Blogging the EPT

You'd think I'd be sick of blogging, after working 14 hour days writing about poker for PokerStars blog. It was an intense experience in lots of ways, my first time blogging about a major poker tournament. There were 400 players, and I was thinking -I don't know the names of the people I need to know, and I can't count chips, and how do you keep track of who's gone out, and how do you write about poker hands and make it seem interesting?

I spent quite a bit of time worrying, and hating it, and writing stuff quickly and wishing I could go back and write it better - but always there'd be something else I needed to write. And being tired didn't help. Amy has a getting up at 6am habit, this doesn't really suit getting to sleep at 5am after working all day.

I muddled through, and there was some blog posts I regretted, and some I thought were ok. And it was sort of lonely, I didn't have a lot of help, and the camera was a nightmare, everyone looked at it to try to advise on why the pictures were coming out blurry, but no one could properly figure it out... But none of that mattered, despite the bits of it I hated (it all got a bit much sometimes) I feel proud that I got a blog written that almost made sense. It was a great feeling on Sunday night when it was all over. Good or bad, I was happy to have done it. Funny that I could hate bits of it so much, but by the end I'd just think, 'I loved that! So when can I do it all again?'

It's because it's writing. I've always been happiest when I'm writing. 14 hours of high pressure writing about a fairly dull subject, when you're a bit of a perfectionist, isn't ideal. But the same principle applies as anything else, it's still weaving something out of nothing with words on the page.

There were 50 stairs from the press room to the casino, I was constantly running back and forth trying to make something interesting out of players sitting in a room with some chips and cards. When you write a line you like, that's special magic...

Steve and I were worried about working together. How odd that we should end up doing the same job? Do you think we're the only poker blogger couple in the world?

We snatched a few dinner breaks together, Steve showed me the ropes, we shared chipcounts and hand stories... We both care about our work a lot so we didn't let the boyfriend/girlfriend thing distract us. There were just a few secret kisses in the casino corridors.

And now, back to answering emails from players who don't think their chat should be banned.

I would love to write for PokerStars blog again, to get right the things I did wrong, to beat that damn camera and take decent photos this time, to get to know the players I'm going to see again and again, to write a better blog next time...

We'll see.