Take Out the Trash Day

Jees, it's tough to come up with enough rubbish to post something everyday. I was going to post something yesterday, got home late and was feeling far too good to do anything so gave it a miss. Now, the pressure is on...

I think there was an episode of the West Wing called "Take out the trash day", or something like that. Basically, all the bad news gets announced on the friday because no-one reads the paper on a saturday. Hell, who knows if that's true, but if typing all this nonsense got me a title for this post, then that's good enough for me.

A lot of planning for Foxwoods today. This is the next tournament I'm heading to - a vast multiple casino'd building in the mddle of the Connecticut-Nowhere. A town planner's nightmare, a developers dream. Lots of players hate the place, and I have a sneaky feeling that we'll only find out why when we get there.

But we're professionals. We'll be ready like no one else can.

I played tonight too, first time in a while and it showed early. The £10 re-buy, the big brother to the £5 turkey shoot on a tuesday at Gutshot. I'd decided to take no shit and play maniac -aggressive at the first sign of a high card.

Ace-King twice. Somehow I blinked and found myself all-in both times and watched as two people re-raised behind me. When that happens you know you're behind. Bugger. Best get out I thought. I was distracted, couldnt concentrate.

Anyway, were into the weekend now, where the mission is to keep out of the house, buy food and not smoke. But I have nice things planned. Things will be fine.

Not much of a post. There'll be better rubbish later on...

Give me your wallet, keys and travel card

I've lived in London for three and a half years now. During that time I've gone through the whole police charge list of emotions that newcomers get. First the sheer awe at how big the place is. Then comes a slight familiarity with the places you live and work. It's good. You like the town. You're offended when you're not peddled skunk on your way out of Camden tube.

Then the dark underbelly emerges, an ugly place where nastiness lurks and tries to steal your wallet whilst you're waiting for change. Naturally you hand it over because you don't like the look of the beast, and you accept that London is a hell hole that attracts this kind of loon, and you walk with your head down and talk to no one.

Then, you learn to live with the madness, and become strange yourself. The lunatic locals are at least your lunatic locals. Better this way than some provincial town where they don't understand these methods. No, now you're in for the long haul. You may hate the place, but the only worst place you could be is anywhere else.

Lump it.

I went for a walk tonight. One of those late night things where you have the time and no rush to be anywhere, so you pick a tube station and take t from there. A guilt free adventure. I don't know anywhere else you can shop for DVDs at 9.10pm, or where smokers pass a cigarette end down a station platform, like the Olympic torch, because no one amongst you has a light. That kind of touching brotherhood keeps me here.

My day got better. Maybe things are salvageable after all. I'll give it a try. Maybe that's what determines how much you like this place.

Karma

It's wednesday. My article for the week is done and well, the writing side of my job is finished for a couple of days. No more creativity. Relief.

But it's going to be one of those horrendously shitty days today, I just know it. You get a sense for these things.

My best friend lives in Mexico and spent a good part of his professional Buddhist life teaching me about Karma. I'm not talking 'My Name is Earl' Karma, I mean the real stuff. I'm not a full-on convert but there's a little of it floating around, I've seen it too much, and I think I'm in the downswing part of it all. Bad things.

But anyway. It's nothing Marilyn Manson can't shift. Sometimes the only thing that helps is Marilyn and his pseudo forces of hell rattling around the flat. That should do it until the police arrive.

Can you still buy Shake n' Vac?

I may need some...

Do they still make it? I remember he ads in the eighties. A homely woman dancing around a living room talking to camera and then breaking into song. But working from home can do that to you...

I have to get rid of the smoke smell in the carpet before I leave the flat. I didn't realise there was one but as a smoker I'm immune from this it seems. But it's there, apparently, even though I'm hanging further out the window to smoke these days.

Nice area, needs work

Went flat hunting today. If ever there was a more miserable experience than discovering first hand that pictures can be deceiving it has to be this. The camera always lies.

Anyway, to Clapham. A nice area, with just one dodgy street it seems. No prizes for guessing which street the flat was on. The hardest part of the whole sorry experience is sounding convincing when you tell the landlord "Great place!" when all you want to do is get out of there before the mold spots a free lunch. Having to hang out of the window to sit at the desk is something I'm not perfectly happy with. Still, I do that to smoke so I could probably do that to work. But no. Not in this place.

Hell.

