 500 by this point. Kind of brings to mind the story of this blog (into its 10th year now) which I know by this point readers sometimes drift away from and then return occasionally, perhaps surprised to see things still chugging along as usual.

The episode I grabbed was from a couple of weeks back, the one in which they discussed Matt Savage’s recent Facebook poll and discussion inviting players to weigh in about what they thought constituted an excellent tournament structure -- the 7/30/15 episode.

If you didn’t follow that whole discussion from Savage, the Ante Up! show is a good way to catch up with its particulars. (Indeed, as one of the few not on Facebook, I’ll admit I didn’t quite follow the entire structure discussion.) They get into it about the 12-minute mark and the discussion lasts about 15 minutes.

By the way, according to those responding to Savage’s poll, the most-important to least-important factors when it comes to creating an excellent structure were determined to be (1) time; (2) levels; (3) player ability; and (4) chips, or starting stack.

Savage agreed that of these four, the number of chips in the starting stack should be considered the least important -- since the length of levels and schedule of blinds/antes increases can obviously make a “deep” stack less deep, relatively speaking. Meanwhile, Savage agreed with the importance of having well measured levels (e.g., not skipping steps along the way), and that the length of levels does in fact have a lot to do with how great and/or appropriate a structure is.

Gonna have to get Ante Up! back into the regular rotation here. Have always enjoyed the way Chris and Scott approach all things poker, representing as they do the perspective of the great majority of us -- i.e., non-pros who greatly enjoy playing the game and following the stories surrounding it (including the stories involving those who are pros).

Playing Stars

Last night Vera Valmore stepped outside around 10 o’clock to see if we couldn’t catch a glimpse of that meteor shower -- the Perseids that happens every year right around this time.

Living on the farm, we are especially fortunate to be clear of city lights and other visual noise, and in fact out behind the house we can see nearly 360 degrees’ worth of sky with only trees surrounding the property keeping us from seeing all of the way down to the horizon.

We stepped outside and immediately saw a vivid streak across the sky to the northeast, just above the treetops to our left. A few seconds after that I thought I might have seen another streak go over the pasture to the east, although I wasn’t sure.

We soon took a couple of chairs out into the back yard, expecting an ongoing to show to follow. Alas, we saw nothing more, or at least no more meteors zipping about. We decided that in fact the action probably was happening a little closer to the horizon, below the treeline, and that also there would be more to see later in the night after we hit the sack.

We did, though, still enjoy the almost half-hour of gazing upwards, marveling at the show that’s up there just about every single night as long as there aren’t too many clouds and we’re willing to enjoy it.

It was a little like picking up pocket aces on the first hand and getting action right away, then momentarily being fooled into thinking that was how the game would continue thereafter. Gradually, though, we gotover the feeling that such action was going to be the norm, recognizing it was going to be a quieter game -- though still one worth playing.

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.

Still the Same

Since moving to the farm a little over a year-and-a-half ago, Vera Valmore and I have finally gotten ourselves settled (more or less), having established various routines to help maintain everything while constantly dealing with new challenges, most having to do with repairs to the barn and/or frequently used equipment. I’ve never in my life spent so much time with hammers, wrenches, pliers, and screwdrivers.

It is no longer the case that everything is new to us. The routines are becoming more and more familiar, and while repetition can induce tedium, there is also a kind of pleasure that can come from it, too.

One practice we established early on was to keep a radio playing in the barn day and night. Don’t know if the horses care one way or the other about the music, but after dealing with a skunk who tried to take up residence in there we read that the noise helps keep them away. We still see skunks about now and then -- in fact, about a month ago we saw a troupe of five of them slinking across the back yard, closely bunched as though they formed a single, frightening-looking mega-skunk. But we’ve seen no Pepé le Pews in the barn, thankfully.

