Posted by Editor | Filed under London 2008, Million Pound Challenge '08
At 12:25 PM, after going over the rules, Tournament Director Barry Mundee announced cards-in-the-air. There are 8 tables, 10 players per table. There are a few empty seats at the start and the dealers have been told, “Deal to every seat.”
Empty seats? Near as I can figure, a few of these challengers missed their wake-up calls. Granted, noon is pretty early to start a poker game, and yes, some players are known for missing the earliest parts of tournaments, but here? Now? These players?
Everyone here has already received £500, more than enough to purchase the most powerful alarm clock on the market.
This is a TV studio but at the tables, it feels exactly like a card room. There is no “TV table”, no hole-card cameras. There are roving camera-operators but the pace and tone of play is like a card room, not a TV show. The sounds are the familiar card-room sounds: small talk, mumbling, the regular patter of the dealer moving play along, and, above every other sound, the clatter of chips.
There are 5 tables along the main floor, along with an unoccupied TV table (with 8 seats, blackjack style). Up a few steps are 2 more tables, then up a few more steps is the last table and some room for spectators.
Once they play down to the last few tables (and thereafter when it’s just one table for the finale tomorrow and the Million Dollar Cash Game, also played here, on Wednesday and Thursday), I’ll have a table to myself, just off camera, with a monitor showing the action.
But now it’s catch as catch-can. I am standing with my computer on a shelf just behind table 8, seat 9. There is a stationary camera behind me, which is scanning the room and being used for periodic taping of stand-ups by one of the commentators.
So I’m pretty much trapped here. On the positive side, it means I have to write about what’s going on here. On the negative side, I am deprived of the chief perk of being a writer: the imperative to find something other than writing with which to occupy myself.
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