Michael Craig's Journal

I’m trying to divide my last week at the Series between working on the Full Tilt book - my editor, Colin Fox, e-mailed me today about the progress, along with complimenting me on the quality of the blog, apparently missing all my moaning-and-wailing entries about how there is no chance I will make the September 1 deadline - and finding interesting stories and participating in interesting adventures as the Main Event gets INTERESTING.

Today is supposed to be a Full Tilt day for the following reasons: (a) I didn’t get to sleep until 5 AM and have been taking narcolepsy-type breaks every two hours to sleep for fifteen minutes; (b) with 1,200 players left, the the field still has to sort itself out and there is a long way to go; and (c) I am desperately behind on the book. [Colin Fox, you can skip this sentence.]

Of course, I can’t ignore the updates online and over the phone. And they don’t look good. My friend Richard Brodie is out. Chris Ferguson, according to Amy Calistri, is out, though CardPlayer.com says he still has chips. (I’m putting my money on Amy here. David Grey, with whom I am working on the Seven Card Stud chapter of the book, is out. According to Pauly, Matt Maroon’s stack is crippled. (CardPlayer.com said otherwise, but I’m betting on Pauly, unless it’s a last-longer bet in Pot Limit Omaha.) Phil Ivey is out.

(With all these Full Tilt guys taking the gas pipe, and Mike Matusow, Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren, and Phil Gordon already out, I’ll have my pick of collaborators for remaining sections of the book over the next few days. I should, er, probably not, um, actually write that here if those guys actually read this stuff. Well, it’s not as if I was rooting against them.)

Especially due to the disparity between the CardPlayer.com reports and the informal blogger reports (and the overwhelming likelihood the bloggers have it right), this is the right time to report on the most pleasant surprise of the World Series: the quality of the reporting from the blogger community.

I admit that my review has been sporadic and unscientific. I’ve primarily been reading Amy’s Aimlessly Chasing Amy; the PokerStars blogs of Wil Wheaton, Otis, and numerous other contributors; Craig Cunningham’s blog and Linda Geenen’s blog on Pokerworks; and Pauly’s Tao of Poker. (My apologies for this idiosyncratic cross-section. There are so many blogs - and so many good ones - that I tend to read what I found interesting yesterday, or what my friends are writing, or what someone recommends to me, or what someone wrote about me.)

Considering how Harrah’s sold media access to Card Player and conditions are pretty dismal for trying to cover the Series - especially as big as it’s gotten - it’s a wonder that the bloggers have stayed on top of things so well. Without exception, they all excel in also getting that “something extra,” that Card Player can rarely even try to get. You get a lot more of the flavor of the Series, as well as the essential editorializing about the problems with the Series that you won’t read in the bought-and-paid-for media reports.

I came to the blogging community through the side door. I learned about many of these excellent writer-reporters after the publication of THE PROFESSOR, THE BANKER, AND THE SUICIDE KING. It was generally embraced by the blogger community. I was flattered but I also realized what a great resource poker bloggers are for an author. They have loyal followings, actually read the stuff they claim to read, and are generally beholden to no special interests, so they have great credibility.

I also discovered another secret of their trade since I’ve been here: despite their haphazard-looking work habits and general air of resignation, these guys work really hard. During the Series, most the bloggers I’ve been following have been on-site most of the day and night or all of it. If you see Pauly wearing the same clothes two days in a row, it’s not because of slovenly personal habits; he’s been working for 24-hours straight. (Well, maybe with Pauly … I just don’t know him that well. But he works very hard.)

Daily, they are reading books, reading other blogs, reading the “official reports” (if only to make fun of them), tracking poker news in general, participating in and reporting off-beat adventures, and following the tournament action. I have my niche but there is no way I can keep up with these guys as the quasi-CNNs of poker.

I purposely kept one guy (by the way, “guy” is not used to denote males here; it’s always a generic term as I use it) out of the mix, because I learned just yesterday that he’s not here in Vegas, which makes his work even more remarkable. I’m referring to Iggy, the author of Guinness & Poker. I met Iggy at one of the blogger conventions but didn’t associate him with his blog. He was one of the first bloggers to review SUICIDE KING.

I admit that I caught up with his blog the other day primarily because he mentioned my Secret Identity of the Suicide King blog and my traffic spiked more than when I guest-wrote LUXE LIFE WITH ROBIN LEACH, which had 1.8 million readers its first year. I asked Amy about him and she referred to Iggy as “the Blogfather.” I’m not sure if that’s because of his huge following, how long he’s been at it, or the scope of his posts, but it would be an appropriate nickname for all three reasons. On Wednesday, August 2, here is some of what he covered in his blog: a couple videos of someone named Tuff-Fush, poker legislation, an article about the main event published by the Review-Journal the day before, introductory links to a dozen recent poker stories (Mike Matusow, Jennifer Tilly, other Las Vegas poker rooms, the BetonSports arrest, Eric Lynch, ABC’s take on the online gambling, ESPN’s report on Phil Hellmuth, etc.), lots of reports on what other bloggers are writing, information about contacting the World Series Advisory Council, the “bubble event”, dealers at the World Series, the players’ antitrust suit against the World Poker Tour, a couple discussions about recent David Sklansky essays on 2+2, Gary Carson on short-handed tournaments, etc. etc. etc.

I swear, that’s just the first THIRD of what’s in Iggy’s blog.

I am in awe.

P.S. - Pauly wrote in his blog today to check out my blog. Nothing about what I wrote, no particular post. Like the Blogfather, swarms of readers.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 8:32 pm and is filed under My favourites:.