The date being the Fourth of July, players were issued with America (and other) flags as they entered the Amazon Room for Day 1b of the Main Event, which began with a country-n-western version of the US national anthem before reigning champ Jerry Yang intoned the ritual cry of ‘Shuffle up and deal’. Britain’s Victoria Coren and John Duthie, Ross and Barny Boatman were among the teeming hordes up against such former world champions as Tom McEvoy, Robert Varkonyi, Greg Raymer and Jamie Gold.

During the day’s play, two historic anniversaries were noted by WSOP media guru Nola Dalla. McEvoy’s presence reminded us that it was 25 years since the invention of the satellite by then tournament director Eric Drache, enabling 1983 world champ McEvoy to be the first player to win the title via a satellite. Also in yesterday’s field was the record holder for the most consecutive appearances at the World Series : Howard ‘Tahoe’ Andrew, who has played every WSOP since 1974 (and indeed makes a cameo appearance in Big Deal). 

’Tahoe’ holds two bracelets, both in No Limit Hold’em, both won back in 1976. If he were to take down this year’s title, it goes without saying, he would also hold the record for the longest time between bracelets.

Schmoozing my way around the Amazon Room I greeted Britain’s Neil ‘Bad Beat’ Channing, who’s been enjoying a landmark year, before noticing that he’d been drawn at the same table as the Hendon Mob’s Ram Vasawami. ‘Yeah, marvellous, eh?’ smiled Neil, while Vaswami remained in his private poker cocoon.

WSOP London champion Annette Obrestad has been seen around the Rio, greeting friends and opponents, but remains – at 19 – too young to play in a US casino. With two years to wait for Obrestad’s debut, much attention focused on a young American named Andrew Schoepfer, who was celebrating his 21^st birthday by playing in the main event. Andrew was eliminated early on by his compatriot James McBeth, who was celebrating his 40^th birthday. Score one for the oldies !

Big names started falling fast, with Daniel Negreanu, Andy Black and Ted Forrest among those eliminated in the first level, i.e. the first two hours. The second session saw the departure of Dewey Tomko, Scott Fischman, Kenny Tran and Greg Raymer, the third Ram Vaswani, Jamie Gold, Humberto Brenes, baseball star Orel Hershiser and British poker writer Des Wilson. Fallers after the 90-minute dinner break included Ross Boatman, Tom McEvoy, Kristy Gazes, Kenna James and Lee Watkinson.

Among the day’s survivors was, yes, Aussie cricketer Shane Warne.

Play ended at 1.05 am, with San Franciscan Ben Sarnoff on 177,500 leading the 615 players to have survived Day 1b out of 1,158 starters. On Day 2a they will merge with the 636 survivors from Day 1a. With the starters so far standing at only 2,455, today’s and tomorrow’s fields will have to be much larger to match, let alone beat, last year’s 6,358.

One of them will be your correspondent, who must now go get some sleep before squaring up to Day 1c. Whatever the outcome, you’ll be the first to hear it…

Ambling down the long Rio corridor towards the Amazon Room, scene of the WSOP tournaments, I found myself ambling alongside Australian cricketer-turned-poker player Shane Warne. (In the flesh, since you ask, he’s bigger and burlier than expected). That puts a new spin on the state of play hereabouts. Tennis champ Boris Becker has also turned poker pro, sponsored by PokerStars. Maybe I should take up cricket or tennis?

We’ll find out tomorrow, Saturday. In the meantime, the first of the four Day Ones has proved a heartbreaker for many of the big names in search of true poker immortality. Among those already back in the pavilion are Freddy Deeb, Lyle Berman, David Benyamine, Eli Elezra, Gavin Smith, Chad Brown, Josh Arieh, Juha Helppi, Luca Pagano, Joe Sebok, David Pham, actor Jason Alexander, former champ Dan Harrington, last year’s runner-up Tuan Lam and sexagenarian South African final-tabler Raymond Rahme. Notable British first-day fallers included Roland De Wolfe, Dave ‘Devilfish’ Uliott and John Gale.

The day began with none other than Mr. Las Vegas himself, Wayne Newton, crying ‘Shuffle Up and Deal’ for 1,297 starters – and ended with 636 survivors, led by Mark Garner on 194,900. The signs are that this year’s final turnout for the ‘main event’ will be a shade larger than last year’s 6,358; the weekend fields are apparently going to be heavier, with Sunday (Day 1d) already closed out. The authorities have trimmed the four Day Ones to just five levels, meaning a civilised 1am-ish finish, after ten hours of play plus breaks, rather than the last few years’ gruelling 3 or 4am. This, I am advised, is a plus for us stamina-challenged oldies. (NB: As a grand-dad with a bus pass these days, I myself prefer the word ‘veterans’). 

No fewer than 87 nations were represented here last year, well up on the previous year’s 54 despite the fall in numbers occasioned by the American legislation. This year it is 104 - so far. Considering there are only 195 countries in the world, and only one was represented at the first few WSOPs, these are fairly staggering statistics. 2008 has already produced bracelet winners from 10 nations, including Canada, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Denmark, France, Belgium, Holland and Russia. The tenth you can work out for yourselves.

