SPLIT, Croatia — The smoke machine seemed redundant.
This was the Cigar Smoking World Championship. There was already a lot of smoke.
But there it was, next to the laser lights and the rattling sound system, pluming white fog around a subterranean hotel ballroom in which people in tuxedos and evening gowns representing more than 40 countries had gathered to find out who among them could smoke a cigar the slowest.
The noise, the pageantry, the glittery prizes valued at tens of thousands of dollars — for Marko Bilic, a garrulous local cigar lounge owner, it was a far cry from the genesis of the event 10 years ago, when 17 people came by to try a game he had just made up.