The Hilton Diagonal Mar is now headquarters for Barcelona's English-speaking expats. The lobby is mobbed with Canadians and Britons, many of whom seem relatively subdued - the Canadians I suppose because they are jetlagged, the Britons I suppose because they are British - but  a healthy portion have stepped off their planes and into their hippest attire and have already whipped themselves into a networking frenzy.

That's right, it's time again for the European iGaming Congress & Expo, which gets underway tomorrow afternoon, and if the buzz in the cavernous Hilton lobby carries through the week, it's going to be a lively event.

For most of those present, as it goes in Spain, the evening hasn't even begun. I, on the other hand, have retreated back to my room to write a blog and Skype with my wife and son. I hear Barcelona is nice, though.

For starters, I've got football on my mind, as the I-gaming football tournament transpired this afternoon. I can't report on it because I didn't go, but I can offer my account of the last such tournament in which I participated, which took place prior to ICE a couple of years back in London. The event was the brainchild of my former boss, Sue Schneider, who managed to assemble a three-team round robin tournament. If my memory serves me correctly, it was River City Group, ATE and CryptoLogic. Sue stacked the River City Group team with European ringers, one former pro from Canada and Michael Caselli. We - the hapless American crew - won our first match handily and nearly won our second match, and we kicked ass the American way: We outsourced. I remember one thing clearly: Neither a single River City Group employee nor Michael scored a goal. We sort of ran around disrupting things and high-fiving our ringers when they buried shots in the net.

Anyway, I welcome anyone who was present at today's tournament to submit trash-talking and or excuse-making comments to this blog. I'll be curious to find out tomorrow how it went.

So a few brief matters leading into EiG. . . First, what to expect from IGamingNews: Like always, we'll report on newsworthy developments and fly home with a bushel of feature articles to materialize in coming weeks. But in addition the standard IGN coverage, we'll do some blogging throughout the week and will follow up next week with audio and video coverage taken during the event. There's a good chance that soon you'll be watching and hearing yourself being insightful at IGamingNews.com. You'll also be hearing from me and our newest writer, Jeanette Kozlowski, who is attending her first I-gaming conference and will play the role of untainted I-gaming journalist.

As for the conference, kudos to Mark Walker from our London office for putting together a nice looking program. I think a new perspective from a different conference organizer will please the masses. I'm particularly interested in the non-gaming related sessions, which should freshen up the program with new concepts. I also find it interesting how much attention US policy is getting on this side of the pond, and anticipate some meaty discussions on this topic.

Setting EiG aside for moment, back home the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article today exposing a scandal in which detained BoS founder Gary Kaplan has allegedly received special treatment in jail. The newspaper's razor-sharp attack on the St. Louis County correctional system offers a harrowing tale of corruption and the unraveling of a web of lies revolving around the smuggling of such contraband as unauthorized office supplies, organic dried cherries and Advil. To read the article, click here.

Tomorrow I'll cut into the guts of EiG and share more observations.