But the more the US shows signs of a slowdown in the poker boom, for more than merely the obvious reason, the more the trends seem to be heading upwards throughout the rest of the world. The debuts of Russian and South African players at last year’s final table has generated several strong Russian performances here this year, and given the online sites heady dreams of poker taking hold in the continent of Africa.

The entire event gets a little better organised each year, thanks to the attentive antennae of Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack as his panel of top player-advisers relay all the moans from the grass-roots. Now the Amazon Room is colour-coded, making your seat (and your pals) easier to find amid the 2,700 players in action as each day begins. Gone, too, is the dreaded overflow tent, too hot and too cold by turns as the industrial air-con attempted to cope with the 120-degree heat outside (to which we smokers are now condemned). What used to be the hospitality suites across the corridor from the Amazon Room, in the heady days before the profile of the big online sites was lowered by the 2006 Safe Ports Act (otherwise known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act), are now satellite rooms in the build-up, annexes during the Big One.

The clampdown on Excessive Celebration (see Joe Saumarez Smith’s June 3 blog) really does seem to have calmed down those exhibitionists in search of TV time. Yesterday’s world-title scene was more like a cemetery haunted by ciccadas (or, as I guess Shane Warne would want to me to say, crickets) – as in the eternal riffling of the chips – than the world’s richest annual sporting event.

But despite the deep stacks and stately two-hour levels, starting at 50-100 of each player’s 20,000 chips, cries of ‘All In and Call!’ could be heard all over the Amazon Room from surprisingly early on. This year, with ‘All In’ bottled water as one of the event’s new sponsors, dealers are obliged to bellow this mantra and hold aloft an All-In paddle every time this not infrequent event occurs. Expect a great deal more of it on the Day 2s and beyond. And just imagine how much more irritating it’s going to get.

Another of this year’s innovations is the bountiful award of a $100 massage to the first player to make a royal flush. This happened, believe it or not, just two hours and 25 minutes into Day 1a, when the lucky player did not get a call after rivering his once-in-a-lifetime (if that) hand, but was formally presented with his $100 massage pass. Almost as generous as the $10 meal voucher Harrah’s give you when you hand over your $10,000 entry fee.

But let’s not start whingeing. Today is the Fourth of July, America’s national birthday. Not that you’d know it here in Vegas, where not even Christmas disrupts the night-and-day frenzy on countless casino floors. The fireworks in the Amazon Room, where Daniel Negreanu, Greg Raymer, Tom McEvoy, Kathy Liebert, Vanessa Rousso and Vicky Coren will be among Day 1b’s starters, are likely to be more thrilling than those outside my Palms picture-window this evening.

Not that I’ll be here to watch them. This year’s evening party schedule is pretty frenzied, seriously endangering my preparedness for Day 1c tomorrow. With my offspring rooting for me so vociferously in yesterday’s Comments, however – hey, thanks a mill, Sammy – how can I go wrong?

Way down below the picture-window of my 52^nd-floor suite atop the Palms Hotel-Resort, framed by the stunningly beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains on the horizon, the Rio hotel-casino looks the size of a matchbox. Head downstairs and struggle across the road in the 110-degree heat, however, and it soon returns to scale : the imposing if deliciously vulgar, starfish-shaped edifice nudging the Vegas Strip, now the world headquarters of poker for these six weeks each year in June-July, as it hosts the 39^th annual World Series of Poker.

I got here on Tuesday, direct from a weekend in Venice – quite a culture shock, I can tell you; it’s just as well I’m not staying at the Venetian, with its phoney San Marco and Grand Canal. And it soon became clear that the 2008 World Series has so far turned out to be the Year of the (usually American) Pro. There has been not one British winner, and not many at the final tables, of any of the 53 gold bracelets on offer before the Main Event, which starts today.

This year’s coveted bracelets have so far gone to such big-name professionals as Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Mike Matusow, Erick Lindgren, Layne Flack, David Benyamine, Rob Hollink, Vanessa Selbst, Kenny Tran, John Phan, J.C. Tran and Max Pescatori. This week Scotty Nguyen followed Freddy Deeb and the late Chip Reese in winning the ‘real’ world poker title in the $50,000 entry, 148-starter, $1.99 million first-prize H.O.R.S.E. event.

Pros or semi-pros have so far won three times as many bracelets this year as amateurs, finally reversing the strength-of-numbers trend of recent years. This seems to have happened partly because the full-time players have adjusted their games to the ‘wild’ online techniques that started invading the WSOP with the advent of online qualification. And it is partly because their influence has moved the authorities to follow the Venetian’s welcome example in making most events deeper-stacked, and more sensibly structured, so that there’s more room for well-calculated ‘play’, i.e. better value for the entry fee ­– shifting the advantage in these huge fields back in the direction of the seasoned professionals. Which is where, I gloomily suppose, it belongs.

