blonde poker

Two weeks to go until I jet off from Gatwick to join the other 8,000 sharks, fish and monkey in their quest to win an overly gaudy piece of jewellery. I qualified way back in March through William Hill, with my very first crack at a qualifier (click here to read the full details) so my qualification expenditure has amounted to just £15.40.

What's my form, then? Well, I started playing a few years ago when the company I worked for made the decision to move me to a desk in the corner where no one else could see my monitor. They also then didn't give me enough work to do. A heady combination, which meant I'd happily spend a little while every day playing £1/£2 limit poker. A while later, the company went bankrupt. The official records show no evidence of causality.

My first real tournament success was qualifying for the first Ladbrokes Poker Cruise, which was a lot of fun, even though I went out on the first day by playing like an absolute muppet (raising Lucy Rokash's BB with KQ and then deciding that was good enough to call her all-in - oops). Then, last year, I qualified for the William Hill Poker Grand Prix and became one of the Gods of Poker (or so it says here).

However, I've never really had much success in the live arena. I once won a £10 rebuy for £270 and came 7th in a £30 freezeout at one of my first visits to the Gutshot but otherwise I haven't managed to transfer my internet play to the real world. That means I've got all the bad live play out of my system, so there's only good stuff left for Vegas (I will not brook any argument against this logic).

I haven't been to Las Vegas, or indeed the US, before so I'm looking forward to the trip as much for the experience as for the WSOP itself. It will certainly be fun - being profitable would be a bonus.

After a very long eleven hour flight, we got a ride to the house, dumped our gear and headed straight to the Rio, buying into most of the events which got rid of most of the cash.

Five or six of the big online cardrooms have ‘player lounges’ and we popped into the Full Tilt one to see what was on offer. Once we realised that there were no free snacks or beverages we did a U-turn but not before one of the dolly birds pointed out to us that we could get our pictures taken with our favourite Full Tilt players in the lounge at the back; I popped my head in and got to see the lone figure of Andy Bloch, slumped in a chair, head in hands. I wasn’t tempted.

We ended up at the Rio’s American Diner with Ian Woodley, Mad Turk, Denis O’Mahoney and Kerry Taylor. Denis chose some very fine Texan red and a jumbo shrimp cocktail, and mini rack of ribs later we really felt we’d arrived.

Late nights and odd sleeping routines mean that most poker players are pretty adept at warding off jet lag and I was very pleased with the nine hour sleep I managed last night. Our house is right at the foot of the hills behind the city and Ariston and myself nipped out to find a local shop for some milk and coffee. Luckily we set off early as it ended up a near 3 mile hike - 3 miles in this heat is a mighty achievement and luckily we did eventually manage to find a cab to get back.