Out in the hallway between the tournament area and the hotel, a roulette table has been set up and a gentleman is very slowly and loudly explaining the rules of the game to some wide-eyed and we suspect quite hungover poker players.
The fun new lark in question is The Festival's Roulette Championship, a €250 entry, two-day emotional roller coaster where the main skills required - judging from the last event in Tallinn, won by Paf-playing legend Johan Palokangas - seem to be holding one's liquor and bellowing across the casino in either joy or disappointment, depending. Sometimes it's honestly hard to tell. Having said that, tournament roulette - as opposed to the common-or-garden casino version - isn't just a you-versus-God game of pure blind luck. Players all start with the same stack, and the aim of the game isn't to win money from the casino (spoiler for those who've never played: the casino always wins, whatever Franke says), but rather simply to amass a bigger stack than all your opponents at the end. This introduces an element of strategy that is absent from the regular roulette, which (speaking from a poker point of view) makes it a far more interesting game. The full rules may be found in a very thorough and informative article by my colleague Arved - please click here. And info regarding how to register and so on is available at the main poker reg desk.
Today we'll be running all three start days of the Roulette Championship, and the survivors from Days 1a, 1b and 1c will go through to the final day, starting tomorrow at 10pm, well into the cocktail hour. Spectators are encouraged throughout, and it promises to be extremely entertaining. Give it a spin - you know you want to.
