The Dog Days of Summer

With the dog days of summer in full swing in the poker world, not much has been going on. The WSOP is finished and the next EPT and WPT event don’t come until the end of August.

I’ve been relaxing at home, doing a little golfing, and playing on my new wii. Plus a little online poker of course. Things started off well after getting home when I won a seat for the EPT Moscow event in August. Russia is one of the (many) places I’ve always wanted to visit so this seemed like a good excuse.

I was thinking of doing the next few months like this; FTOPS in early August, then a trip to EPT Moscow and onto APPT Macau in late August, next a few weeks at home and finally onto London in late September for the WSOPE main event and EPT London.

This plan changed suddenly when I heard the news that Russia has just shut down all poker clubs and removed poker from their list of approved state sports. All in all, this makes a poker tournament pretty much an impossibility. Though I haven’t heard any official announcement yet, in my mind there is no chance that the EPT event will be run. Too bad, as this pretty much ends the poker boom in Russia. Tough luck Ivan.

The good news is that there are so many tournaments going on these days that finding an alternative is always easy. Maybe I’ll hit up the Legends of Poker in LA, or the WPT event in Cyprus instead. So many choices…