On Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint

While traveling to and from Deauville I took along a copy of Philip K. Dick’s 1959 novel Time Out of Joint. It’s a book I first read long, long ago, but have thought about a lot ever since. In fact, looking back through the blog I notice I mentioned it a few years ago as belong to a list of books that “for whatever reason, stand out in my mind.” I bought a copy at the Labyrinth Bookstore in Princeton prior to the France trip and took it along, and finished it on the way home.

Like all of Dick’s novels and stories, the premise of Time Out of Joint is inventive and thought-provoking. In this case, a middle-aged ex-vet named Ragle Gumm finds himself living with his sister and brother-in-law in an ordinary ’50s neighborhood. Gumm has no job per se, but makes a decent amount of money each month by winning a daily puzzle-solving contest in the newspaper, something called “Where Will The Green Man Be Next?”

The story proceeds in a fairly mundane, realistic fashion for the first third or so of the novel, then a few strange things occur that lead Ragle to believe either something is wrong with the world as he knows it or perhaps he is going insane. He finds what seems to be a current phonebook but all of the numbers are disconnected. He also reads a story in a magazine about a beautiful contemporary movie star named Marilyn Monroe, but neither he nor his sister and brother-in-law have ever heard of such a person.

Ragle additionally starts to experience what he believes to be hallucinations in which objects disintegrate before his eyes and are replaced by strips of paper stating what they were (e.g., “door,” “drinking fountain,” etc.). All of which further fuels his anxiety about his own mental health and whether or not the strain of putting in hours and hours each day creating his contest entry is getting to him.

As you might guess, there’s a lot more happening here than initially meets the eye. I won’t give away more about the plot than to say that eventually Ragle does come to confirm his suspicions that the contest he’s been working on is more than just a harmless bit of problem-solving, but has much larger implications. And that the mundane suburban setting in which he lives isn’t what it seems at all, either.

I read a lot of Dick novels long ago, and I seem to remember most of them having these highly intriguing set-ups and then the execution sometimes feeling a little hasty. I think Time Out of Joint falls into this category, too, although ultimately the story is successful at making the reader think about the nature of reality and larger philosophical questions such Hamlet contemplates when he utters the line that gave Dick his book’s title.

I don’t want to say too much more about the book, though, because I want to recommend it to anyone reading this blog. I think it’s a book that poker players should find especially interesting, and not just because there’s actually some poker played early on in the book (something I’d completely forgotten about).

Rather, I’ll quickly list three reasons why I think the book might appeal to poker players, especially full-time players who sometimes find themselves stepping back and thinking about the significance of having found themselves playing a game for a living.

One reason is the obvious parallel between Ragle’s “job” and that of, say, a full-time poker grinder, especially one who only plas online and thus finds him or herself kind of isolated from the world in much the same way Ragle is when working on his puzzles.

Aggravating his wondering about his own sanity are Ragle’s self-doubts about the nature of his employment and whether or not his life has any real significance. In fact, there’s a small argument early in the book between Ragle and a neighbor in which the latter kind of chides him a little for not having a “real job.” Ragle thinks to himself about how even though he makes more money at his “job” than his brother-in-law does at the supermarket, his existence ultimately boils down to “puttering about with something in the daily newspaper... like a kid.”

I know some poker players -- especially those who mainly make their living playing online -- have these same conversations with themselves and with others regarding how they earn their living. I’m thinking especially of these guys chasing Supernova on PokerStars or who pursue other endurance-test type promotions (or self-created goals) which assign a kind of tangible significance to their activity that perhaps gives it extra meaning beyond simply trying to earn money playing cards.

A second idea that comes up in the book is the question of Ragle’s “skill” at solving the ““Where Will The Green Man Be Next?” puzzle. Years of working it have allowed him to accumulate data and charts he uses to help inform his predictions with each new puzzle, much like the grinders keep and review their stats and use it to increase their chances of winning.

Ragle gets asked questions about his skill for the game sometimes, and it is clear there is at least some doubt among others about how much chance is involved in the contest’s outcomes. And in fact there are some suggestions made as well about cheating and/or the contest being “rigged,” in some fashion, all of which I think would prove intriguing to online players, too.