We started out playing a classical station, then at some point early on switched it over to the local classic rock one -- you know, the one that plays a rotation of a few hundred songs we’ve all been hearing for years and years. Some tunes I like, some I don’t, and quite a few I’m ambivalent about even if they manage to enliven in a dim way that nostalgic part of the brain that makes things that are familiar seem pleasurable.

I mean, I own exactly zero Bob Seger LPs. I feel like once I might have had a cassette of Against the Wind, but that was very long ago. If we were to apply the “VP$IP” stat from poker to him and his oeuvre, I voluntarily play Bob Seger -- my current VPBS -- exactly 0.0% of the time. Yet I know every note and lyric of at least a dozen of his songs, thanks to their inclusion on that endless loop of tunes I heard in my childhood and have continued to hear over the decades since.

If you ever listen to the “classic rock” station where you live -- probably in the car, I’d imagine, which for many of us the only place we are exposed to FM radio anymore -- you’ve probably heard some of the same drops my station includes in between songs touting their playlist as “timeless” and “the best music ever made.”

I suppose just by the evidence of playing music first written and recorded 40 years ago or more, the “timeless” claim is being aggressively proven by the mere fact of these stations’ existence. However, the argument about it being “the best music ever made” is obviously one with which many people -- especially those outside of the (now aging) target demographic -- would take issue.

(Speaking of, search online about “classic rock” and you soon learn the term “demographic cliff,” used in concert with the idea that the first audience for such music is dying out. As Mick Jagger -- who turned 72 over the weekend -- once sang, what a drag it is getting old.)

Something occurred to me this morning while feeding the horses to the accompaniment of Leon Russell’s “Tight Rope” and Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock,” though -- something that might help explain from where this “best ever” claim might be coming. Those of us who grew up listening to just a few radio stations or watching three television networks or going to the same few movies that played for weeks at a time in the local theater shared a lot of the same cultural experiences, with these various artifacts helping provide odd little touchstones that significantly shaped the way we learned how to relate to others, for better or worse.

Meanwhile now people experience popular culture much differently, in more fragmented ways that among other things can involve a lot more consumer direction (if the consumer desires such freedom of choice, that is). The phenomenon is more complicated than that, of course, but it starts to explain at least one difference between the present and the past, and also the source for that insistence by some that what came before represented the “best” cultural products “ever made.”

I guess the Seger song that best emblematizes the mass psychological experiment of “classic rock” is about has to be “Still the Same.” You know it, the one addressed to a gambler -- a poker player, presumably -- who “always won every time you placed a bet.” Of the gambler, Seger sings “you always said the cards would never do you wrong.” And like the old card player in “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers, Seger’s understands the importance of knowing when to walk away: “The trick, you said, was never play the game too long.”

But while he never plays a particular game too long, he’s more or less stuck in his role, not unlike a song being played over and over and over again. As the chorus explains, the gambler is a lot like those poker “lifers,” destined (doomed?) to keep “moving game to game.”

Because (the song concludes) -- like that playlist of “Dream On” and “More Than a Feeling” and “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Magic Man” and “The Joker” I can count on hearing every time I go back into the barn -- “some things never change.”

A New Fiscal Physical Year

If you hunt back through some of my posts from early last year -- and heck, from years’ past, too -- you’ll see me occasionally talking about physical fitness and making mostly vague promises here to try to remain active, usually according to some imagined schedule.

It was during last summer (or so) that I once again lapsed as far as regular exercise was concerned. That said, maintaining the farm has required a fairly steady pace of physical exertion from your humble scribbler (he said defensively while raising a plastic pitchfork).

I mean, I’ve lifted more 50-lb. bags of feed, similarly-weighted bales of hay, and full muck buckets than I care to count, and that’s not even getting into other daily, weekly, and monthly chores and repairs that are constantly needing to be done.

All of which is to say, I haven’t been feeling especially slothful, although for some reason when July 1 came around this year I was strangely inspired to put on my running shoes and hit the road again. It’s a week later and I’ve managed to string together seven days’ worth of runs in a row -- nothing too outrageous (just a couple of miles), but enough to feel like I’m doing something.

