The Poker Journalist Bucket List

I hear a lot of authors refer to their books as their ‘business cards’, to demonstrate the number of opportunities that come their way as a result. Jared and I are both experiencing that phenomenon significantly at the moment, now that The Mental Game of Poker has been out for a few months. He is out in Vegas right now and networking with everyone, we expect to see him on a PokerNews Podcast next week and we are trying our hardest to get him on ESPN before it ends (Don’t quote me on this, but I believe he has several clients still deep the in main event).

I may be stuck in Blighty but my phone has also never stopped ringing, for both book stuff and non-book stuff. I have some really interesting stuff on the horizon, I will be a judge at another poker awards, I am going on Sky Poker again, and hopefully I will have an interesting feature in trade magazine Inside Poker Business (as long as they like it).

 

I also will be scratching not one, but three things off my ‘poker journalist bucket list’ – a list of things I have wanted to do as a journalist at some point. I have already ticked off loads of things including being on TV, live reporting, publishing a book, judged at the European Poker Awards, interviewed pretty much everyone but Phil Ivey etc.

Now I can also claim ‘wrote for every magazine’, kind of. Thanks to the book and some very generous editors, we have got samples of the book in just about every magazine in the UK. The last one being the first one I ever bought, PokerPlayer Magazine.

Two more will soon be ticked off the list. This month I will be in London reporting on the Full Tilt hearing in London, where I will be reporting for PokerNews and ticking off another thing I have always wanted to do, which is the rather new trend of live twitter reporting, where I hope I will break a major news story and get thousands of followers as a result (Though I feel it will be nowhere near as exciting as that).

And soon I will be ticking off one I have always wanted, which is live commentary of a televised poker tournament. I am not 100% certain I can mention which one, simply as I haven’t seen anywhere that it has been advertised as televised (On the interwebs, not actually telly as far as I know). I’m not sure why, but I have always fancied myself doing that co commentator role, probably a mix of liking attention but not wanting to force my mug on the TV audience.

All of which makes me wonder what is next on the poker journalist bucket list left to do. Obviously the nicest thing would be to ‘do a Roland’ and win a WPT event, but assuming that doesn’t happen, this is what I have got so far:

• Get a Massive Twitter Following: I am a twitter nut, and I am closing in on my 1000^th follower, but I believe the future of all journalism lies there and I think I need to be aiming for 5000 or 10,000 if I want to claim poker klout. (Its @barry_carter btw)

• Write Something for a Paper: Any paper will do, even gutter press, but I reckon the most realistic aim would be the Racing Post.

• Work on a TV Production: I have lots of chums who work on poker shows, and I have been around the guys at Sky Poker and Matchroom quite a lot, and all I know is I like being around a TV production. What could I do? No idea, I’d guess some sort of script writey, consultancy kind of work (Although I am getting more comfortable in front of screen, I could never see myself even attempting to present). No doubt Tikay will read this and tell me to fetching him cups of tea would count).

• Get Poker on Sky Sports News: This is no doubt the loftiest of all the aims, having spoken to several people at Sky and Matchroom, this is very unlikely. Poker is so incredibly down their pecking order that most would tell me not to bother, especially because no doubt the significantly more influential Sky Poker & Matchroom must have tried along the way. But every time I watch Sky Sports News (every day) I just feel the audience would love to know that the UK are dominating at least one sport – poker. All the other goals on my list are realistic, but I think it’s not such a bad thing to have an ambitious one too.