One more day in beautiful Venice and then I'm going home after 56 days on the road. Phew! My suitcases are stuffed full of dirty laundry and I have exactly one clean outfit to wear on the flight. One of the difficult things about staying in hotels is the ridiculous cost of having clothes laundered. I spent 10 days in one hotel that wanted 20 Euros to clean a pair of jeans!! Unless they're being licked clean by fluffy albino kittens, I can't imagine how that's reasonable.

Anyway, enough of the complaining. This has been a killer trip and a great start to 2012. 2011 was a good year in some ways (ESPN and the WSOP, great friends, travel) but also a very difficult one in others (jaw surgery, living out of a suitcase for 5 months, car accident, Black Friday etc) so I was definitely looking forward to getting rid of the 2011 calendar and facing a fresh start with a new year.

So far I've been able to spend a lot of time with my friends in Brighton (who I miss horribly when I'm in California) as well as going to Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris, Deauville and Venice. I've made some money at poker and managed to get quite a few hours of live play in with my Party Poker patch on and during all of this, I've been hanging out in incredible cities with really fun groups of people. I played an EPT for the first time in years and was able to catch up with all of my old friends on that circuit from the days when we all worked together. I've eaten a LOT of very rich food and I think I've gained about 10 pounds. I got to be on the cover of a magazine in France and see my face on posters in shops and restaurants there...Seriously, 2012 is kicking ass so far.


I get to go home tomorrow for a break; to rest and recover a bit from life on the road. As awesome as it has been, my immune system is really worn down and I'm ready for a week in my own bed.

Oh yeah, and it's my parents' 45th Wedding Anniversary today. 45 years!! Incredible. I'm so proud of them and so grateful to them too. If you fancy saying congrats to them, you can go on twitter @ellenspot and say it there. I think that would really make my Mom laugh :)








In Deauville, I made my friend James Dempsey have dinner with me in this restaurant because they had my photo in the window. I know this makes me kind of a dick, but I CAN'T pretend that I wasn't geekily excited by seeing it!



For me, Venice is one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world. I absolutely love it here. I've been practicing my camera skills...




The WPT put on one hell of a party for Venice and they had the magician Dynamo come and do tricks for people at the party. He's not just some guy who does tricks - he's phenomenal and a pretty big deal so it was a real score for them to get him. His website is so worth a look http://www.dynamoworld.com/ This photo was at the WPT Player party and we're with two Italian poker players - my teammate on Party Poker and my good friend Giovanni Rizzo and the lovely Max Pescatori.

Ooh la la and pass me another croissant! I bloody well love France.

I spent 10 days in Paris recently playing a couple of events in the Euro Finals of Poker and attending the European Poker Awards where I sat as a judge. It's a very swanky event and I was both surprised and really pleased to have been asked to join them. I have been nominated for an award by them twice in the past but never managed to win one. Being asked to be a judge may be a consolation prize but I'm quite happy to take it!

There were 8 of us on the judging panel and we spent 2 hours in the afternoon going through all of the nominees for each of the categories; debating their merits back and forth before voting by secret ballot. As much as I liked the experience of being on the panel, I really hate 'judging' between people, especially people I know. When my friends send me their writing or ask my opinion on a piece of work they've done, I'm incapable of giving anything but positive feedback. I know this is actually a pretty annoying trait but when it comes to my friends or people I like, my rose-tinted glasses refuse to budge. I knew I was going to feel horrible no matter WHO won in each category because other people had to lose.

The evening portion was a fancy affair and a great reason to dress up. It's not often that I get to put on a red dress and killer heels in Paris! I found myself on a table with various British nominees among others (edit: and an Irish one :) including the eventual winner (hugely deserved, imo) of the Lifetime Achievement Award, Jesse May. In fact there were 8 nominees at my dinner table and I was the only judge. Aside from Jesse, nobody else at our table got to lift a trophy. Ouch. Thankfully they didn't throw me off of the table or trip me on my way up to the podium to give the last award.

It was great to catch up with some friends. I had a good old natter with Victoria Coren (who I basically love, admire and want to be like) and Barney Boatman (who I really don't get to see enough of anymore). Most of us retired back to the Aviation Club after the awards dinner to drink champagne and carry on. I didn't think that I had that much to drink but as I managed to miss my morning train back to England, evidence suggests otherwise.

A couple of days back in Brighton was only long enough for me to check in with my friends for the last time in a few months, wash my clothes and pack everything up for the last couple of legs of this trip. I've been on the road since December 19th and although I'm having some great experiences, I'm getting ready to sleep in my own bed soon. Travelling is awesome but it's also really hard on my general health as I start to get allergic to everything from my shampoo to the hotel laundry detergents to random women's perfume. That's the sign that it's time for me to hang up my travelling shoes for a little while at least.