Finally, a third reason I’ll recommend Time Out of Joint to poker players has to do with the way it invites readers to think about the difference between subjective experience and objective truth. You know, that big existential question of whether or not one person’s idea of the world is similar to what others think about it, and how our subjective experiences often diverge and force us to compromise when it comes to assigning meaning to the world around us.

Poker is a game that highlights this idea that there is a difference between reality as such and what individuals think about it. I’ve written in the past about the John Lukacs essay “Poker and American Character” in which he makes a grand statement that “poker is the game closest to the Western conception of life... where free will prevails over philosophies of fate and chance, where men are considered free moral agents, and where -- at least in the short run -- the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens.”

I take Lukacs as saying that poker provides a great context for demonstrating how humans can collectively experience something -- e.g., a hand or session -- and come away with entirely distinct ideas about what happened or what it meant. A bluff is a concentrated example of this sort of thing, wherein the significance of a given bet can obviously mean different things to different people. But I think the idea applies more broadly to the game and the seemingly endless ways people tend to approach it, define it, and define themselves and their actions when they play it.

In any case, this invitation to think about the nature of reality (as we know it) that Time Out of Joint offers seems to be the kind of thing poker players might be interested in pursuing. Thus my recommendation.

And if you do happen to read the book, come back here and tell me what you thought it meant and we’ll see how well our ideas match up.

Looking Back (Deauville Footprints)

Had some decent travel run good on Sunday with my shuttle to Paris and both flights sticking to schedule. Was great reuniting with Vera at the airport and getting home for a full night’s sleep. Slept a little late, in fact, and after taking care of various post-trip business I’ve now let most of the day get away from me. But I did want to share one last thought about the end of the EPT Deauville Main Event and the experience of spending the week in France.

Now that I’m home, I’m catching up a little with the commentary regarding Super Bowl XLVII. I mentioned last week I was able to watch most of the game in my hotel room, but I didn’t really have time in the following days to see what people were saying about the game.

Been thinking further about the whole crazy shift in momentum that happened pre- and post-blackout in the game. Remember how Baltimore was up 28-6 early in the third quarter when the power went out, then from that point forward the 49ers outscored the Ravens 25-6 to make the final score 34-31 with the Ravens prevailing.

Indeed, if not for some clock mismanagement and weird play calls at the end of that late-game drive by San Francisco, the Niners really should have won the game, which would have led to years and years of talk about the power outage having unfairly stemmed the Ravens’ momentum and thus affected the outcome. But Baltimore won, so that angle will not be pursued.

I was thinking today how the final table went in the PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event and how the end of the tournament kind of resembled the Super Bowl in some respects.

During the next-to-last day of play, the Frenchman Remi Castaignon built an enormous lead by knocking out several players on the way to the final table. He began the last day with 9.9 million chips when the next-closest player (Walid Bou Habib of Lebanon) had but 3.835 million. Thus did play begin on Saturday with an assumption that Castaignon would very likely at least remain ahead for most of the day, and perhaps might just gobble up all the short stacks and cruise to the win.

It was a little like the feeling after the Ravens returned the second-half kickoff to go ahead 28-6 insofar as the imbalance was now so great that it would take something very, very strange for the leader (i.e., Baltimore or Castaignon) not to remain in an advantageous position for much if not all of the remainder of the contest.

In the Super Bowl, the lights went out, interrupting the game for 34 minutes, and when play resumed it was as though the Ravens and 49ers had switched uniforms. For anyone looking for proof that momentum matters in team sports, that game has provided some hard-to-refute evidence.

The lights didn’t go out Deauville, but something strange did happen at the start of that final table. During the first orbit, Castaignon showed he wanted to get involved right away and use his big stack to pressure others, but got himself into a big mess early in a hand versus the young German, Enrico Rudelitz. Heck he probably felt like someone had pulled the plug on him, the way that hand went.

After calling a raise from late position, Castaignon watched Rudelitz reraise from the blinds and called again. Then he called c-bets by Rudelitz on the flop and turn before the German pushed all in on the river with the board showing .

