ItalianoGACKT Official Blog update. Translation below:
I was completely done in my jet lag
and I only fell asleep around 7 a.m. yesterday.
In the end,
after falling asleep in a weird way for around 2 hours, that can’t even be considered as sleep,
I got woken up by TAKUMI.
I took a shower and slowly got dressed.
My daily rhythm has turned completely strange.
I’m not suited for America after all…
The dryness is horrible too.
It was then time, and I headed towards the venue for the charity event
and was welcomed by the CEO of WPT, Adam, at the entrance.
The flow is that WPT is hosting the
Tiger Woods charity event this time but
it seems that Tiger Woods himself is unable to come due to surgery.
Oh well,
even though he wasn’t here, it’s already this exciting so
it can be said that that is more of a surprise instead.
I arrived at the venue a little earlier.
After awhile, not only the celebs
but even the internationally ranked poker players
started to enter one after another.
She is one of the most famous people among the women, I think.
Maria Ho is a rather famous player among the women.
Compared to the impression that I got from watching her play, she’s an affable person and a good conversationalist.
I did a few TV interviews but
I was already drunk so I couldn’t speak well.
Let’s think of that as charming.
After awhile, Daniel Negreanu entered.
Daniel is the current top ranking player
and, even just considering the official tournaments, he has won over 3 billion yen.
He’s the most famous poker player in the world.
As he’s a candid and likeable player,
even though he has just met me, we quickly hit it off
and for some reason, the both of us got oddly excited.
Halfway through, pretty good looking people were introduced to me.
This time,
because so many different people were introduced to me,
I initially didn’t know who did what though…
As we spoke,
there were quite a number of people who made me go,
『This guy, he could be pretty amazing!!』.
One of those was golfer Wesley Bryan,
who won the Louisiana Open Tour for the first time last year
in the month after that got his 2nd win in the Mexico Championship,
and then in August took his 3rd win at the Ally Open.
When such a star athlete appears,
that industry will become exciting… I was curiously convinced.
We got excited talking about anything and everything
and despite that the starting time of the
actual charity event was being delayed,
no one looked like they were going to get seated.
My name was called too, and I went to sit.
Then, Daniel, who I had been talking to earlier,
suddenly appeared to be at the same table as me.
When we saw each other’s faces
『Really!!!!』
we ended up exclaiming.
To be able to compete together like this itself is a happy thing though.
The tournament started
and when I watched how the other players played
it seems that there are quite a lot of sloppy beginners.
Just by joining this charity,
I got the feeling that they were playing poker without really understanding it.
A competition that I can’t really understand kept on continuing like this.
A tournament like this with so many beginners is pretty rough.
There were many accidents.
Both me and Daniel too
got impressively eaten up by those accidents
and somehow found ourselves kicked out.
In the end,
the only pro who made it to the final table was Maria
and it felt like all the others are just muddling around but
everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves as they played.
This atmosphere is, again, one that is unique to poker.
The most important thing of all is to firstly enjoy yourself.
This trip passed in the blink of an eye but
I’m very honoured to have been invited to such a charity,
and to have been able to have fun with these internationally famous people.
To prepare to go home, I returned to my room and organised my things.
I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight.
I’ll be departing in a few hours.
Even so, that was fun.
Well then,
I’ll head back to Japan, then I have to finish the work that’s been accumulated.
Source: GACKT Blog
Translation: GACKT ITALIA Team
Translation © GACKT ITALIA