I'm in Deauville right now getting ready to play the EPT here before I fly to Venice where I'll be playing the WPT. I'm ridiculously excited about Venice because a) I frakking love that city b) we'll be celebrating the birthdays of two people at Party/WPT who I adore c) it's one of the most gorgeous hotels ever and d) I've heard whispers of some very special entertainment that the WPT are arranging for the players.

If it all comes together, I'll definitely try to post some photos! Oh, and this is awesome - I'm on the cover of Poker 52 this month! It's a French poker magazine and I quite excited to pick up a copy :) You can see the cover on my facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OfficialKaraScott

2012 did indeed start off with a bang. I'm spending the first 6 weeks of this year travelling around Europe playing tournaments for Party Poker but when I have a few days off between events, I'm kicking back with my friends in Brighton. Being here isn't the healthiest of lifestyles but damn, if it isn't fun!

The first poker event of the year for me was World Poker Tour Ireland in Dublin. It was held at the CityWest hotel which is a favourite of mine, just for the simple fact that the hotel bar is pretty much one of the best places in the world to catch up with old friends over a pint or a glass of Irish Whiskey.

The poker itself was no great shakes and I busted on Day 2 after a losing a big pot with 1010 vs AK and then got my last 20bb in with AQ vs AK. C'est la vie and on to the next stop in Paris.

There are some lovely photos up of the event by Christian Zetzsche so go and have a look here as I don't want to repost without his permission:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150469984758963&set=a.10150469976528963.363309.620668962&type=3&theater

Of course with the poker being finished, that left rather a lot of time to get into trouble. But oh, what fun :) With some of my favourite reprobates there to knock around with, it's no surprise that quite a few pints of Guinness were downed (not to mention the Irish Whiskey). Once the tournament was over, a large group headed into Dublin to experience the famous Irish craic. It might sound like a tourist cliche but there's nothing like an Irish Breakfast at 11pm followed by a bit of dancing.



For now, I'm back in Brighton for a few days of downtime before the next leg of my journey in Paris for the Euro Finals of Poker and the European Poker Awards where I've been asked to join the judging panel.

No time for my feet to touch the ground...

I'm in Canada for a week to hang out with my family over the holidays and It. Is. Brilliant.

I'm staying with my sister's family. As well as being the best sister EVER (this is undisputable fact so don't even try to argue the point with me), she is also pretty much the best cook in the world. She's a vegetarian so just being here means that I'm getting healthier and eating more veggies - a very good thing before I live in hotels for 6 weeks in Europe.

My nieces and nephew are fully awesome people so spending time with them is one of my favourite things to do. They're funny, interesting, engaged with life and actually care about the world outside of the usual teenaged preoccupations. My youngest niece is 14 and she's the one who gets kicked out of her room to make space for me when I come to visit. At night, I curl up in a single bed under the watchful eye of a signed photo of Rick Mercer. That's right. My 14-year-old niece has a signed photo of a Canadian political satirist in her bedroom instead of Justin Bieber. Better yet, it was a gift from her older sister. I could not be more proud.

The world is a complicated and scary place sometimes and disappearing into the latest celebrity gossip or pop star scandal can be a more attractive option then seeking out information on the various problems our countries are facing. Being socially/politically aware can be scary (not to mention depressing) so I'm even more proud of my nieces and nephew for being interested in what is happening in the wider world, rather than just Hollywood.

But then I would think this, as apparently I have a preoccupation with (in the words of one disgruntled reader) "liberal crap" like Gay Rights and Corporate Greed.

I made a few people angry on Twitter (@KaraOTR) this week with the aforementioned "liberal crap." Angry to the point of seeking out some of the companies that I work for and expressing their disgust at my trying to push my liberal Human Rights agenda through social media.

Sigh.

My twitter account and this blog are places where I try to be a bit more honest than I am with my usual work persona. I'm definitely, firmly on the liberal side of the sociopolitical spectrum but not being American, I can't (and won't) claim allegiance to either political party. I'm interested in what is going on though, here and worldwide and I will continue to tweet about things that catch my eye, including strides in LGBT Rights, the danger facing journalists trying to expose corruption in their own governments and social justice issues including poverty and inequality.

This does not mean that I think I have the answers. Far from it! Rather, I'm happy to seek out information and am more than happy to hear alternate points of view. What I don't want and won't engage in, is pointless, angry debate where the main goal is 'winning' rather than gaining a better understanding of whatever issue it is that we're talking about.