The pot had bloated to 6 million chips by then, and after tanking for more than five minutes Castaignon called and saw his opponent flip over Q-Q for top set. We were all then fairly amazed to see Castaignon’s hand -- 5-5. He’d made a “hero call” (as they say), and while one could kinda-sorta see how he’d talked himself into it (after the fact, anyway), it still seemed like a major, momentum-shifting misstep.

Suddenly Castaignon was no longer in the lead, but like Baltimore he’d recover and ultimately played a solid endgame to win anyway. Thus, as with the Super Bowl, the story of the 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event won’t really linger over one surprising moment, in this case a first-orbit hand at the final table in which Castaignon surprisingly lost nearly half of his dominating stack.

As I was saying in those brief bursts throughout the week, it was a great experience going back to France and getting to experience a little bit of the culture again, plus a lot of fun, rewarding collaboration with all of the other media folks who were there. As has been the case at the WSOP and these other tournies over the years, I’m grateful to have been part of the effort to share with the poker world what happened at Deauville over the last week, and to have contributed to the chronicling of it all.

Speaking of leaving one’s mark, I’ll share one last funny nouvelle from the week.

I mentioned how a highlight was finally getting to meet in person my longtime friend and colleague Matthew Pitt, a.k.a. “@YorkyPuds” or “Yorkshire Pud.” One morning the Pudster and I were making the short walk from the hotel to the casino, engaged and distracted by whatever conversation we were having.

Suddenly we both looked up and realized the last couple of steps on the sidewalk had been qualitatively different from the previous ones. “Seemed kind of soft,” said Matt, and we looked back to see one newly paved square of sidewalk interrupting the usual pattern. There had been no signs or cones or anything warning pedestrians to avoid treading through, and so we’d plodded right over it, our prints amusingly gleaming there in the still-drying pavement to show what we’d done.

We looked back, looked at each other, and then instinctively (and hilariously) put our heads down and kept walking, perhaps a tiny bit faster than before.

As we walked the same path again and again the remainder of the week, we had to laugh each time to see our handiwork still there. Or footwork, I guess you’d say.

“Look... I was here once,” they say. Kind of like these travel reports....

2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 1a
2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 1b
2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 2
2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 3
2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 4
2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 5
2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 6

Travel Report: 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 6

Having to keep this post short and sweet, as I have a full travel day ahead of me and not much time for scribblin’. There to the left is the front of what has been my home-away-from-home this week, by the way, La Closerie on Avenue de la République here in Deauville. Has been a comfortable, accommodating spot to land each night.

Speaking of short and sweet, such was the final day of play at the PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event, which finished in a blindingly fast five hours. The other EPT media vets were remarking on it being one of the quickest final tables they can remember, and indeed, as I was suggesting yesterday, it was somewhat expected given the chip imbalance and preponderance of shallow stacks to start the last day.

The big leader to start the day, Remi Castaignon of France, actually lost his lead in dramatic fashion within the first orbit of the day after making a somewhat head-scratching hero call in a big-pot hand versus the German Enrico Rudelitz. But he recovered well enough, regained the top spot, and ultimately took care of business at the end to take the trophy and €770,000 first prize.

I did manage to do a quick walking tour of the Deauville city center yesterday morning to see a few more sights and pick up a couple of gifts. Was another windy, gray day, with rain again necessitating my wearing a hat and breaking out the umbrella. Very reminiscent of that year in Lille again, during which it seemed like it was always overcast.

I’ll probably do some more reflecting tomorrow once I’m back home, but did want to mention this morning how great it was to have this chance to return to France and even see a little of it while not working. And also to say how great the working part was, too. Was great fun all week working once again with Homer and “The Conv,” as well as finally to meet and work in person with YorkyPud. And Neil, Mantys, Adam, Sarah, Kristy, Stephen, Howard, Rick, Mad, Benjo, Frank, and all of the other smart, funny, and super supportive EPT folks who make working in such an environment so rewarding.

Time to pack up and look a little further into all of this blizzard stuff I’ve been hearing about happening back home. Hopefully it won’t delay my return, but I won’t fret too much if it does. Travel variance. Part of the game.

