Blogging for the win

I was reading some of Snoopy’s blog postings on blackbelt poker and it took me back to my brief sojourn as a live tournament reporter or blogger as they are somewhat disrespectfully called.

I had been tremendously lucky in that the first tournament I got to cover is easily the most fun festival in the European poker calendar, the Irish Open. Ton’s of Guinness and a party atmosphere made for 6 long but fun day’s, so when I was asked to cover the London EPT I thought I was in for a blast.

Unfortunately I was not, if you ever get the chance to play or work a major tournament avoid the EPT’s at all costs, there fucking snorefests, nothing but circuit grinders and hoodie wearing euro wankpots, very dull in the most part.

The highlight of day one A was watching Patrick Antonius trying to eat a bowl of spaghetti at the table, whilst playing a hand. The Vic refused to close their restaurant to enable the tournament players to eat there, presumably in case this offended the regular punters pissing away there money on craps and roulette, so the players where forced to eat at the table.

The press room was on the floor below the card room and at least a 700 yard walk up a flight of steps, so day 1 B saw me staying in the poker room and phoning updates through to Nick in the press room, poker news promised to pick up the phone bill but never did, ohhh poker news I loves you(they fucked me for the hotel bill in Ireland, luckily I won €500 in the media event so was not out of pocket).

Anyway Daniel Negreanu was playing, I had interviewed him a day or two before and played with him at a charity event at the Loose Cannon club, playing with him was no accident, the media girl who was managing the draw was holding the ball sack (fnnr) way to low, so I looked at Daniels table and just picked that number. I wanted to play with much more than the other featured pro’s, my mate got drawn next to Dario Mineri and tried to bluff him off the nuts, fecking tool.

Hevad Khan who was a sponsored poker stars player at the time, this was shortly after his deep and deeply annoying run in the Main event went on to win, and he kept the package even though he was already paid in by stars, lulz, he kept the charity money, what a twat.

Anyway the reason I mentioned Daniel was because he got a bit shitty about an update I did, what happened was he managed to get knocked out by Joseph Mouawad the Lebanese guy who went onto win it. I only caught the river so asked Marc Goodwin what happened, I think Goodwin gave me some old shit, probable motivated by the spat over the golf money that was owed by him and Ram Vaswani to Phil Ivey.

Anyway Negreanu writes on his blog complaining about the way his exit hand was written up and how poker needs to be more professional and so does its writers, which im thinking fuck you mate, £75 for an 18 hour day, my day job pays a fuck load more than this shit and nits nowhere near as hard, so this is what you can expect until the news people start shelling out decent wages! Anyway the truth is there’s usually so much floor to cover that you end up having to ask for second hand information when a big name busts out, so when one starts acting a plum because you get something silly like the wrong inconsequential suit on the turn you think fuck him.

Anyway, don’t know what the purpose of that was, on poker front im back on Ladbrokes to try to qualify for Kilarney, that was great fun last year, and well if BurnleyMik can win over there anyone can! Just kidding well done Mick!

Well done to Kev Bloor as well, he had a tasty score this week and there’s not a nicer fella in poker, so WP Sir.