The 53 events of this year’s WSOP have so far generated $116 million in prize money. How much will the main event add to that? We won’t know the answer till Sunday, the last of the four Day Ones, but current predictions suggest that the field will be slightly up on last year’s – i.e. some 7,000-8,000, despite the inroads made by that wretched American anti-gaming legislation.

My flight over was all but a Ladbroke’s charter, starring snooker champ Steve Davis as unofficial team leader; and the Palms has been all but taken over by this site’s online partners, PokerStars. Even the key to my suite carries the ‘Stars’ logo, as do the jackets of hotel staff. Monday night will see the site’s annual bash in the Palms’ exclusive ‘Rain’ night-club. It’s such a hot ticket that I’m giving serious thought as to who gets my guest pass – and why…

The Palms is a stylish joint by Vegas standards, with a snazzy pool – where, yes, I am doing my daily lengths, then undoing all the good work at the bar in its centre. The hotel boasts a multi-screen cinema, and countless restaurants from the ritzy to the takeaway. The high-grade food and wine on offer in several upscale Palms eateries, such as the Nove Italiano and the N9ne steak-house, are among the numerous snappy restaurants around town justifying Vegas’s recent, umpteenth reinvention of itself as the world’s latest gourmet destination. At the Palms’ rooftop Alizé last night, as we admired its commanding 360-degree view across town to the peaks, writer Des Wilson and I managed to spend $400 on dinner. And it was, I have to say, worth it.

A few hours ago, over at the Rio, I stood in line almost an hour for the privilege of plonking down my $10,000 entry fee for the main event. I’ll be playing on Day 1-c, Saturday, and aiming to be one of those happy few still standing on Monday 14 July, when the last nine players will all become dollar millionaires as the final table is frozen – for TV’s sake – till mid-November.

In the meantime, I’ll be bringing you news of Days 1-a and 1-b. While getting (and thinking) myself into top shape for 1-c.

So watch this space !

I’ll be playing as a ‘Friend of PokerStars’, a new category of player sponsored by the world’s biggest poker website – which, I am pleased to say, will be maintaining its exclusive partnership with BiggerDeal.com.

Lee Jones, alas for us, has returned to his native United States, to a new position in the poker hierarchy. Otherwise, BiggerDeal.com is shuffling up and dealing on with its trademark premium hands.

After the WSOP (i.e. mid-July), this site will be rejuvenated by some new young bloggers alongside (most of) the same old faces. They will be led by Oliver Chubb, the dynamic poker whiz-kid who recently reported here on the pros and cons of this year’s delayed final table.

They’ll be starting arguments about the finer points of ‘new poker’ expertise as well, no doubt, as sharing twenty-something travellers’ tales and bad-beat stories.

There will also be some surprise cameo appearances from more seasoned players whose names we will be proud to be posting on BiggerDeal.com.

After its WSOP summer break, the Tuesday Night Game will be back in August, hosted by PokerStars.com, so I hope you’ll sign on as soon as we can post the password(s). This year’s next dates for your diary will be:

• Tues 19 Aug
• Tues 16 Sept
• Tues 14 Oct
• Tues 18 Nov
• Tues 16 Dec

Forgive my absence from the site for a while - I’ve been finishing my new book, a poker manual (yes, you heard right, manual) called Holden on Hold’em – to be published by Little, Brown in November. You’ll be hearing more about that – a lot more – nearer the time.

We might even host a party, complete with NLHE tournament, at our bricks-and-mortar partner the Loose Cannon Club, in London’s Blackfriars.

And I’m hoping soon to be able to announce other big events at the Loose Cannon this autumn, where we can all get together offline.

In the meantime, go get ’em, whether you’re headed for Vegas or not. And pass on the word to your poker pals: BiggerDeal.com is the only place to be for poker sophisticates. See you at those Tuesday Game final tables !

Since taking over the World Series of Poker, and moving it to the Rio in 2005, Harrah’s hasn’t had the greatest press. Critics and players have complained about how corporate the event has become, with beer commercials on every table layout and ESPN dictating the scheduling of final tables.

Some of the carping has been deserved, especially concerning the terrible bathroom facilities in the WSOP’s first year at the Rio, the sudden appearance of extra chips in the main event a couple of years back, and Harrah’s swingeing 6% cut of the entry fee.

But generally I think they have done a pretty good job. It is hard to imagine that Becky Binion would have ever grown the World Series to the size where there would be 3,929 players sitting down for a $1,500 no limit tournament more than a month before the main event, as happened earlier this week. Poker players are, as a group, one of the biggest collection of moaners and whingers I have ever come across; even if they were all given free entry to the main event, I suspect some would complain that they would rather have played two pot limit Omaha tournaments at $5,000 a time instead. Harrah’s has responded to the criticisms it has received, listened to player suggestions and, in several cases, actually responded to those ideas and made changes for the better.

Players often forget that Harrah’s is the largest casino company in the world, and its private equity buyers have a seriously hefty pile of debt to pay off. It should come as no surprise that management tries to make as much money out of the event as humanly possible. Harrah’s is not a charity – any more than the Binions were – and it has taken a punt on poker in a way that few of its rival Vegas operators were prepared to. (Poker produces far lower returns per square foot than slot machines, and you don’t have to worry about slot machines turning up for work or needing to go on a break).