The most dangerous thing that any of us could do, is close our eyes and our ears and ignore what's happening around us. Through social media like Twitter, we have this incredible chance to watch history unfold all over the world, from a first person perspective. Social Media is already changing the world and this year was linked to things as disparate as the revolution in Egypt and the London Riots. The latest issue of Wired Magazine has a really cool article about this topic, if you're interested in it.

Of course, the nature of Twitter means that we have to learn how to weed out bad information (or misinformation) from the good. With a little effort, you can find news agencies and journalists with information you trust. And you can seek out the opposite point of view just as easily; to make sure that your understanding is better rounded.

But we can only do this if a) people are able to keep using Social Media to document events, and b) if we remain able to access it freely online. That's a whole other topic though.

In my mind, the important thing is to keep our eyes and ears open. Keep asking questions and try not to shut down other people becuase they have different views than we do.

Keep the conversation going.

This is such an annoying blog to write that I've been putting it off for ages. I really hate to 'fail' at things. I hate it. So much.

So yeah, I didn't manage my goal for NaNoWriMo (http://www.nanowrimo.org) and that kind of sucks. In the end, I wrote 9000 words towards a novel but that fell far short of my personal goal of 25k words. I hate making excuses about as much as I hate to fail but here they are anyways...

1) I was a lot busier with work in November than I anticipated. Once I finished with the WSOP Final Table broadcast, I was planning to write while in London working on the Party Poker Premier League Mixed Game show but the schedule was far heavier than I thought it would be. The first day of filming, we finished at 3am and then I had to be back on set at 9.30am for another 14-hour day, followed by 3 more long days. With the jetlag, I only managed 2 hours of sleep between the first two days of work and it really knocked me on my ass for the rest of the week.

I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm not entirely happy with my own performance on that show. I definitely felt like I was struggling for words and on a number of occasions I had to restart interviews because I either lost the thread of the conversation, asked an entirely stupid question (you just busted out, how do you feel?.... oh, yeah. Pretty shitty. Right) or I made sounds that just simply didn't add up into actual words and sentences. Not my finest hour, although I think I caught up on sleep by the end of it and so finished better than I started.

2) Moving house is stressful. After 5 months of living on the road out of suitcases, I finally moved into my new place in Santa Barbara, the day after I returned from London. I'm incredibly happy to be settled again and I love (love love love) my new place which is an old renovated Barn. The moving process (coupled with jetlag) was more tiring than I expected and writing again took a back seat.

3) This one is probably the ACTUAL reason that I didn't make my NaNoWriMo word limit. I bored myself. I started writing and kept trying to push through tiredness or lack of creativity or 'writers block' but found myself confronted again and again by the reality that I was just. so. boring.

If I'm bored by my own stories, I'm certainly not interested in inflicting them on others. I'm not sure why I couldn't tell stories that were funny, interesting, compelling but one possible truth is that I'm just not as interesting as I thought I was! Or maybe I'm just not ready to write about shit yet. That could be it as well.

I've spent the past month settling into my life (and my barn) and feel far more grounded than I have in a long time. Being on the road and having my life thrown into some kind of 2011 randomness generator was a very cool experience. I've learned a lot about myself, about my friends (mostly how fucking incredible they are) and about what I love about my life.

I'm happy to have a nest to call my own even if it's only for a short period of time. I leave for Canada in less than a week to spend Christmas with my family. After that, I go straight to Europe until Mid February. Two more months of suitcase living but with a bit of stability back under my feet, I think I'm better equipped to enjoy and revel in the experience. I adore living on my own but I'm also a very social chaffinch so getting the chance to visit my family, my friends in the UK and spend time with my Party Poker family as I travel to play some WPTS.... well, life is good. That's all I can say about that.

I do wish I'd done a better job on NaNoWriMo but I think I need a bit more time to find my place before I can write with enough honesty to make it worth people's time to read it. Thanks for reading this blog though and I hope wherever you all are, you're cozy and warm and as content as I am!

I have been in a food coma since American Thanksgiving last week.

Being a non-US transplant in California has certainly been an interesting experience over the past couple of years. Although Canada and the USA are geographically close (note: but not ACTUALLY the same country, thank you very much) there are just enough cultural differences to constantly remind me that I am indeed in a foreign nation.