But I'll go on looking because I can't stay here. Living with your ex is no good for anyone.

Winners and wads of fake cash

Well that's that.

Three days of the district line, dodgy sandwiches and having to sit in on conversations about things normal people will never understand. The British Poker Open is over.

But the press corp are rarely made in the standard mold, and we thrive in these circumstances, where conversation is one-sided and even nodding compliantly doesn't get your name remembered. It's a cutting edge world.

I'm glad it's over. Noah Boeken won, to the relief of the marketeers who can now use his name to promote the thing next year. It was touch and go that an unknown qualifier would triumph, but when it went heads up between Noah and Marc Goodwin, they began to rest easy. They even began to care less about the thinning audience.

Marc Goodwin took second, and immediately headed to The Vic where he held the overnight chip lead in the final day of the big one there. I say 'big one'. I really have no idea. I just know he's on fire these days and doesn't want to go to sleep in case he loses form...

Glad to be out of there, despite the hospitality, and back to home working, where at least when I talk to myself I call myself by name.

99 Slobbering idiots

For most blokes in the poker world a night making sure Isabelle Mercier has all she needs is the job only God himself can hand down. And only then when he's drunk.

She was coming to Gutshot to play a tournament. Crowds would be heavy. The booze bill heavier.

Isabelle is one of the first ladies of the game, if you can discount the 'old' connotations to that. She has a WPT win, makes a killing online and after a recent bad run has started to get the results together. She gets a lot of stick, but she's nice enough. And all I had to do was take her picture a few times, ignore the ribbing, and leave her to it.

She's also one of PokerStars' sponsored 'ambassadors'. A few months ago, when I was in the grooming stages of my current job, I used to hate PokerStars. I wrote terrible things about them thinking I was making a stand against the Poker Corporates. Well that's kind of what I thought. Mostly I thought I was being clever. I got nothing out of it, but the boss got a letter asking us to stop being nasty. I remember he didn't like the 'us' part.

Now of course, I think PokerStars are great. I have my reasons. Yes, I sold out, but who really cares? They let me go to their tournaments around Europe and give you hats and t-shirts and chips and things. And who amongst us could turn that kind of crap down?

But all this Isabelle stuff was a bit of a drag, with other things occupying my mind. But she was friendly, made polite conversation, didn't;t mind poker players "just squeezing past", and bumped up the numbers for the £100 freezeout at Gutshot. That's why we gave her lots of free drinks...

Time please

I hate to admit this, but maybe it's for the best. I'm bored shitless.

It's the first day of my job I've felt this way, so it had to come. Poker is a great game, but watching two slow heats on a saturday is no longer a novelty. It's a hard slog and only my professionalism will see me through. But I'm all out of that. I'm back to hanging on.

But my 'hang on' mode is one of the best. I can brace myself for any kind of tedium better than anyone I know. It's become a matter of pride - just how long can I cope with this madness?

Seems I'm about to find out, as this heat shows no sign of finishing soon. Even Mike Matusow's lip has faded and he's taking it seriously. 'Not long now', we thought an hour ago.

The Green Room

Inside the Green Room at the Riverside Studios, where the coffee flows easy but cold, and the bacon sandwiches help fight off the thought of having to pay for lunch.

Actually it's not that bad. Mike Matusow is hitting on my co-worker so I can get some work done. She herself is hitting on Gus Hansen, and once Gus hits on Mike the circle will be complete.

Gus Hansen is playing awfully of course, so all is right in the world. And a 71 year-old internet qualifier George Fraser is raising hell on every hand. When he flopped the nuts his glasses actually fell off.

No nine, no nine...

Headaches, deadlines and text messages I'd rather not deal with.

The British Poker Open seems to be going well, apart from the lack of live bodies to put in the front row seats. But walking into a cinema and seeing live poker on the screen is a treat for most poker fans, a free buffet and beer is a dead cert.

So, to the press lunch at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.

Players and press, along with clever people who wangled a free pass and a chance to fill the last tournament seat labeled "Journalist". Some players /media folk desperately want this chance for exposure, but for the weary, the thought of being hooked up to heart monitors, microphones and then being plugged into the mainframe is no idea of joy. That includes me. I was among them as I stood around a table for a one-handed satellite. No time for a media event they said, get to the point fast.