You should have seen my sad waddling around after the third day, when the soreness was at its greatest. Things got much better soon after, though, and Vera has even joined me these last couple of days, which has provided some additional encouragement.

Like I say, I’m not sure what inspired me to get out there again. I would say it was all of the players at the WSOP discussing the importance of being fit in order to play so many marathon days of poker one after another, but to be honest it was more the otherwise meaningless milestone of the half-year starting.

Whatever the cause, I’m going to try to stick with it a little longer this time. Have a trip coming up later in the month (to Peru) which might provide a challenge, but I’ll nonetheless see if I can keep up the pace here at the start of my new “year.”

Flight Time

Am back home safe and sound on the farm after two weeks in Monaco at the EPT Grand Final. Have already gotten busy mowing some of that grass that relentlessly has been growing on all sides of us for the last six weeks or so.

Wrote about the grass last spring, right about this same time, in fact. Sometimes I find myself looking out and imagining I’m actually seeing it growing. Think sometimes of that Stephen King short story “Weeds,” made into an episode in George Romero’s Creepshow anthology titled “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” (in which King starred).

Speaking of movies, I didn’t watch any on the way out and almost didn’t on the way back. Searching through the selections of mostly new titles, I had little desire to see anything, particularly on a small screen and in a cut version (as is the case with some of them).

It was a nine-hour flight home, and traveling back through six time zones I almost felt like I was getting some time back. But after frittering away the first half of it doing nothing much, I realized I could use some way to make the rest of it go by more quickly. I finally decided to dial up the almost three-hour (and not edited) Interstellar, the sci-fi one starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway.

Was a little skeptical at first, although I was drawn in by the rural farm setting where the film begins. I’d been gone nearly two weeks and was feeling some serious longing to get back not just to Vera, our horses, and cats, but to the pastures, the sky, the barn, the fences, and yes, even that grass growing up all around.

I’ve written here before about being the son of a physicist who nurtured within me curiosity about various physical phenomena, as well as about space. Not enough to have made it an academic pursuit (beyond just a few classes), but enough to make me interested in some of the questions raised by some “hard SF.” Or by movies like Interstellar that take on some tough concepts and ideas and try to fit them into a plot most of us can follow with characters to whom we can relate.

I won’t get into the story too much other than to say after getting over those initial doubts it drew me in quite well. At one point characters having to negotiate passage near a supermassive black hole introduces the idea of gravitational time dilation -- i.e., some characters age just a few minutes while others age many years -- something that subsequently creates some very affecting pathos when a father realizes he’s suddenly missed 23 years of a daughter’s life.

I couldn’t help but think of being away from home for those two weeks and missing everything happening during that time I was gone. From there it isn’t hard to think as well of even longer gaps between meetings with friends and family.

Later on in the film comes a scene with an elderly woman in a hospital near the end of her life, and that, too, brought on some personal memories reminding me of how even though life seems so edge along so gradually, so slowly, it only seems that way because of our lack of attention to what’s happening.

In reality, it’s flying. Faster than we can imagine. Blink and two weeks are gone. Or two months or two years. Or a lifetime. I can’t really see the grass growing. But if I look away for long enough and then look back, it seems like it has.

I’m a complete sucker for time-lapse photography, partially because of the way it foregrounds that theme of time -- our lives -- slipping away from us. I become oddly moved by it, even emotional. I think how we haven’t got long. I think, worriedly... slow down!

Here’s an example of what I mean, an inspired video matched with a track from an album I’ve been listening to a lot lately, Robert Fripp’s A Blessing of Tears (a record expressly intended as a memorial for the artist’s late mother). The music isn’t unlike some of Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for Interstellar, actually, at least in terms of the mood it evokes:

Slow down clouds, sky, grass. Slow down Earth.