Over the past couple of weeks, the only topics of conversation seemed to be Thanksgiving and Black Friday. No, not the poker version of Black Friday but this strange day which sounds ridiculously ominous but is actually just an extreme and slightly frightening version of the Boxing Day sales you non-Americans might be more familiar with. People camp out with real tents and everything and line up in front of stores like Walmart ALL NIGHT in order to be allowed in early to pick up deals on merchandise. People get really wound up about Black Friday and the news has been full of stories of people going a little bit too far in their shopping zeal. One lady even used pepper spray to fend off purchasing rivals who were approaching things she wanted to buy. I really don't understand the whole thing and I'm sure there must be more to it that I'm missing, because it all sounds utterly bonkers to me.

Thanksgiving though, now THAT I can get behind! This is a holiday created for nothing short of gluttony - something that I'm quite fond of as a pastime. Some friends of mine invited me over to share their dinner, along with about 15 family members and other friends. It was, in a word, awesome. The taste and variety of foods was staggering although of course Turkey was the centrepiece. And the amounts, dear god, the sheer volume of food that we ate. It was really lovely to be able to watch her family dynamic as everyone teased and told jokes and caught up on each other's lives and they welcomed me in like a long lost Canadian cousin. I endured a lot of 'eh' jokes but we bonded over the humour from the classic Canadian movie Strange Brew.

They are a great group of people and if they don't invite me back next year for some reason, I might just camp outside their house pre-Thanksgiving in my own version of crazy Black Friday consumption madness.

I hope you all enjoyed your November, whether Turkey was involved or not!

So I'm supposed to be doing NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.com) this month along with a lot of poker/journalist friends.

Let me be frank. It's going very, very badly. Seven days into November and I've written a grand total of 344 cliches words.

In my defence, I wasn't planning to actually start writing until after the WSOP coverage was finished on the 8th, so I'm not technically 'behind' yet. Working on the near-Live ESPN coverage is a pretty big deal for me and I didn't want to split my focus by writing at the same time. It turns out that today (the day off between the two sections of the Final Table) I actually have a bit of free time so I tried to make a start on my writing. I don't know if it's just tiredness or preoccupation or what, but I'm pretty sure that everything I wrote was shit. Like, really shit.

I know this is the point where you're supposed to just push through and keep writing but I'm actually boring myself so much that I'm finding that kind of impossible.

I'm going back to my original plan of waiting til the 9th to start writing. I'll deal then with the disturbing thought that I'm actually a lot less interesting than I thought I was.

For now, my head is pretty full of November Nine stuff. It's great to be back on set with my colleagues and having a post-work drink at the Hooker Bar with my friends in the media. Tomorrow we play the final 3 players down to a Champion and it's going basically live (15 minute delay) on ESPN during prime time. Yowzer! It's a pretty incredible atmosphere in the Penn & Teller Theatre and I love getting to be part of this spectacle. It's one hell of an experience and such a fairy-tale story that one person is going to win nearly $9 million tomorrow.

Now if only I could figure out how to use my words to throw some of that excitement onto paper.

French Press' is the name of my favourite coffee shop in the world (tied with Red Roaster in Brighton). I also thought it was a clever play on words to wear my favourite 'French Press' t-shirt during a photoshoot for WPT Magazine in Paris last month (geddit, I'm a member of the press and we were in France). I'm also sitting in said coffee shop this very minute and someone just delivered my copy of WPT Magazine, hot off the presses. Synchronicity.

All that to say, I'm in a magazine and I'm stoked!! I'd like to be all cool about it in a 'yeah, whatever man, no big deal' type of way, but I can't help myself. These things are exciting. I am air high-fiving ALL of y'all right now!

The magazine has just come out but the cover photo was released a little while ago and I thought it was interesting how many people commented on the 'Party Girl' headline. Quite a few people got in touch with me through social media to say that they didn't think it was a good representation of me. The truth is though, I work for Party Poker, so 'Party Girl' is kind of given in terms of nicknames. My friends pretty much all laughed when they saw the title after I posted the cover on twitter last week. Too put it simply, I'm not exactly known for partying. I'm the one who is always saying 'nope, I can't go out' and extolling the virtues of fluffy slippers and early nights. I think Oskar Garcia, an AP Reporter said it in my favourite way on twitter:

oskargarcia Oskar Garcia "@karaotr Maybe their definition of partying is getting to sleep at a reasonable hour after a day of working on various projects. :)"

Not that there's anything wrong with partying. Some of my best friends are partiers.

Jon Young, the editor of WPT Magazine wrote a really cool feature article to go along with the cover and I need to say a big thank you to him because it was totally flattering and just so gratifying to read. Tell me that you think I'm 'likeable and professional' and I will purr like a cat - best compliments ever, imo.