Talk to you soon. Au revoir!

Travel Report: 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 5

After the très rapide day on Thursday, yesterday’s Day 5 was a fairly long one again as it took more than 12 hours (including breaks) for the final 23 players to play down to the eight-handed final table.

Remi Castaignon of France ran red-hot yesterday, knocking out eight of the 15 players who were eliminated including the last three to finish with almost 10 million chips. That’s nearly three times what second-position Walid Bou-Habib currently has, and about 42% of the total chips in play. And with many of the others starting play today at least short-stacked (if not in the danger zone), we could well have a relatively short final day of play today, especially if Castaignon continues to run well.

Thursday’s long work day went well, though a highlight of the day came before when I had the chance to take a quick tour by car around Deauville and nearby Trouville with Howard Swains and Stephen Bartley of the PokerStars blog. They’d mentioned to me how they’d seen a few sites nearby that had been designated with the “Proust was here” markers, and so we went out to take a look at those and a few other things before play began at noon.

Over in Trouville we saw Les Frémonts, a place where Marcel Proust spent a couple of summers in the 1890s and which served as a model for La Raspelière in À la recherche du temps perdu. While not that different from other, similarly attractive edifices surrounding the hillside, the view out over the coast was quite stunning, and one could imagine how looking upon it might help provide some literary inspiration.

We saw another house, the Villa Strassburger, that had been inherited by Gustave Flaubert. We also saw one of the old pillboxes dug into a hill and pointed out toward the water, a small, squarish, concrete structure with small openings from which weapons could be fired. Stephen explained what the pillbox was to Howard and me and how they were used in WWII.

Finally we drove around to the Hippodrome de Deauville to see the track and even some horses being ridden on the cool, brisk morning, yet another picturesque scene to take in as we imagined a summer’s day with stands full of people and races going off one after another.

Am going to cut things short for now. Going to see if I can’t get back out before play begins today and perhaps explore the center of Deauville a little more as the opportunities for doing so are disappearing quickly. Meanwhile, check over at PokerNews today to see how the Main Event plays out. Also look in on the reports from the High Roller at PokerNews, as well as Howard and Stephen’s musings about it all on the PokerStars blog. There’s live streaming from Deauville happening, too, if you click over to PokerStars.tv.

Travel Report: 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 4

Is it Friday already? The week is flying by here in Deauville, and now we’re suddenly down to two more days of reporting followed by the long journey back home on Sunday.

It only took three 90-minute levels plus about a half-hour of a fourth for the Main Event to play down from 51 to 23 players. The top five spots in the counts are occupied by Frenchmen currently, with the last American (Jason Koon) having gone out in 39th.

Meanwhile the High Roller (a €10,300 buy-in event, with one rebuy available) got underway yesterday as well, and by the time I left it had attracted more than 80 entries (better than last year’s 72). Chris (Homer) and I covered the Main Event yesterday, then stuck around a bit more to help Marc (MarcC) and Matt (YorkshirePud) with the HR before leaving by around 11.

Sounds like that High Roller is going to last through Saturday as well, and so while I’ll be mostly sticking with the Main Event coverage, I may continue to hope over to help the fellows with the HR stuff, depending on how things play out.

Has been a fun week for various reasons, not least of which getting to work with my English mates. Has also been fun chatting here and there with several pros this week, among them Zimnan Ziyard, Lex Veldhuis, Matthias de Meulder, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, and Max Heinzelmann.

Heinzelmann is a two-time Main Event runner-up on the European Poker Tour, doing so back-to-back at EPT San Remo and Berlin back in April 2011 when just a 20-year-old. He’s perhaps best known by some, however, for that wild six-bet shove with A-6 versus Shaun Deeb’s A-A from the 2011 WSOP Main Event, a hand which Heinzelmann eventually won when two sixes landed among the community cards.

I mentioned to him how I’d written up that one as a “Hand of the Day” over on Betfair poker, and he laughed saying how it certainly was that. He also noted how Deeb himself was perfectly capable of a similar play (and in fact had done something a lot like it at the WSOP before). (Incidentally, for those remembering “Max Rolfs” character from The Micros, he debuted just a bit before Heinzelmann came on the scene, I believe.)

