Howdy ho, peeps, and welcome to the live update thread of this year's Dublin EPT.
At this point in time, I don't know too much about who is playing, what the venue is like, how many players there are going to be, and so on, but what I do know is that play for the first batch of poker dreamers begins tomorrow at 2pm.
One of the players who is definitely making an appearance this week, although on Day 1B, is the Jaffa King,
Jeff Kimber. With my eyes firmly fixed upon the departure screen waiting patiently for it to magically reveal my gate number, I spotted a lonesome Jaffacake (that's Jeff, by the way, not an actual giant Jaffacake) trundling through the airport waiting lounge. "Jeff!" I shouted to no avail. "Jeff!" Again no response as he walked further away. "Jeff!" By this time I was becoming slightly embarrassed as everyone shuffled away from someone they believed to be a mental patient.
As I crammed my laptop into my bag and raced after old deaf aid like an over zealous Take That fan, I managed to catch up with Jeff and, instead of showing myself, creeped up behind him demanding, "Will you make your ****ing move on Scrabble!"
To anyone but us, this exclamation won't make much sense, but the story of late is that Jeff, who I have been unable to beat thus far, is refusing to make his move on our up-to-now amicable game of Scrabulous on Facebook. According to Jeff, my latest word, 'unriper', which, although slightly shaky, has been accepted by the dictionary, is, in his eyes, totally unacceptable and thus reason to boycott the game.
Now, this is the third time I've played Jeff at Scrabble, and he's beaten me on both prior encounters, so imagine my delight when I suddenly unearth a seven word score and manage to place it on a tripple word square. Woohoo! 80 points for the Beagle! However, then imagine my disdain when my opponent suddenly questions the very word that the dictionary has accepted and refuses to play, thus robbing me of my defeat.
Anyway, back to the airport, and, as he had done on many an occassion, Jeff simply brushed aside my request and replied, "I'm not playing until you can tell me what 'unriper' means."
"It's obvious," I claimed. "If you have two bananas, and one is riper than the other, then the other one is unriper."
"But it would just be 'less ripe'," he swiftly replied. "You're going to have to do better than that."
"Let me put it another way," I continued, with a hint of desperation in my voice. "Just say you have two bananas, and scientists add chemicals to each one that reverses the riping process. They would be unriping the bananas, and the one that is most unripe, therefore becomes unriper than the other."
Not surprisingly, my perhaps outlandish scenario fell on stony ground.
After a slight pause, a stunned silence, and the gentle breeze of a clump of tumbleweed brushing past my leg, Jeff replied, "No chance, it's not a word. No one uses the word 'unriper'."
"Tell you what," I suggested. "If in tomorrow's live update I can successfully utilise all the Scrabble words from our latest encounter, will you admit defeat and make your move?"
Hesitantly, Jeff agreed, thus bringing us to the current situation by which I need to incorporate the following words into the Dublin EPT reports.
Gulp! Perhaps I should have re-evaluated the board before striking this deal...
Me:
UKE,
MOATED,
JIB, HAG,
POD, TORC,
CEDI,
AI,
TURN,
SURF,
RAI,
UNRIPER,
ANY,
DEX,
VARY,
PIED,
VOX,
JUKES,
EGOJeff: WELT,
COG,
TAGS,
LADES,
BIT,
REE,
QI,
NIT,
ZONED,
ELFIN,
WELDS,
,
OX,
KNIT,
LOT,
BEE,
OBIT,
TAHmm, I don't think the word TURN will be too tricky to implement into a poker update, but there are few in there that may require a little out-of-the-box-thinking in order to succeed in this challenge. However, after I've er... studied the dictionary to find out what the hell these words mean (!), I'm sure I'll have a good crack at proving Mr Cake wrong and showing him that all the words I have used in our battle of Scrabble wits are perfectly normal in the realms of the English language.
I remain quietly confident, but I think I'll need more luck than the players I will be updating. See you tomorrow, and don't forget to shout out for any players you wish us to keep an eye on. We always do our best to answer any such requests.
Author