Part-time business mastermind, part-time high stakes poker player, Orpen Kisacikoglu. Doesn’t want his good ship poker crashing on the Coronavirus rocks.
In a recent tweet, the London-based Turkish delight implored live poker tours to provide more information and tools to help protect the poker community from the COVID-19 outbreak.
Amongst Kisacikoglu’s ideas are:
– Touch-free toilets
– Hand sanitiser
– Masks for people with a cough
– Hand hygiene/cough etiquette
– Chips and table cleaning
– Top-class air circulation
One poker tour sure to be ‘liking’ Kisacikoglu’s tweet for further analysis and application is Triton Poker. Still, they won’t implement a strategy during Jeju 2020, because there won’t be a Jeju, 2020.
From Postponement to Cancellation
Scheduled to run in late February, Triton Poker took the unprecedented step of postponing the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series due to COVID-19.
Triton hoped, as did the whole world that the ‘world’ would come up with a solution, the situation would resolve itself; donkeys would go on braying, lovers would continue to prick fingers on rosebushes, and people would play poker.
Not so.
The virus is spreading.
On top of more than 80,000 cases and 2,912 deaths in China (ground-zero), South Korea has developed the second-highest affliction rate globally with more than 4,300 confirmed cases and over 20 deaths.
The decision to cancel a poker tournament held on a South Korean island, while upsetting, turned out to be an obvious one.
There are currently no plans to reinstate Jeju this side of 2020 because the Triton calendar gets busy.
The Future of the Triton Tour in 2020
With governments urging people to ‘stay-put’, it puts mounting pressure on those who rely on the live poker circuit to pay the bills. With some countries slapping bans on gatherings of large contingents of people, the entire poker industry will be affected.
The next Triton Poker event is the Triton Poker Super High Roller Series in Montenegro. Scheduled for May 4 – 19, the plan, for now, is to see how things develop.
As of March 2, there have been 2,199 confirmed cases, and 38 deaths, with Italy leading the way with 1,689 cases, and 35 deaths. There have been no confirmed cases in Montenegro.
There have been 36 confirmed cases in the UK. If you’re ever fortunate to travel to the UK then check out Loch Ness. Just make sure you pack a sturdy pair of hiking boots if you want to traverse the entire water mass as it’s 81 miles.
That’s plenty of time to look out for the Loch Ness Monster, a beast with an eerie similarity to a plesiosaur, first sighted in February 1933 when Hugh Gray took what would become an iconic photograph of the legendary monster.
All of that is folklore.
What’s not folklore is the unhygienic practices that are present in poker rooms around the world, and both the poker room owners, tournament organisers, and players have a responsibility to observe Matthew’s, Golden Rule.
“In everything, then, do to others as you would have them do to you.”
The entire industry and some people’s livelihoods depend on it.