Anyway, the whole point of this blog is to praise something Harrah’s has introduced at this year’s World Series of Poker – the Excessive Celebration Rule. It came into force last Saturday, and states that ‘excessive celebration through extended theatrics, inappropriate behavior or physical actions, gestures or conduct may be subject to penalty.’

The rule has already informally become known among players as the Hevad Khan rule, after the final table antics of last year’s sixth-place finisher. His shouting, grimacing and all round play-acting were considered by many to be disrespectful both to the event and his fellow competitors.

Now such behaviour can be punished. ‘We’ve introduced a new rule that puts a focus on unsportsmanlike conduct and brings to life our desire to have the competitive field as enjoyable and pleasant for the players as possible,’ said Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack in an interview with USA Today.

‘You could be put on the rail (held out of play) for a few minutes, you could have a forfeiture of chips, there can be a forfeiture of prize money, there can be ejection from the tournament. We even have the ability to ban people from future WSOP events.’

Khan was hardly the first person to behave like this at the tables, and over the past five years I have seen some pretty astounding rubdowns and arrogance from players. The motto ‘get it quietly’ seems to have passed them by.

Part of the problem was that the cameras patrolling the floor at the Rio would focus only on those who brought attention upon themselves – so players soon learned that if they wanted to be on TV (and seen by all their buddies), then the most likely way to achieve that was to behave like a total tool. There was a snowball effect to this as television editing meant that viewers at home were educated that ‘in your face’ behaviour was perfectly acceptable at the World Series (where were the commentators saying: ‘He’ll be embarrassed as heck when he sees the footage and realizes that he looks like an utter tosspot’?).

So far, from what I have heard, the rule has been sensibly applied and, most importantly, is actually being enforced. Unlike the F-bomb rule (anti-swearing), it has a high degree of subjectivity as to what constitutes excessive celebration, and I hope that it is applied consistently throughout the tournament. If someone gets kicked out from the final table, and it turns out that similar behaviour in an earlier tournament has not been punished by a different member of the tournament staff, then I could see lawsuits flying.

I still expect to see some pretty rough behaviour at the World Series tables - you can’t expect players to turn off their emotions when so much money is involved – but it might at least calm some of the worst exhibitionists and make life a little happier for the 99% of players who just want to get on with it.

PS: One small criticism of Harrah’s relating to the record-entry $1,500 event (event 2) of this year’s World Series. Players were forced to play until 5.40am on Tuesday morning because Harrah’s and ESPN’s schedules were not flexible enough to add an extra day. I know these things are hard to arrange – all the management who could make that sort of level of decision were probably still fast asleep in bed – but with so much money at stake, it is tough on players to keep them playing for 16 hours or longer, especially as it was clear that some were losing focus and making major mistakes as it got past the 4am mark.

Expertise at poker used to be an unwritten job requirement for all would-be US Presidents. Proficient White House poker-players have ranged from Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt and Warren Harding to FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ and Nixon.

We poker players can only be expected to approve. Were I a US citizen, the poker-playing candidate would always get my vote. As I noted in my 1990 book Big Deal, Truman played the game with the White House press corps while pondering whether to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan; Nixon financed his first political race on his wartime poker winnings in the Navy; Johnson used his poker know-how to forge early political alliances in Texas.

In recent years, however, this great American tradition seems to have fallen out of fashion: Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr – not a cardsharp among them. Or is it just that America’s ‘new puritanism’ has all candidates of whatever party zipping their lips about their enthusiasm for anything remotely to do with gambling? This seems to be why the world is not yet aware of the poker skills of Senator Barack Obama, who now seems certain to be this autumn’s Democratic candidate against John McCain.

Asked by the Press Association to name a ‘hidden talent’, Obama revealed early in the campaign that he considers himself ‘a pretty good poker-player’. Subsequent investigations were hampered by a sudden shutdown on the subject from his anxious media minders. But it is already on the record that, after a cool reception from fellow legislators in 1997, when he first took his seat in the Illinois senate, Obama won over colleagues of all parties with his charm and expertise at the poker table.

With another freshman senator, Terry Link, Obama co-hosted a regular game for which there was soon a waiting-list including Republicans as well as fellow-Democrats. ‘When it turned out that I could sit down and have a beer and go out for a round of golf or get a poker game going,’ Obama told the Chicago Tribune, ‘I probably confounded some of their expectations.’

His was not a big game – on a bad night, a player could lose 200 bucks – but Obama has declined to discuss it as his hopes of the nomination have risen. ‘American Puritanism,’ says the Illinois-based, Obama-supporting writer James McManus, bestselling author of Positively Fifth Street and the forthcoming The Story of Poker, ‘has turned playing poker for tiny stakes into radioactive information.’

In a recent New Yorker piece, McManus suggested that poker was the secret of rookie Obama’s transformation among ‘the Chicago machine pols and downstate soybean farmers’ from ‘overeducated bleeding-heart and greenhorn’ to regular kinda guy. Said Link: ‘You hung up your guns at the door… It was just a boys’ night out – a release from our legislative responsibilities.’