It's interesting to see how different media outlets spin things in different ways. I was in Ireland last month doing some interviews and press work and I ended up in Ireland's Sunday World newspaper. Reading that article was strange because even when they were quoting me, I just couldn't imagine myself saying the words as they were written. I think it's difficult for non-poker media to write accurately about poker (that seems like an obvious thing to say but it bears saying) so this may have been a big part of our communication disconnect.

They quoted me remarking,

"There are lots of us girls now kickin' ass in poker. I will admit that we are not on a par with the boys but we are getting there."

For a lot of the people reading this quote, they won't realise that we actually had an extensive, analytical discussion on why the number of women in live poker is so much smaller than the number of men. People reading this might think I'm saying that women don't PLAY as well as men. Let me be clear; there is NO way that I would suggest that. In fact, when I initially read the Sunday World article I was convinced that the next knock on my door would be someone coming to revoke my 'feminist card.'

And on a similar note, Congratulations to Linda Johnson on her induction into the Poker Hall of Fame. It is well-deserved recognition for decades of work promoting the game we all love. I certainly won't be telling her (or Vanessa Selbst or Jennifer Harman or DMoonGirl etc) that they're not 'on par' with men!

I'm back in California and the jet lag is finally starting to fade. I swear that it's much more difficult coming west than going east! It's nice, albeit a bit strange, to be back here and I'm glad that I'm getting a chance to catch up with my friends. I'm pretty lucky that people let me dance in and out of their lives this way. I'm rarely around for long periods of time anymore and I imagine that must be frustrating for people. It's certainly a bit frustrating for me!

Speaking of being busy, I'm still planning to attempt the www.nanowrimo.com challenge. I'll be attempting to write 50k words of a novel in November but considering that I'll be in Las Vegas working on the WSOP Final Table for nearly a week, then travelling to England to work on a TV show there for Party Poker for over a week and then possibly moving into my new place at the end of the month.... well, I'm setting myself a lower bar. If I can crack 25k words in November, I'm going to be really happy with that. I'm still shooting for 50k but I'll just be happy with a lower number. I guess the whole point was to get myself writing again and if I let myself feel that anything less than 50k words is a failure, I might just not do it at all. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out and I hope that next year I have a clear November so I can really focus on trying to do it properly.

After a crazy November with only 10 days in Santa Barbara, it looks like I'll have zero days back here in December. Party is sending me to Europe to do some work there and then I'll be off to Canada for Christmas before returning to Ireland for New Year and to play the WPT. Phew. Crazy schedule. I need to figure out a better way to make sure that I'm eating well and staying healthy while I'm on the road because I've definitely noticed myself getting a bit tired and lethargic from not eating regularly enough. Any good tips from you all would be gratefully received in the comments box!

And now I'm off to look at one more apartment in Santa Barbara before I make my final decision on where to live. I've seen some great (and awful!) places here and I'm totally ready to just get my stuff unpacked in one of them so that I can feel like I actually 'live' somewhere before I take off in November. This is a really great time of year to be in Santa Barbara as the weather is amazing and there are all kinds of food festivals going on. Time to go out and enjoy it!


Here's a photo from one of SB's great festivals. This was Fiesta a year or two ago!

I've had such a great time being back in Europe that going away is kind of breaking my heart a little bit. Tomorrow afternoon I'll be leaving on a jet plane with lots of lovely memories and a real sense of homesickness.

I managed to extend my trip here by a few days so that I could be around for a friend's birthday. It was a big one for her and I didn't want to miss it. She and I were roommates as two single girls here in Brighton in another life. Her boyfriend threw her an amazing party and surprised her with her 'real' present which is a sailing holiday around Greece that he's been organising for months. Thankfully we don't set sail until next spring so there's a bit of time to plan it all!

Around 25 of us went down to the beach after sunset and had a great big bonfire tonight. The weather has been incredibly warm for Autumn so it was so lovely and mild, even after dark. There were groups of people scattered around the beach as far as you could see in either direction and every once in a while a bunch of paper lanterns would float up into the night sky as people celebrated whatever they were there to celebrate.

We had a couple of tables full of food, cakes and of course, lots of booze. I've never really understood why it's against the law to drink outdoors in most places in the USA. It's just so damned civilized to mix your own cocktails by a fire on the beach! It was a great way to spend my last evening in Brighton but it's also made it that much harder to face leaving in the morning.

It is going to be fantastic to settle down in one place for a few weeks though. I can't wait to catch up with my friends in Santa Barbara and spend some time re-connecting with them while I do some apartment hunting. I've decided to spend another 6 months or so in California so October will be focussed on finding a good place to use as a home-base for all the travelling I'll be doing. Wish me luck as I think I may need it!