Anyhow, the wi-fi having failed in the hotel overnight, I’m having to cut things short today as play is about to resume. As always, you can check in over at PokerNews for our reports today.

Travel Report: 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 3

Yesterday’s Day 3 of the PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event played down to just 51 players, with the bubble bursting along the way. There to the left is another Neil Stoddart shot of a tense moment from the bubble with a player contemplating a big call to put his tournament life at risk.

Sounds like they may actually work their way down to 16 today (instead of 24). In any case, while Homer (Chris) and I continue with the Main Event these next two days, we’ll likely be experiencing a short day either today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, Marc (MarcC) and Matt (YorkshirePud) will step over to report on the two-day High Roller starting today.

The European Poker Tour has reached the middle of its ninth season. I’ve only really gotten to visit one previous EPT stop, and that was an unusual one for the tour, the one-off visit to Kyiv, Ukraine back in Season 6. But even after just a few days here in Deauville it’s easy to see how well-oiled the EPT machine has become, with the staff, media, and players all working together especially well to create an inviting environment for poker.

There are several small things the EPT does that improves the tournament’s coverage, one of which includes giving players small laminated tracking numbers at the start of each day of play that they then carry with them throughout. The system is quite simple. If you’re at Table 4, seat 1, the number is 41. At Table 21, seat 8, the number is 218. The players are used to the practice and thus are used to carrying the numbers with them when moved during the day, and it does wonders for being able to identify them when reporting.

PokerNews has implemented a similar system in the past at the WSOP, especially for the Main Event. But it’s only used occasionally and thus isn’t necessarily something players come to expect. Thus while it is useful there the system isn’t quite as reliable, mainly because it still hasn’t become an expected part of how events are run.

There are several other small things done on the EPT that further improve the coverage. Another is how when the field gets down to a certain size, chip counts of everyone are performed at each break, with EPT Media Co-ordinator Mad Harper then sending that out to everyone for reporting. That, too, helps immensely.

There are lots of media to coordinate, too, with reporters and photographers from several countries all here from start to finish. I kind of chuckled at one point yesterday when I noticed a German crew actually conducting a quick interview with one player while a hand was taking place involving a couple of others across the table. It might have seemed like an intrusion, but it was done somewhat discreetly and all seemed amenable.

Like I say, I think it all runs well mainly because by now everyone -- players included -- are accustomed to the fact that the tournament is also an event designed to be promoted in various ways via live reporting, streaming of feature tables online, interviews throughout, and so on. I’d suggest the WSOP could probably still incorporate some of these ideas to help standardize (and improve) coverage of its events, especially the preliminary ones, although to be honest there’s much less media attention of WSOP prelims than these EPT Mains.

The day went relatively quickly -- just five 90-minute levels with breaks in between each -- and we were out of the casino by about 10 o’clock. From there we made our way through the cold windy night to the small city center to enjoy a late dinner at Il Parasole, a nice Italian place where I enjoyed a three-course meal of fritto misto (calamari), penne pasta, and a delicious dessert of dôme glacé au chocolat.

Got back by midnight or so and had a quick Skype chat with Vera while she was driving in a car in North Carolina. As someone who grew up in an age without cell phones or the internet, I remain in awe of how such things work.

Back to it. Follow along both the Main Event and High Roller over at PokerNews.

Travel Report: 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 2

Was another gray, windy day in Deauville yesterday. A few drops of rain caused me to stick my umbrella in my bag for the short walk over to the Casino Barrière de Deauville yesterday morning, and it was still cool and brisk for the walk back around late last night.

We had a somewhat shorter day of it yesterday at the PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event, as they played two fewer levels and skipped the dinner break. After we finished, Matt, Chris, and I again ate at the Le Plaza Café in the casino, where I enjoyed a tasty dish of cuisse de canard (duck leg) with potatoes and a salad. Have really only been able to have one meal each day, getting coffee in the mornings at the hotel’s buffet and snacking on sandwiches and such otherwise. But I have eaten relatively well here thus far.