From what I’m told by intimates, Obama’s poker skills bode well for a potential leader of the free world. He is versatile, but shuns unnecessary risks; he wants to be holding premium cards before he even thinks of getting involved; the only gambles he takes are very closely calculated.

America would be mad to pass up on a potential leader of such shrewd poker acumen. In a world so fraught with danger, a leader of such visionary powers will surely restore his country’s tarnished reputation around the world. So let’s hear it for one potential sign of Obamanian ‘change’: White House poker games played, like Harry Truman’s, with chips embossed with the presidential seal.

A version of this article first appeared in The Observer (of London) on 18 May 2008

The World Series as we know it was born in 1971. Since then, player numbers have swelled, events have been added and the tournament relocated, but the format has remained largely unchanged. The pattern so far has been familiar: poker-mania in Vegas builds during the preceding events until a champion is crowned in the early hours of the summer series’ last day. The following morning the arena is disassembled, the gathered poker masses go their separate ways and the build-up to the following summer begins.

Not any more.

As of 2008, the main event will be played down to the final nine players on July 14th, at which point the tournament will be halted. With the players for the final table decided, the poker world will enter hype-building mode for four months. ESPN will run a series of shows with footage of the tournament so far, with focus on the nine surviving players. As a television event, nine fortunate amateurs and anonymous pros playing for the title might lack the draw of other sporting events; by the time the players reconvene in Las Vegas on November 9^th to play their final table, however, ESPN is hoping to have built enough of a back-story to captivate the television audience.

Some of the poker world is already up-in-arms about the change. Unlike the operators of other major sporting events, Caesar’s Entertainment (the new corporate identity, as of last month, of Harrah’s Entertainment) gets to run the WSOP and sell its television rights without having to stump up the prize money. They even take a cut of our entry fees to pay for costs and to line their pockets. “They’ve got such a good deal,” say the antagonists of the reform, “that messing with the format to boost ratings is just greedy.” This seems like a knee-jerk reaction; after all, it’s not a zero sum game. What’s good for Caesar’s Entertainment and ESPN isn’t necessarily bad for “us”.

The poker bubble has unquestionably burst and not just because of UIGEA (the US’s dastardly Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act of 2006). Last year, entries dropped in the World Series for only the second time in its history because of this new law, but television ratings are also down and TV shows are being cancelled. This is indicative of a change in sentiment inexplicable by the Act alone. The tournament scene reached a peak of profitability a couple of years ago on the back of the influx of new players created by the spike in poker’s popularity. If a change in WSOP structure is what is needed to rekindle the public’s interest and encourage new players into the game we, as players ourselves, should be looking to accommodate the change. It is no surprise that the change in format has been approved by the Players Advisory Council.

Furthermore, the nine players themselves can use these four months to leverage their position with potential sponsors; they can shop around for the highest sponsorship package to wear a site’s logo on their shirt. Unfortunately, if a player qualifies online, he may already be contracted to represent the site. If he is a big-name pro, he may already have a sponsor. Of the nine players reaching the final table, it may be that only one or two are in a position to negotiate.

The only group of players that really have a cause for complaint are the established and successful tournament pros. The change in structure will level the playing field for the final table. Any recreational players and satellite qualifiers will now have four months to train, read and take lessons on final table NLH strategy. Four months of solid study can revolutionise a player’s game. As a result, the standard of play at the final table should be the highest since before the poker boom.

Of some concern, too, is immigration and the IRS. The majority of players in Vegas in July will be on non-work visa waivers. Although they are playing in the ‘main event’, they are not in the country to seek financial gain. Non-US amateur players have previously been allowed to claim 100% of their prize and handle their own tax authorities as they saw fit. Come November, when their face has been on ESPN for four months and in the poker literature, their claim that they are not entering the country to seek financial gain may be a little harder to substantiate. Although Caesars’ lawyers have promised to assist in the arrangement of entertainment visas, if even one of the players is refused entry to the US, or the IRS decides to withhold part of even one player’s payout, the new format will have been a disaster.

Only time will tell how the new structure goes down with the community at large. Sure, the town won’t be packed with most of the poker tournament community in November. There won’t quite be the same crescendo of poker frenzy culminating in the final river card of the summer. But if it means that nine lucky people can live the dream for four months instead of 12 hours, and if it keeps our game in the public eye for a few more years yet, it’s fine by me.

Oliver Chubb

“If you start me up, I’ll never stop”

Ever wonder why Mick Jagger is still touring with Keith, Ronnie, and Charlie, dancing across stages around the world, and certainly stressing his 60+ year old bones? Remember, this guy is a legendary businessman – he probably has the money to buy W1 if he wanted to.

I thought about that as the fireworks glowed around the face of Glen Chorny, the new European Poker Tour  grand final champion. It was about 2:00 AM in Monte Carlo, and the last card of the tournament had been dealt just a scant few minutes prior. We’d gotten precious little sleep the night before and with the closing-up activities, the emotionally necessary gathering at the bar, and early morning flights awaiting, we stood to get less sleep that night than we’d gotten the night before.

