Well done for the coverage team - much appreciated - and a special thank you to Caroline for brightening up the place (as usual).

Re:  its a fantastic week's poker and a very good event.

Exactly - as a newbie I must say I was blown away by the standard of the dealers. They were all so well trained - a real credit to the management.

Hi - a few thoughts on day 1a. I recently won a free day at a TIPS seminar with Paul Zimbler - and Liv Boeree as the guest pro. She emphasised the importance of entering satellites to get into big comps - so on Monday night I joined DTD and won a £560 entry into this event for £34. I’d never been to DTD or a tourney like this before - and with three minutes to go the excitement built as all the names and seat allocations came up on the screens - and as usual my name wasn’t there! Managers were summoned to sort out some Aussie guy waving a copy of an email saying he did in fact have a seat, and after missing a few hands I finally made it to a table.

Before all this, I had arrived very early and stumbled across a lone piece of paper on one of the empty tables stating that Nick Weathall was giving a one hour tutorial in the VIP room before the show started. I scampered off to find a starving crowd of about 20 who actually knew about this, and listened to Nick and Team PokerStars Ireland Pro Jude Ainsworth give a great seminar - and got some PokerStars goodies too. But, to quote www.ukipt.com, “unfortunately Jude went bust during level 4 when his nut flush was beaten by Daniel Sidebotham’s straight flash in one of the notable hands of the day”. Since Dumbledore had banned the use of the Petronus Curse (with so many muggles about in the card room), it’s almost impossible to beat a straight flash - unless your name is Hermonie.

I got off to a terrible start - hit full in the face with the deck - Aces three times, Kings twice, Queens, my A.J of hearts flopped three more hearts for a nut flush, my 7.8 suited made a straight and a flush, etc, etc. No one would play against me, I limped with Aces and checked to the end - and still only picked up 75 chips for the blinds! With the blinds 25-50 and a one hour clock I only managed to get an extra three to four thousand chips. Then nothing for the rest of the day, and endless stream of junk all the way to the end. But there was one proper poker player at my table - he had his hoodie pulled up over his face the whole time, cool sunglasses, iPod, serious jewlery - the lot.

And it was his turn at the end - he not only got huge cards, but he hit everything, knocking people out left, right and centre. When two new medium stacks arrived at the table in the last hour, they ended up going all-in against each other with monsters, but our hero called the two large all-ins with.....6.4 of course. Obviously the flop was 6.6.4 and two more bit the dust. So make a note ye mortals, if you ever see two solid players (with above average chips at the end of the day) go all-in -  and you look down to see 6.4, get in there my son.

Actually it was a bit boring ‘till Caroline "Mouth" Cove (as she was described earlier in this blog) turned up to play with us. Boy did that liven things up - luckily she did not perform the aforesaid ‘straight flash’ at the table.

The tournament structure is interesting, one hour blinds, eight levels and every two hours there is a 15 min break. So you start at Noon and finish at 8.45 pm. Quite civilized. A free meal voucher is provided and you have to fit your (very indifferent in my case) meal into the above structure. Coffee is £1.75 a cup - what a bloody stupid price - poor waitresses fiddling about with change at the tables while trying to balance a tray of other orders. I like to give them at least a small tip and so gave £2.50 each time - with a resulting cost of £10 for four smallish cups of equally indifferent coffee. Just don’t tell the mob at G Luton you can get the punters to pay for coffee.

So that’s it - all in all I didn’t get anywhere, but had a great day out for my 34 quid - thoroughly recommended.

Put me in thanks.

Re a certain young lady having the nuts, I was probably the only one at the table old enough to remember the musical HAIR when it first came out (it's being revived now as a matter of fact). There was a little sketch towards the beginning of the show that went -
IF you have nuts on the wall, you have wall nuts,
If you have nuts on your chest - you have chest nuts.
But if you have nuts on your chin
You have a mouth full of ...........

So - who was the lady who announced to the table a few nights ago that she was not at all fussy about what went in her mouth?

So, as usual someone always asks me about the Mile High Club when I tell them what I did. Actually, since it's almost eight years since I got divorced, I don't really feel very qualified to speak on that subject any more (and after two houses, £340K and a car for the divorce, it just might be a while before I sign up again). Anyrate, what I wanted to say was, to join the club you must meet your partner for the first time on the flight, bonking the girlfriend in the aft loo on the way to Palma sadly does not count. While accomplishing the feat on twelve hour flights to the far flung corners of the earth like Vancouver, Tokyo or Cape Town obviously count, extra points are awarded for the thirty minute shuttle between London and Paris.

Thanks for the welcome guys, and I'm not here to flame anyone - just to get a bit better (not too hard!) at poker. I must say I find live quite a bit harder  than the internet at the moment, I'm a computer nerd, and miss my two screens full of stats from various programs telling me all about the other players and the state of the game. Hell, I never even know how much is in the pot when at the casino! I did play at G and Stanley a bit before, but have decided to try again now that my 19 yr old son is more independent and has his own car, but mainly it's just to get out of the house in the evenings after seven years as a single dad looking after him from the age of 12. I do like having a dealer at the casino (it gives me the illusion of being a proper poker player) - and the ones at G are now so much better than they were a year or so ago. If any internet newbies have any questions about different sites, and setting up the tracking software and Head Up Displays used nowdays, I'm only too happy to help. Oh look, the rain's stopped - time to get a load of washing on the line .........................

RE: Why don't pax get parachutes?  You're asking a man who gives passengers a plastic knife and fork to cut up their steak - and a metal spoon to stir their coffee? Just remember, after landing, "always remain in your seat until the aircraft comes to a complete stop". That's as compared to a normal stop, where we will be, er, stopping.

Hi - can you put me on the list please - thanks, Adrian.