From 782 starters they are down to 154 already, which means the money bubble will burst sometime today (at 120). Also means we’ll probably have a relatively short day either today or tomorrow, as they’ll aim to play down to 24 by the end of Thursday, then down to eight on Friday to ready for Saturday’s final table.

Nearly half of the entrants were French (385), with no other country even coming close to that percentage. The next closest is Russia (43), Germany (40), and the U.K. (36), while the U.S. only sent 10 players. Here’s a nifty pie chart from EPT Media Co-ordinator Mad Harper reflecting the nationalities of the players:

Andrei Stoenescu of Romania leads currently. He made an EPT Main Event final table last year in Madrid, finishing third. And Zimnan “Zimmie” Ziyard, winner of EPT Loutraki in 2011, is in second position. Others with big stacks going into Day 3 include James Mitchell, Sam Grafton, Gordon Huntly, Jason Koon, and Pascal LeFrancois.

Tons of Team PokerStars Pros here, as expected, though just three are still alive through Day 2: Matthias de Meulder, Sandra Naujoks, Vanessa Rousso. Both Gaelle Baumann and Elisabeth Hille played in this event, too, although both went out during play yesterday.

A couple of our fearsome foursome of bloggers will be splitting off on Thursday and Friday to cover the High Roller event. That one has a €10,000 + €300 buy-in with a single rebuy, and will be played eight-handed. Last year saw 72 entries in the High Roller, with the Frenchman Eric Sfez coming out on top.

Am hoping to get out here at some point to explore some of the shops and places we have been seeing on our walks to and from the casino. Also expect with an early night in here somewhere to get out to one of the several restaurants being recommended to me by the guys who have been here before.

Back to the poker today, though. As always, you can follow along over at PokerNews and on the PokerStars blog.

Travel Report: 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 1b

Have quickly slipped back into the familiar work routine here in Deauville, where this year’s PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event is now in full swing.

Yesterday’s second and last Day 1 flight saw 475 players come out after 307 participated on Sunday. That total of 782 is down a bit from the 889 who played in the event last year. I think coming right on the heels of both the PCA and Aussie Millions likely keeps a few folks from trekking over to Europe who might play otherwise, but it’s still a healthy number with a big €770,000 first prize awaiting the winner.

These first two days added up to about 14-hour workdays, all told, although it’s likely we’ll have a few shorter days during the week as the tourney is scheduled to continue all of the way through Saturday. Am hopeful that means there will be some chances to get out a bit for some dining and perhaps even a promenade or two to do some sight-seeing before it’s all over.

I’ve mentioned before how this marks a kind of return trip for me as I lived in the north of France before many years ago (in Lille). Was kind of transported the day of my arrival when I spent a little bit of time walking up and down the street on which the hotel is located, including visiting the Carrefour to stock up on a few supplies for the week.

As I did I remembered vividly that year in Lille and the many trips to the supermarket, including the much bigger Carrefour down near the city center -- kind of a Walmart-like place where you could buy groceries as well as clothes, household items, and so on. I remembered to bring my own bag and bag my items. I also remembered the intermingling smells of freshly baked bread, fish sitting out in the open, and the various cheeses of the French supermarkets.

Speaking of being possessed by memories, I’m realizing now that I’m here how Deauville (along with couple of other coastal cities, Cabourg and Trouville), provided inspiration to Marcel Proust in his seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu, specifically as the basis for the fictional seaside town of Balbec. I only made it through Swann’s Way in college, and so now am once again having those one-day-I’ll-really-read-Proust thoughts, thinking perhaps I’ll have to return to those volumes in earnest sooner than later.

And with regard to literature of a different sort, reading online I’m seeing references to Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel Casino Royale and how the casino in that book was likely patterned after one in Deauville where the writer had played baccarat and other games. That’s another book I’ve never read and so am now intrigued to do so.

But there’ll be time for reading later as there’s a bit more writing to get done this week. And gathering of new memories, I imagine.