I stood there and thought, “Man, I’m going to miss this.” More about that in a second.

You get tired of the airplane seats and realizing that you know the safety briefing as well as the flight attendant does. The border control officer can’t find an empty place to stamp your passport [1] and you long to wake up and be 100% sure, even groggy, what town you’re in.

But you never ever tire of walking into that hotel – maybe a hotel you’ve walked into last year and/or the year before – and having PokerStars Swedish blogger Lina Olofsson throw her arms around you in welcome. Or receive warm handshakes from Sunset+Vine cameramen Dave and Liam.

You get re-energized when you see the smiling faces of the players. Some old veterans and many – you can always spot them – first-timers. They know that they’ll start the tournament tomorrow with the same number of chips as Patrik Antonius and Daniel Negreanu. That if they get kings and Luca Pagano gets queens that they beat him 80% of the time. [2]

But what you most love is the thrill when the tournament director says, “Shuffle up and deal!” That moment when the cacophony of hundreds of nervous conversations is replaced with the rural night quiet of chip-cicadas riffling.

Yeah, I know why Mick does it. Because there’s nothing like putting on a great show for an appreciative audience. Like getting a high-five from Antonio Esfandiari or Marc “Randall” Flowers teaching me the patented (and extremely secret) “Rand-all-in handshake”. We put smiles on people’s faces, joy in their hearts, and adrenaline in their bloodstreams. We rock the European poker world, and I’m proud to be part of the band.

Well, “to have been part of the band.”

See, I’m stepping down, just like Bill Wyman did. It has nothing to do with the EPT, believe me. It’s just that it was time to go back to the United States. Lisa and I, we’ve got a new house in Asheville, North Carolina, in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She’s going to teach singing and I’m going to play bluegrass music and go fly fishing for trout.

Oh, and be the COO of Cardrunners.com. Come on over and check us out.

It’s time for us to be back in the States and I just couldn’t justify living in the U.S. and working in Europe. Which isn’t to say I didn’t try. But the Cardrunners opportunity came along and was too exciting to turn down. You can follow the twists and turns of my career over there.

First, though, I have to stop, put down the electric bass, and salute my bandmates:

From the PokerStars crew: Marta, Hilda, [3] Tori, Conrad, Jeanne, Andrew, Louise, Chris, Tricia the bag lady, Laura, and a million more who showed up off and on for various events.

The video and TV people: Nikki, Reshi, Francine, Marc, James, Chris, Lawrence, the SikTilt  guys, Kara “One shot” Scott, John, Vlatka, Dave, Liam, Matty, Dan, Dan, and more than I could possibly name.

The bloggers and photographers: Mad, [4] Stephen, Neil, Mickey, Lina, Howard, Klaus. They bring the buzz to the outside world and that brings the players, and that, as I constantly remind people, means that we don’t have to do real w*rk for a living. The bloggers are my heroes. [5]

The dealers and floor people: Neil, Steve, Allen, Peter, Charlie, Charley, Gabi, the names go on forever, but without them, we have no show. A tip of the hat and a fiver, with appreciation, from the wallet.

Of course, the Rolling Stones without Mick are just another band. And the EPT without John Duthie is, well, nothing. I can’t describe how much I’ve learned from watching this man work. He is a living, breathing eye of a hurricane. He can walk into a scene of total chaos and suddenly there is calm. “Ah, John is here,” people say. “Certainly, all will be well now,” is the unspoken follow-up. I have also been deeply privileged to hear many of his stories. They are delivered in understatement, with cigarette smoke and cappuccino steam side dishes, John’s grey eyes dancing with merriment at his own high jinx. The “Tale of Jennifer Bidgood”, recounted in the restaurant at the Monte Carlo Bay, had half a dozen of us breathless with laughter, eyes watering. John had effortlessly transported us to his adolescent world, played the fool without shame, and gave all of us a few moments of absolute joy and glee. It has been my great honor and privilege to work for him. And greater honor to call him my friend.

Finally, a concert is really about the audience. And an EPT event is really about the players. It is you folks who create these events and give them their positive vibe. You give the game your energy, your concentration, and your determination. You suffer hideous mind-numbing bad beats and yet, with few exceptions, smile through the tears and shake hands with the person who busted you. And, bless your hearts, you always had a smile and a good word for me when we’d cross paths at the venue, on the street of an EPT host city, or in an airport concourse. All of you are, indeed, the core of the EPT family, and I hope that I’ll be welcome at family reunions in the future.

