In Recovery

Monday, October 12, 2009 - Gene Bromberg

Home sweet home. That’s what a lot of people who attended the 2009 Aruba Poker Classic have been saying the last day or so as we wended our ways home. Don’t get me wrong, who doesn’t LOVE being in Aruba? I know I did, especially when I got home to Pittsburgh last night and the temperature was 38 degrees. And I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. You bet I was missing Aruba then.

But a week on the island can take a toll, can it not? What with the non-stop poker and partying and sunshine and swimming it taxes even the strongest constitutions. I bet lots of folks who spent the last week in Aruba are taking today to regroup, to let their sunburned skin and overextended livers recover. God knows I am.

I’m also reveling in a hard and fast internet connection, something we didn’t always have in Aruba. I spent much of Sunday morning yelling at my computer, begging it to let me upload photos of the Awards Banquet held Saturday night. I figured that party would be more low-key that the Welcome Party of a week before, though full-on soccer riot would probably be more low-key than that party had been. And indeed things started off quite mellow, with a smaller crowd enjoying drinks and dinner and the end of the tournament.

The newly-minted champion of the Aruba Poker Classic, Brandon Hall, briefly addressed the crowd and thanked Tournament Director Matt Savage’s staff for running such a great tournament and accepted the congratulations of the crowd for his victory:

In keeping with the Roman theme of UltimateBet’s Tenth Anniversary celebration there was a procession of glittering models who walked through the crowd and posed with the partygoers (some of those pics may not be, uh, suitable for publication):

Phil Hellmuth chatted with the crowd before introducing the evening’s entertainment–The Dan Band. And they were awesome (I shot some video which I’ll post over the next day or so) and got the crowd in a dancing mood:

And as the evening wore on more people got in the pool and we started to see more scenes like these:

And that’s when the party got a bit…spirited, with roving gangs roaming through the crowd and tossing dozens of people into the drink. Some of these people went willingly, others were a bit demonstrative in their opposition. Usually when I sort through my photos I look for things like composition and clarity, but with some of the pics from the party I may have to take ethical considerations into account before I work on them. Like, “would this person be appalled if I posted this pic?” I usually take a conservative approach to such things so the more voyeuristic among you might be disaapointed. Though not with this pic of Liv Boeree and Robbie Cunningham, who worked on their synchronized swimming routine all year:

I’ll be posting more items about Aruba all week, trying to catch up with everything that went on during that whirlwind week. But now I’m gotta scrape the frost of my car and then I’m probably gonna have a little cry. Aruba…miss you already.

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