Behind an anonymous green door in London's Mayfair on Wednesday night met an assortment of poker players and reporters increasingly familiar. Over the last year I've been following the tournament trail and keeping a keen eye on all stories poker.
Introduced by the enthusiastic Catman, Dave and tikay were on hand to field questions about blonde, its new poker site and the potential to learn the game in a friendly, live environment with experienced teachers.
Although the audience Dave was expecting was meant to be mostly beginners, there were exactly two in the room who would claim that status, and in fact what could have been a rather prosaic introduction to the game (this is the button, a flush beats a straight) turned into an interesting mini-masterclass touching on many important aspects of Dave's own winning game. Informed questions shot from the audience, and although El Blondie seemed a little daunted by the quantity of his own written notes, his succinct and no-nonsense discussion of points like "tells," "position," and "information gathering" was definitely worth paying attention to when they were raised. I spotted Catman making notes.
Then came the tournament, and the chance to take down their mentor - which they did with aplomb. Tikay fared a little better than El Blondie after the first hand he played brought him Aces, that is, after 15 minutes or so of wandering round, finally taking his seat and being instantly rewarded by the poker gods. But the true success story is that of the winner (fairly obvious, that) - Claw75 aka Claire who after a fairly rapid destruction of the four starting tables took the top spot and $600. In her own words (stolen from the forum): "got to say I had a lot of luck, but I'm not knocking it (I only saw three decent hands all evening!). Big thanks to Tikay as well for helping me out at the end (after I knocked him out...)"
Close behind her came Pokerdave69 ($300 better off) and then SuffolkPunch (Simon Young) who took $200 - I was fairly busy being beaten heads up by Aaron the Baron to see over the heads of the enthusiastic finalists, but the atmosphere was like that at all blonde live events, fun, competitive and entertaining. In charge of the evening's Turbo Tournament was veteran T.D. Roy Houghton, so it ran as smoothly (and as fast) as a cheetah on ice skates.
Having never attended a poker seminar before (even a mini one) it was good to get a taste of solid 
advice coming from a background of experience - but a few members of the audience probably knew a lot of it already (and if they didn't, I don't think Dave particularly wanted them to - Joe Grech (pictured left) springs instantly to mind..). There is definitely something to be gained in just discussing the interesting questions thrown up by the game and I reckon there may be a few new blondeites online soon putting theory into practise.