I do need to single out one group from the players for specific mention:

There is a (rapidly growing) group of North American players who are coming over to play in EPT events. Some of them are here because the United States government, in its wisdom, judges it appropriate for 18-year-olds to dodge IEDs in Baghdad but not play at a game of skill and chance for money. [6] Many of them, even past the age of 21, have discovered the ineffable joy that the EPT has – a camaraderie and spirit completely alien to any WPT or WSOP event. But for whatever reason, they endure trans-Atlantic flights, show up completely jet-lagged, but still hold their own against Europe’s best. [7] So Brandon, charder, timex, ch0ppy, daut44, tnetter, randallin, weaktight, RickyF, Dave Robinson, KenH, Martine23, TommyC, shaundeeb, BillE, JoeS: this one is for you. Thank you for the smiles, the handshakes, and the American accents that remind me of home.

Finally, as part of all this, I am also leaving Bigger Deal. I will be doing my blogging with Cardrunners and I’m delighted to say that I go with Tony Holden’s good wishes and blessings. I pretty much can’t believe that my name was in the masthead alongside names such as Holden, Alvarez, and Alson. They are real Writers, and I’m just a pretender to that title. But I was wildly proud to be in that group nonetheless.

I leave you with one image that sums it up: on the penultimate day of the Monte Carlo event, I walked through the media area. There sat Annette Obrestad and Tim Vance, the fellow from St. Louis who won the Copenhagen event. Annette was teaching Tim to play Chinese poker. But not for money (yet, anyway). It could have been a vignette from any family reunion. “This,” I mused, “is what makes the EPT what it is.”

So, as Mick would say at the end of the show, good night, Monte Carlo. It’s been an amazing tour. I won’t be on the tour next year, but I do plan to return to be in the “audience”, at least once.

“In Poland there’s an inn, in Poland there’s an inn”

You get in the elevator (“lift” to the Brits) at the Warsaw Hyatt, and right there, engraved into the door jamb, is the name “Schindler”. I have a confession to make: I’ve never seen the movie Schindler’s List. Whenever I’ve seen a movie (or play) like that, I’ve left feeling like my guts have been ripped out. So no Hotel Rwanda for me. There’s enough of that on CNN, so I don’t go looking for more of it in the time I have for entertainment. Hell, I’m not even sure if the Schindler stamped into the metal of that elevator door is the same Schindler who saved so many Jews from death during World War II. But I’m going with “Yes, that’s his company.” And I’m delighted that it’s prospered all these years.

Down in the casino, I come across a bunch of different issues of Card Player magazine, all in Polish. I instantly went to the index, and discovered that, yes, I had articles in some of them. Which means that somebody had to translate my piece “Play a hand with Ken” into Polish. I can’t decide if that’s really cool, or I just feel bad for the guy that had to do it.

The first day of the European Poker Tour Warsaw event, the Harvard Business School was having a get-together in the hotel lobby. A bunch of Harvard B-school alums, friends, and hangers-on, ordering from the same bar as a crowd of poker players. I know that poker is big at Harvard. In fact, a famous professor at Harvard Law School, Charles Nesson, has formed an organization to teach kids good life skills using poker as the decision-making model. So I was awfully disappointed that the two groups didn’t manage to find each other to arrange some, ah, “inter-disciplinary discussions”.  I kept looking for a Harvard t-shirt in the cash games, but didn’t see one. Silly B-school people, attending boring workshops when they could have been in the juiciest PLO game I’ve seen in a long time.

Which brings me to the insanely attractive women that seem to be everywhere in this country. [1] One American Internet whiz kid described it this way: “So this other American guy and I are walking through a club, and we decide to have a bet: the first one of us to spot a woman we could both agree wasn’t beautiful – that guy would win 200 Euros. Eventually, we gave up and called the bet a push.” Neil Stoddart, the EPT tour photographer, said, “All during the communist era, you never saw pictures of beautiful women inside the Eastern Bloc. Were they keeping them to themselves, or what?” I pointed this out to my wife, Lisa, as we passed through airport security on the way out of Warsaw. It was overseen by a beautiful blonde lass, in camouflage and a sidearm. “That’s certainly the most gorgeous armed security guard I’ve ever seen.” I mentioned Neil’s comment to Lisa. “Think about it,” she replied – “Suppose your country was a puppet of a major superpower. Your government had no authority, you couldn’t travel outside your country, you had zero consumer luxuries, and nothing to look forward to. Eventually, that would reflect in your facial expression, your physical stature – everything about you.” If this means that the fall of the Berlin Wall was responsible for the megawatt smile on the barista who made “long coffees” for me at the casino bar every morning, then viva la revolucion.

Which really does bring me to the coffee, which was, without any questions whatsoever, the best I’ve drunk on the EPT.  And this comes from somebody who will sip espresso at the drop of a demitasse. More importantly, John Duthie heartily agreed about the coffee’s quality. This is a man whose last cappuccino was never long ago, and whose next one is never far off, so his judgment is unquestioned. A “long coffee” is simply espresso that has been allowed to drip through the grounds longer than a standard espresso shot. It means that the overall drink is a bit weaker, and perhaps a bit more bitter. But compared to drip coffee, it is… well, there’s no comparison. You put in a little sugar, top it with a drop of milk to smooth the flavor, and your day is off to a dynamite start.

