After being making the short list of the Global Poker Index (GPI) European Poker Awards: Poker Industry Person of the Year, fellow short-list combatant Marc Convey stated:
“Lee Davy would get my vote for the hardest working industry person of the year – churns out content like no other. Starting to think he must have a factory of writers hidden in the valleys somewhere.”
I learned that work ethic from my father.
It’s one of the main reasons I was able to excel in the Railway industry, and also how I managed to turn a pipe dream into my own personal writing business, that takes care of the bills, and leaves a little something behind at the poker tables.
When I worked on the railway I would have had to kill someone in order to get a size nine up my ass. I had a great monthly salary, wonderful annual bonus, and the prospect of picking up one of the best pensions in the country after I retired.
My performance was not related to the amount of money I earned. Even if I decided to report sick for six months I would have still been paid the same amount of money.
The poker world is a lot different.
One minute your work is in demand, and the next it isn’t. We are all like vultures sitting amongst the skinny branches waiting for our chance to tear apart any piece of meat we can find. It’s dog eat dog and the fact that I have a Korean wife doesn’t help me one iota.
At times I feel like the school kid curling his arm around his paper so the person next to him can’t see what he is doing. I remember being asked to cover the European Poker Tour (EPT) in Berlin for PokerNews some years ago, and then getting dropped at the last minute. I had already spent the money and I felt utterly powerless.
This is why I’m like a sponge.
I soak in anything that comes my way. By hook, or by crook, I will find the time to get the work done. It’s not because I need the money to buy myself a new pair of Gucci shoes. My life purpose is to help people quit drinking and the more money I hold in my possession the wider my reach, and the more people I can save from a life of misery.
I am always busy, but if you see me working at a live tournament you will see me at my busiest. I don’t have time to do anything other than tap, tap, tap like Woody Woodpecker on crack.
Live tournament reporters are paid from the tiniest of budgets. There isn’t a lot of money to go around, and so being multi-skilled, and having the desire to go 10 steps further than you need to, is imperative if you want to be asked back.
There are times when I have covered World Series of Poker (WSOP) $1,000 events on my own. You know the size of those fields. They spill into three different caverns. I am like a speck of dust. You hardly know I am there.
There are other times when I have picked up the camera and taken the photos, stood in front of the camera and hosted an interview, and then sat down to continue pecking.
You do what you have to do, or someone else will do it.
With a lot of outlets now preferring more fact based reporting, and less vivid color, it puts added pressure on your ability to be multi-talented, because suddenly your talent as a writer becomes secondary to everything else.
If I was Donnie Peters, the head honcho of the live tournament reporting team for PokerNews, I wouldn’t be as interested in quality of writing, as I would be for someone to just take orders, get their head down, don’t answer back and work like a Trojan.
Here is a brief glimpse into a day in the life of a live tournament reporter.
I know that during the tournament I am going to be spending anywhere between 12-15 hours on the tournament floor. This means I need to write articles for my other clients in advance of any tournament that I plan to work on.
So in the few days leading up to the event I am working flat out to try and get ahead of the game. This includes writing for two hours on the train ride to London and then non stop on the plane ride to my destination. I once wrote for 11-hours consecutively on a trip to Joberg, because I had promised a client that I would write a shedload of 300-word articles on bingo!
When I arrive at the hotel I am usually cream crackered and by this time everyone wants to meet up for drinks, but the clock is ticking. I write a Day 1A intro post and save it for release the following morning. I make sure a new tournament has been created in the blog and enter the tournament structure.
I will wake up just in time for breakfast and steal as much food as I can to eat for lunch afterwards. I will head back to my room and finish off some more articles before publishing the intro post and heading to the casino.
Once inside I look around for the possibility of some early interviews. My plan is to always secure three or four interviews per day. I like to get one done before the tournament starts and then during the breaks. The interview’s usually take between 5-10 mins and are stored on my Dictaphone.
When the tournament starts I have to take note of all the well known players and enter them into the chip counts, whilst simultaneously looking out for any of the early action. You would think that entering chip counts into the blog would be quick and easy.
Not on your life.
In the past it was not uncommon for an entire first level to pass by with nothing but one or two short posts, because the chip count adjustments had taken so long. The idiocy of this is the fact that by the time I have entered them, they are all wrong.
This is why it’s so infuriating when players don’t stack their chips properly. In order to get as much writing done as possible, you need to be able to quickly scan chip stacks and best guess them before moving on to the next task. When Phil Hellmuth starts stacking them in his own inimitable way, I want to shove my Dictaphone up his arse and interview his colon.
I write my action on text edit and then transfer it to the blog. This is a safety precaution to prevent posts being lost when the blog has technical difficulties. It is also a must when you have Internet connectivity issues. In recent years this problem has greatly improved, but in the past trying to manage a 1k field with no Internet connection, was as stressful as having a vasectomy with a pair of chopsticks.
If you want to see my little yellow head turn red and then explode like Veruca Salt. Then just sit around me in the media room watching football on a stream of some kind whilst I am struggling to write about Daniel Negreanu three-betting Phil Ivey as the Internet goes up and down like a fiddlers elbow.
Posts have to have a title, and during my days with PokerNews this would freak me out. Everyone used to use these incredibly witty puns. So witty that I didn’t have a clue what they meant.
I was new and so just followed the crowd. There were times when I would spend five minutes trying to think of a title. Then I realized nobody gave a shit, and started writing ‘Marvin Rettenmaier Take’s it on the Turn’. The views didn’t dip, nobody complained and life moved on.
Then after you have written your post, you need to check for spelling and grammatical errors and attach it to the blog. You then need to tag the player’s names, and upload a photo. This involves going into Flickr and copying the HTML into the blog and then publishing. You then carry out a final check to make sure all is hunky dory and then head out to do it all again.
There have been numerous tournaments where I have also had to take the photos, upload them into Flickr and name them all. Like I said. Being multi-talented helps…but it can also be a curse.
You also have social media responsibilities. If there is a noteworthy piece of action then Twitter needs to know about it. If someone asks you a question on Twitter you need to reply. This produces the awful scenario where you forget whose Twitter account you are using and start sending personal messages to the wrong account.
Not a good idea.
During the break I will try and get another interview, finish up writing hands and then run around trying to get some more chip counts. I also try to write up part of my end of day recap to minimize the time it takes to write it at the end of the day.
A poker writer also needs to be confident in front of the camera. The coverage of the live tournaments it getting more and more interactive, and somebody is needed to stand in front of the web cam and give updates or interview players.
That is very often yours truly.
I can’t remember ever having a 20-minute break in my life.
During dinner I will grab something to eat and then quickly focus on my recap again. Get some quick chip counts and back to the action.
Towards the end of the day you have to wait until the players have bagged and tagged so you can capture the main contenders, chip leader and well known players. Sometimes you just want to grab the chips and count them yourself as players take an eternity to get this shit done.
Then it’s back to the computer to enter the chip counts you have, finish the recap and complete the end of day tribulations on Twitter. By this time everyone wants to have a drink. I need to go back to my room because I have four interviews I need to listen to, type up and post on the site.
I then have to wait for the end of day chip counts and seat draw to arrive by e-mail. I have to enter then individually into the blog, post them on the site and spread the news via Twitter. I may have some other articles to write and also my own business to attend to.
I usually go to sleep around 04.00 in the morning, grab 6-hours sleep before doing it all over again.
So next time you see me at a tournament, and you wonder why I am not going to the players party, stopping for a drink, or even just talking to you.
It’s not personal.
I just have a lot of work to do.