T7 off-suit. Harmless enough. Until a straight draw formed making a nine on the river a sure fire way of sending me to another public humiliation. It didn't come, and I live to fight another day.

That was day two over with. Devilfish, Carlo Citrone, Dave Colclough, Marcel Luske and Marc Goodwin all span the wheel. Tomorrow it's Gus Hansen, Noah Boeken and the riptide of Full Tilt poker washing ashore. But only if they can make it to the studio for 9am. No fear. They'll start without me.

British Poker Open

It's the second day of the British Poker Open today. Normally this doesn't mean much to me. There are thousands of the things every year and one tournament quite quickly looks like another. But this one is of the TV studio kind, and unusually for me, I have to go. Two heats today in a bunker somewhere near Hammersmith. I can't even remember what I need to be there for.

Ah yes, that's it. The Buffet. A friend of mine recently wrote how the collective noun for poker players should be a "buffet". Dead right. It sums up their only basic need outside of poker, and coincidentally the only subject some of them can talk about other than poker. So that's what's going on. The welcome lunch for press and hangers on. Get in, perform a quick buffet run, find a corner and try to make it through the afternoon unscathed.

The other thing is that it's actually work. This ruins a fool proof plan as I have to talk to people, and I can already feel deep down somewhere, half of my nerve endings putting on life jackets. The other half are clutching knives. This is how it goes with interviews. Find a good one and he or she will talk for ages, you press record and sit back. The rest have to be carved out of stone.

So this will take up the weekend, trying to get interviews and writing about the whole thing. It will be a bit of a test because things are a bit hectic these days. But hell, we're living the dream. Game face people.

Definitely the last tin

I'm hoping that I'll be able to do some thinking on this thing. I do most of my thinking hanging out a window of my flat smoking. I get most of my ideas there, always the furthest window from any pen and notebook.

I'm not supposed to be a smoker. I was always the kid at school who knew that smoking was bad, and that I'd never do it, which set me aside from all the other 11 year olds. The teachers told us this and I went along with them. The teachers liked me, always the good boy, but I had to keep them sweet. It was the only way to distract them from noticing how bad I was at the subjects they taught. Keep them on my side. Already I was thinking tactically.

So I smoke. Small cigars mainly. Everytime I buy another tin the voice in my head says "this will be the last tin". But recently I've decided to ignore the voice in my head and just wing it. It's working, but I think it may have a point with the smoking. So this is definitely the last tin. Second to last actually, I have a busy weekend.

So yes, ideas. None so far. But it's early isn't it...

Weird and pro

Well I must be on a roll, or something.

This isn't as easy as I thought. Lots more buttons than I was lead to believe. My crash course in the technical side only mentioned "Log-in", "Create Post" and "Publish". I'm already way out of my depth.

Anyway, I suppose I started this thing to avoid drying up. I have a day job writing. I write about poker. One of the first things you learn when you write about poker is that there's not much you can write about. Even less if you're not of the "Ace-King versus King-Jack" persuasion. I'm not, unfortunately, and I'm in trouble. A couple of ideas saw me though the darker months, but now, well, I'm holding on with my finger nails.

But enough of that. I decided rather than spending the day panel beating three mediocre sentences out of this machine, about some obscure poker pro with no personality, I figured writing something else might be good. Keep the creativity out of traction and the thinking muscles loose. I have my doubts though. One fear is that I'll use ideas here that I could get paid to use in office hours. But when I'm honest with myself I don't worry about that much anymore as I ran out of ideas months ago.

It's a constant worry of the Pro. Being found out, flipped over as a fraud, and having all your worst fears confirmed.

I called this 'Weird, and turning pro' because, well, that's how things have gone recently. My life has always had weirdness involved, in a fun and 'ooh' interesting way of course, and I have just turned pro. Three months to be exact and the view from this side is no clearer than it was over there. Now thought I get paid to do what I've always loved doing. But it was one hell of a ride getting here.

Hunter Thompson said it... "When the going get's weird, the weird turn pro." He was spot on. I loved Hunter. But the bastard shot himself. It left a gap in the world. Now what are we left with? We'll see.

Is this it?

Incredible.

Five years after everyone else but i've jumped on the bandwagon. I should be ashamed. But hell, you're nobody these days if you don't have a blog, so why not? Good opportunity to keep the spelling up to date and kick out those adverbs. Living like Kings of the internet.

Now what?