Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

This is the conclusion of a trip report, the first part of which can be found here, from a high school debate tournament at which I recently volunteered. I founded the Boston Debate League in 2005 to bring competitive extracurricular debate to students at some of the city’s more troubled public high schools and continued to serve as the part-time, volunteer executive director for several years. In 2008 we hired a full-time executive director who has grown the organization into something much larger and more influential. He was out of town this weekend receiving an award from his alma mater for this excellent work and asked me to fill in for him at the tournament, which I was more than glad to to.

Round 3

Saturday morning proves far more hectic than anticipated. There’s a surprising amount of turnover, meaning students who competed last night but who if they plan on coming at all today have not arrived as of 8AM. Frustratingly, I’m not getting good information from coaches about which of their students have not showed up.

I am used to leading by moral authority. When I ran the BDL, the coaches and students all saw how hard I worked, and most of them knew that I wasn’t paid. I more or less shamed them into making my job easier and doing what I told them to do.  Read the complete post...

Sorry for the recent silence – I was in Boston over the weekend running a debate tournament for the Boston Debate League. I don’t have a WYP for this week, so instead please enjoy this Trip Report which hopefully will provide a behind-the-scenes insight into the world of high school debate, or our own little corner of it anyway:

There are 174 high school students registered for the debate tournament I am running this weekend. Roughly 135 will actually show up to compete, but not all of those 135 will be among those who registered in advance. These students will compete Friday evening and all day Saturday. Most of them will, anyway – a few show up, without warning, on only one day or the other. Just as many will be competing simultaneously at another of our schools, most of which are not large enough to host so many debates at once. That other school is not my responsibility at all.

About half as many middle schoolers will debate in their own separate competition at my school on Saturday only. They are kind of but not really my responsibility.

When I stepped down, three and a half years ago, as executive director of the Boston Debate League (BDL), we were lucky to get 40 kids at a tournament. Obviously there was no need to spread them out across two sites. There were no middle school debaters.  Read the complete post...

Today is Sunday, but I won’t be playing the Sunday Million, because I’m currently in the United States.

For as long as I’ve had this blog, I’ve started every year with a series of posts about my poker-related goals and resolutions, and I’ve ended every year by assessing the progress I made towards them. I set goals for 2011- my most ambitious ever, actually- but now it seems pointless to even look at them, as Black Fridayrendered them more or less irrelevant.  The best laid plans of mice and men, eh?

A dark omen in Montreal.

I’m not really in a place to start setting poker goals for this year, either, since I have no idea what the year will look like for me, poker-wise or otherwise. Not since my final semester of college have I felt this level of anxiety and uncertainty about my future. Those Big Questions are back: Where will I live? What will I do? Who will the people around me be?

I’ve spent the last week and and a half fending off questions, some idle and some concerned, at various gatherings of friends and family. My recent life as a nomadic poker professional was strange enough to them that they’ve learned to accept without alarm the fact that I don’t know where I’m going to be two weeks from now.  Read the complete post...

I don’t play pit games, I don’t go to strip clubs, and I don’t get table service at Las Vegas nightclubs. Whole Foods is my leak.

Last night I was there for the second time in two days. My girlfriend has been cramming for the GRE and just had her bike stolen, so I wanted to get her a treat. At the bakery counter, they sell these mini chocolate mousse cakes that she likes.

The couple ahead of me in line were in their late 60′s. They looked lifelong outdoors people, he with scraggly beard, she with close-cropped hair and weather-worn face, both rail-thin.

There were two mousse cakes left in the display case. The woman behind the counter handed one to the old couple. “We need two, please,” the man corrected her. The last two.

The woman took out the other cake, inspected it for a moment, and then showed him a small blemish. Perhaps 0.5% of the icing had fallen off. “It’s a little broken, do you still want it?”

“We get a reduced price, right?” the man asked aggressively, leaning over the counter.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“It should be a reduced price, if it’s damaged.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t do that. We donate imperfect items to the food kitchen, we don’t ever sell them at a discount.”  Read the complete post...