It was fun seeing Kara “One-Shot” Scott [2] show up in jeans and a PokerStars dress shirt. She was actually playing in the event as a PokerStars-sponsored player and was approximately 1000 times more excited to be at the table than interviewing people who’d busted out. Alas, she busted out after about three hours on the first day, but by all accounts, she acquitted herself most admirably – these things just happen in a poker tournament. We also asked her to take a turn at final table announcing. She said she was nervous about doing that. “You? Nervous in front of a camera?” A woman who spends more time in front of a TV camera than the rest of us combined. “What if I make a mistake in my announcing, and it affects what the players do?” Always thinking about the game – what a woman. To nobody’s surprise, she did splendidly, but she admitted that the crowds around really did make her nervous at first.

I saved the best for last. At the Warsaw Hyatt, they get poker players. They have a special dinner buffet for the players that stays open until, well, I don’t know. I do know that I went in there at 1:30 AM more than once, to find it well-stocked and being maintained by the staff. Even more delightful, a fellow could play until the poker room closed at 6:00 AM, go to bed for seven hours, then come back to the poker players’ buffet, and get (brace yourself) omelettes made to order, fresh fruit, cereals, and coffee. At 1:00 PM.

The other good news? For EPT Season Five, the Warsaw event has been moved to November. So you only have eight months before you get to go (back?). See you there.

[1] It didn’t, really, but that was the best segue I could think of.    Go Back

[2] That’s “Kara”, rhymes with “American”, not “Kahra”, rhymes with “car”. Go Back

On to last night’s adventure. One hundred and forty nine people worked out how to enter before the kick-off time, many of them being continental Europeans with a different time zone altogether. The pace was brisk as we hurtled into the 18 paid places by 21:40, just 140 minutes after the start of play. I for one was one of the many to get rivered by an Ace hitting the table when a hopeful Ace-King called my all-in pair on the flop. Tony Holden went shortly afterwards and it was left to Cindy Blake to carry the Bigger Deal torch into the last fifty places where she finally succumbed.

From the last 18 PokerRef, Kartajan, jashawk, Guessthenews, marcmac, sam2020, freeadm, NonBlonde and zagga took the $50 places which left us with the final nine at 22:10. The blinds were 800/1600 with a running ante of 150 and an average chip stack of around 25,000. Miss_Bongo had the clear chip lead with just over 50,000.

The pressure of having to pay close to 4000 in chips per round guaranteed action and ten minutes on Ornivas got all-in with A-7 off suit. Miss_Bongo thought and called with J-T hearts to not only hit a ten but three hearts as well. We were eight and the blinds increased to 1000/2000 (ante 200) after 20 minutes.

The Enimal saw 7-7 as the time to move in but unfortunately found FILFUNGI with the bullets. No seven and we were seven. Low chips forced 24/7EVEN to make a move with 7-5, PokerBozzie called with A-Q and J-J-A-J-X on the board made it six players left. So far no major hand reversals. FILFUNGI and Miss_Bongo were chip leaders.

The cruising RedDevil had his stack crippled when Macthehat rivered a card and then found 7-7 to put the rest of them in the middle of the table. The A-Q of FILFUNGI took care of them and the table had shrunk to five.

Macthehat now flying high found a pair of Queens in the hole and got HisSweetbaby to go all-in with just a bare Ace. Another Ace on the table meant Macthehat was now low and the rest of his chips went to the very stable looking FILFUNGI. Down to four. At 22:46 the blinds rose again to 1500/3000 with a 300 ante.

Ten minutes later and more chip pressure forced PokerBozzie to take a stand with King high but a low board of 2-4-4-3-4 meant that anyone with an Ace would take the pot. HisSweetbaby did and we were now three players all of whom were happily bantering away with praise for each others play in good humour.

The final hike in stakes came at 23:01 with a move to 2000/4000 (ante 400). The play was swift and after raise, re-raise and call, HisSweetbaby was glad to see his/her Ace was in good position against the Q-J of FILFUNGI. Unfortunately not only a Queen flopped but a Jack followed quickly afterwards to put HisSweetbaby into third place.

The last two players were evenly matched and quickly came to the conclusion that a split was the best thing after four hours of play. The money was allocated and the two went on to play for honour, switching chip leads at frenetic pace. Finally FILFUNGI found K-Q of diamonds at the same time that Miss_Bongo found A-J of spades and all the money went into the middle. Both an Ace and a King hit the virtual table and with no improvement Miss_Bongo was declared the winner.

After a difficult creation the tournament was played with fine spirit, not a bad word ejected from any keyboard around the globe. Worthy winners took home over one thousand dollars each for an $11 stake. We all look forward to the next event!

149 players

1 Miss_Bongo (Espergaerde) $1047.50

2 FILFUNGI (Hartlepool) $1047.50

3 HisSweetbaby (Wetumpka) $498.61

4 PokerBozzie (’s-Hertogenbosch) $335.20

5 Macthehat (Edinburgh) $272.35

6 RedDevil 6699 (Manchester) $209.50

7 24/7EVEN (’s-Hertogenbosch) $146.65

8 The Enimal (Noordwijk) $108.94

9 Ornivas (UKFF) $71.23