ben brantley’s blog

I have a poker tournament named after me. Okay, really the only reason it’s so named is to entice me to come and supposedly donate my dollars to my opponents. Nevertheless, said tournament has a real trophy made of poker chips, an old-fashioned cigarette tin, and some St. Basil’s Cathedral-esque adornments.

The reason I can show you this picture, of course, is because I now have the trophy, and the reason I have it, of course, is because I won the latest incarnation of the contest. Having recently learned that my friend, trophy-creator, and author John Vorhaus was about to leave the country to spend an undetermined but large number of months in Moscow, in winter, I decided that it would be best to assemble the gang one for one last hurrah prior to his departure.

So, it was with optimism and enchantment that I spirited myself off to Los Angeles at the last minute, courtesy the very fine United Airlines, for a less-than-one-day visit to the BBI Tournament Battlegrounds. As it happened, I arrived on a Friday afternoon just in time to:

a) visit my sister-in-law on campus,
b) enjoy a delicious Armenian sandwich at my old haunt, Zankou,
c) show up as a live guest on a poker radio show being broadcast that afternoon,
d) attend J.V.’s book signing and goodbye party at Vroman’s Bookstore, where I also got to listen to him pontificate on all manner of things and try to induce the crowd to come play in the BBI,
e) discover that I, in fact, am personally profiled in another poker book that my friend Tony authored a year ago, and
f) participate in the BBI, of course.

All in all, it was a great trip. I guess the $670 prize purse for winning the BBI was a nice spiff, but really, the highlight was the cringing, grimaced faces of my friendly opponents. When I started this entry, I thought, “Wow, I’m slow in getting this to press. I should apologize to my loyal readers,” but now I’m feeling grateful: it’s been just long enough that reliving the experience, and drooling over my trophy, is like being there all over again.