After a low-key Friday night, Nico and I resolved to live it up on my last night in Madrid. We started off having dinner and watching the Barcelona-Seville game at a restaurant/bar across the street from his apartment. It was a bit of a dive but had surprisingly good food and there were a wide variety of people just kind of hanging out there, some drinking and watching the game, some just having dinner. Nico said that Spanish people spend a large percentage of their time in places like this, and that his roommate goes to this place every morning for breakfast. So despite the game ending in a draw, a good outcome for all the Madrid fans in the establishment since they won their game, it was a good time and a neat place to hang out.

From there we took a subway to Tribunal for some botellon, the fine Spanish tradition of outdoor, public drinking. I’ve never been a big fan of bars, since I’m mostly going to talk to the people I’m going with and could do that more easily and cheaply with drinks at home, but there is something to be said for the atmosphere and for being among people. Botellon is the perfect combination: you’re outside with plenty of other people milling around, but you’re drinking your own alcohol rather than buying it at inflated prices!  Read the complete post...

After all the hassle, the money did successfully make it to Cannes, so I am all bought in and ready to go! Play starts in a little over two hours, but I´m already having a great trip and have the beginnings of a trip report to share with you. I’m trying to set up Nico´s phone so that I can send occasional tweets, but since he´s in a different country it´s not cheap and I probably won´t be sending a lot of them. I’ll definitely update the blog at the end of the day though (and hopefully not before!) Until then, here’s what I’ve been up to so far (pictures forthcoming):

Our journey began at the tobacco shop, where naturally my continental companion needed to stock up on rolling papers, tobacco, and filters. Then we were on the road, zooming past revelers preparing to celebrate Fiesta Virgen del Pilar. The land surrounding Madrid is dry and brown, scorched by an eternal sun burning through a cloudless sky. Occasionally a crumbling stone cathedral set into the countryside would break up the monotony, but overall it was a dreary landscape, and I told Nico as much. He assured me it would get better.

It did. The brown hills turned green as we pressed northward. Mountains rose up out of the arid brush, and a dense fog clung to the horizon. We were in Basque Country.  Read the complete post...

We’ve left Canmore and are now en route to Vancouver, but before departing we snuck in one more hike that proved to be one of the best we’ve done. There are these trees up here called “larches” that are like pine trees except that they turn yellow in the autumn, the way deciduous trees do. We’d deliberately waited to do the Larch Valley hike until now, both because this is the season that the trees are at their most spectacular and because Parks Canada had just announced that they were lifting their requirement that hikers travel in groups of four now that bear season is coming to an end.

So we drove down to Lake Moraine, which is pretty spectacular in its own right. In fact its image used to grace one side of the Canadian twenty-dollar bill. After taking a few pictures made our way over to the trailhead, where we were greeted with the following sign:

Apparently there had been some bear sightings that very morning, and so Parks Canada made a last-minute decision to reinstate the travel restriction. At the height of the season, it would be no problem to wait at the trailhead until another party of two showed up, but now there were not nearly so many hikers. We waited for a few minutes and then resigned ourselves to doing a much crappier hike.  Read the complete post...

Three weeks gone by and thousands spent,

I fled my homeland for this event,

matched wits with the pros and the keyboard droolers,

but fell to a series of beats and coolers.

Pay attention, friends! Don’t let those eyelids droop,

as I sing to you of my WCOOP.

On September 4th, bright and fresh,

I sat to find Liv Boeree on my left.

Immediately my equity took a dive,

without the benefits of meeting her live!

Nothing doing, quickly busted.

Have my long-dormant skills have gone rusted?

Another 6-max, another chance for Yahtzee,

Another seating draw beat, as I met with Raaszi.

He 4-bet shoved, my Queens held out,

and that was the end of de heer Veldhuis.

I ran over the table, never let up,

got down to two, and crushed it heads up.

Second table the same, got it heads up again,

but he made Kings and Queens, when I had Queens and Tens.

‘Twas was not the end of the sweat for me,

a player I backed was heads up at table 3!

But the bad beat fairy was right on track,

And he bubbled the final table Ace-King to Ace-Jack.  Read the complete post...