For reports from the floor and tourney tracking, hop over to our PokerNews live blog for continued Main Event coverage, with reports from the High Roller coming as well later in the week. Also be sure to click over to the PokerStars blog where Howard Swains, Stephen Bartley, and Rick Dacey are finding various stories to tell in feature pieces along the way. And also enjoy perusing Neil Stoddart’s photos on both blogs (a sample of which appears up above).

Finally, for those in a hurry, Kristy Arnett and the PokerNews video team put together a quick tour. There’s a très rapide Shamus cameo at 0:34. Oh, and pardon the French...

Travel Report: 2013 EPT Deauville Main Event, Day 1a

Bonjour, mes amis. Since we’ve last talked I’ve been on a couple of planes, traveling to about 500 miles over to Detroit, then nearly 4,000 more to Paris. Then it was another 120 miles or so by van up to the northwestern edge of France and Deauville.

Again I find myself in a coastal resort city during the offseason, much like the couple of trips down to Uruguay I’ve made during summer months. Was feeling plenty of flashbacks to my time living in Lille years ago as well when reunited with the gray skies and cold temps here in Deauville upon my initial arrival.

I landed at Charles de Gaulle airport late morning on Saturday, then after an hour-and-a-half or so of uncertainty finally was able to get in touch with my scheduled ride to Deauville. It was just above freezing, and when I first climbed into the van that would be taking me to Deauville a brief hail storm erupted, peppering the vehicle with small white spheres. That turned to a light rain during the first hour of the ride, then came blue skies and sunshine for the latter part of the journey.

Got checked in by around four in the afternoon, and eventually hooked up with my PokerNews blogging mates for the week The Conv (Marc), Homer (Chris), and Yorkshire Pud (Matt). Was great reuniting with Marc and Chris, both of whom I have worked with before several times, and finally meeting Matt with whom I’ve collaborated for quite a while now over on the Betfair poker blog.

In fact, me and Yorkie Pud go way, way back. If you look back at the earliest posts here (from 2006), you’ll see him having come around to comment a few times, much as I did at the blog he kept long ago. Looked it up and saw his first comment here coming on a post I wrote in September 2006. Pre-UIGEA, even!

Needless to say, after having communicated online in various ways for so many years, it was like I was reuniting with Matt, too, when we first discovered we’d been positioned just a few doors away from one another on the same floor of a quaint hotel here in Deauville. Kind of like meeting a pen pal, I guess, but more than that, really, given our shared experiences going from recreational players/bloggers to full-time poker writers.

Saturday night saw me, Chris, and Matt walking a few hundred meters up the road to dine at a pizza place recommended to us by Benjo (Santa Lucia), then meeting up with Marc, Sarah, Kristy, Mantys, and Adam later for the Stars welcome party. Made a relatively early night of it, slept reasonably well, then got up and walked just a few blocks north to the Casino Barrière de Deauville to start covering the PokerStars.fr EPT Deauville Main Event.

Yesterday saw the first of two Day 1a flights play out, with just over 300 players taking part. Will most certainly be a bigger group for today’s second (and final) Day 1 flight, although it’s appearing the overall turnout will probably be down from the 889 who played last year.

The tourney went well, with the always efficient running of the show by PokerStars on display. Had to get a casino card, a press pass, and a bracelet to go where I needed, and even then found myself at the end of the day suddenly refused entry back into the tourney area when a guard decided he wasn’t letting me pass after all of his colleagues had for the previous 11 hours.

That reminded me a little of living in Lille, too, I have to admit, and encountering what sometimes seemed whimisical displays of authority. All worked out, though, and to be honest I wasn’t even bothered by it, perhaps having been conditioned to expect something similar from living here before.

I’m sure I’ll write more about the actual tourney and experience of covering throughout the week, but this morning my thoughts are mostly occupied by that crazy Super Bowl XLVII which I was up until five a.m. watching.

Caught a bit of it on a stream at the casino once Day 1a ended, then decided against joining Chris at a nearby bar to watch the game and came back to the hotel instead. Much to my surprise the game was on one of the channels in my room (I’d been told it would only be available on a pay-per-view basis), and so I settled in and watched the second quarter, Beyoncé’s halftime show, the start of the third quarter, the power outage (and a Beyoncé replay), then the rest of the game.

Was a nutty game, and kind of a treat to watch it while following all my friends and others having that cacophonous conversation on Twitter throughout. During the power outage I made a tweet referring to an old Airplane! gag that was retweeted a couple dozen times and rapidly appeared on one of those tweet-collecting reports you sometimes see, “The Super Bowl Power outage in Social Media.”

Was amazed like most at the Ravens’ dominance and 49ers’ lack of readiness early on, although I did think the teams were evenly matched and wasn’t expecting an S.F. blowout. Incredible, though, to see it play out as it did -- yet another stirring playoff game this year, and another crazy, nail-biter finish to an NFL season.

Gonna sign off here as it’s already late morning and I need to get cleaned up and back over to the casino in just a few. Salut à bientôt!

That City That Never Sleeps

Had big fun yesterday goofing around Manhattan with Vera. We were staying Newark, and so it was a simple enough matter to take the train over and spend the day.

We arrived at Penn Station around noonish, then decided to hoof it up to the Museum of Modern Art (perhaps a one-and-a-half mile walk). Was a relatively warm day, with the winds that had been whipping pretty hard all week having died down a bit, which made for a pleasant journey. And of course there was no shortage of things to look at along the way.

I mentioned how we’d visited NYC a few times before. There was even one brief moment way back in there somewhere when we had contemplated a grad-school related move to New York, but we never did. As much as we like NYC, we ain’t really made for living in such a place. (Not that there are such places like it anywhere else.)

As we walked up 7th Avenue I thought occasionally about my novel, Same Difference, which I set in NYC back during the 1970s. Some of the story takes my detective into the old grindhouse scene of Times Square, an area which has obviously changed considerably since then.

Indeed, there are barely any vestiges of that era anymore. Am reading this morning about the passing of Ed Koch during the night, another incentive to think back to that time. Koch became mayor of NYC in ’78, just a little after when my novel is set. Thus he came in when all the bars, sex shops, and the theaters still dominated the landscape there at Broadway and 7th. Really wasn’t until Giuliani and the ’90s that it all began to disappear.

We’d been to the MoMA before, but nonetheless enjoyed the return trip to see The Starry Night, The False Mirror, Three Musicians, The Scream, Campbell’s Soup Cans, and more. Again, I couldn’t help but think about writing novels and being creative, as it’s impossible to wander about and look upon such things without being inspired.

We enjoyed a late lunch the cafe on the fifth floor, then made our way back down 7th to Penn.

By then the temps had dropped and the wind had picked up, making the return trip a bit more arduous. But we still enjoyed ourselves, including when we took a moment to stop in front of the interactive billboard at Forever 21 (near 45th and 7th). That’s us in the lower left corner. Vera is waving. (Click to enlarge.)

Now, of course, I’m heading right back out the door as my trip to France begins later today. Will be flying to Paris overnight, and then will be at EPT Deauville for the entire week, with the tourney going from Sunday through Saturday.

Am already thinking about Sunday’s Day 1a and how when play concludes I’ll most certainly be finding some way to watch the Super Bowl which will be kicking off after midnight there. This will be the second time I’ve followed the Super Bowl from France, actually, the last time coming during the year Vera and I lived in Lille. Listened to Denver beat Green Bay on Armed Forces Radio in the wee hours in our tiny apartment, I remember.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, me and the others who write over at Ocelot Sports did a fun little roundtable in which we weighed in on 20 prop bets (from the hundreds) for Super Bowl XLVII. Click here and check out whether we think there will be a safety, whether or not LeBron James will outscore the 49ers on Sunday, and our studious opinions on the coin toss.

While I’m linking out, let me also point you to a contribution I made over at All Vegas Poker detailing “Nevada Taking the Lead for Legal Online Poker.” Kind of an exciting moment for Nevada and online poker, with licenses having been approved for several operators and technology providers, and games likely to launch within a few months.

Meanwhile, I’ll start checking in again here on Sunday once I’m in France to share a few poker pensées from my visit. Definitely looking forward to the trip. Ought to be a scream.