It was a good year to be Irish. Though we fielded an inexperienced team, they gave a very good account of themselves. A whole bunch of them made the money and a couple of them cashed for huge sums. I'm assured the fact that a lot of them seemed to get knocked out with indecent haste right after the bubble had been reached and congregated at the bar was pure coincidence. But if you're Irish you're used to dealing with this type of suspicion.

Near the business end of the main event I'd turned up a little late in the Rio to lend a little support to the remaining Irish players, especially my friend Don Fagan. I had just walked in the door as he got knocked out. He was a little shell-shocked for a few minutes as he knew as well as I did that he'd been in with a great chance of winning the lot. It's hard to keep a good man down so it wasn't long before we retired to the beer tent with 888's Jonny Natas. Don was trying hard to be depressed but a pocket full of chips and a couple of ten thousand dollars bundles in one's pocket beats Prozac any day. Before he'd finished his first beer he was in flying form and correcting a very famous Irish poker story that I was narrating to Mr Natas.

The story as I know it goes as follows : many moons ago, the members of Terry Roger's Eccentric Club headed off en masse to play a poker tournament in the Isle of Man. The late great Jimmy Langan, a man well-known to the Americans, was Ireland's leading tournament player at the time and Terry was piling lumps on Jimmy to win the tournament. We might have had our first world champion years before we did if Jimmy didn't suffer from a condition that required pretty severe medication. Every now and again, Jimmy would decide to give the medication a rest and the fun would really start. Just about anything was liable to happen and frequently did. He chose the Isle of Man as one of these occasions and despite the efforts of his lieutenant Johnny Suitcase, Jimmy was completely out of control and refusing all please to take his tablets. There was only one thing for it : Sean Fagan, Don's brother, himself as colourful a character as you could ever meet, put Jimmy's tablets in his pocket and took Jimmy off to the local pub. He spiked Jimmy's pint but Jimmy was too good a player to fall for that and when Sean was distracted he switched the drinks. The result was that when they got back to the hotel Sean went to bed and couldn't be woken for a day and a half and Jimmy continued on his merry way until they managed to bundle him onto a plane and take him home.

That was what I thought had happened, but Don knew differently. Completely forgetting he just got knocked out of the World Series, the tears were practically running down his cheeks as he put a new slant on the tale. Sean knew that Jimmy was quite likely to be thinking ahead and would pull the switch, so he spiked both pints to be sure to be sure. That's what I call taking one for the team.

I'm fed up listening to guys who say they'd much rather be playing against a table full of really good players. What a load of nonsense. Give me the Muppets anyday ! The funny thing is, that the guys who want to play against the good players generally speaking aren't all that good themselves, or too bright for that matter. When you walk into the room, it looks like you've either accidentally arrived at a Star trek convention, or have stumbled into a bunch of people on their way to the beach. The sooner they ban sunglasses the better; and hiding under your jacket while they're at it.

Card Player magazine reported that I had got a tough draw. It didn't look too tough to me. In the middle of the announcements at the start they came up with a new one "Let's have a big round of applause for Team Brunson" I though they were having a laugh, but they were deadly serious. I'd be the first guy to stand up and applaud Doyle Brunson, but I didn't really see why we should have to clap at a bunch of Guys who had been paid to wear a shirt walk solemnly down the aisle in the middle of the tournament room like pall bearers at a funeral. So the guy beside me said that if I'd qualified for $14 bucks on the net, I'd be quite happy to clap what ever they told me was good all day long. Some real champions from other sports were in the field : multiple World Snooker Champions Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry went completely unnoticed by the guy with the mic although 888's Lennox Lewis got a warm welcome.

Everything went very smoothly from my point of view, which is completely out of character for me, and I finished the day with an above average stack. Phil Hellmuth provided most of the entertainment by skipping the first level at the feature table and proceeding to get knocked out before level three. I thought the Cheers when his elimination was announced were a little out of order, for a man who'd had a marvelous World Series, but what do I know ?

I Bumped into Dan Harrington and told him his book had got me into a lot of trouble, and should come with a warning that it should be packed in a suitcase when travelling, and not carried as hand luggage. I had innocently been carrying Dan's book in my laptop bag as I passed through Beauvais Airport in France, when I was called aside for a security check. A routine check almost turned into an international incident when the girl decided to flick through the pages of Harrington on Hold'em. The book contains a lot of diagrams of a poker table which take the form of numbered circles all nicely connected up. The security girl jumped about a foot in the air when she saw these diagrams and shouted some instructions in French. I'm not sure what she said, but within seconds a guy with a machine gun, who looked like he was just itching to use it was at my side, and a supervisor arrived who split his time pretty evenly between looking malevolently at me, and glaring at Dan's diagrams. A heated discussion that seemed to take minutes ensued, after which more instructions were barked at my friend with the gun. While again I didn't understand what was said, i gathered that they had decided that the diagrams weren't a make your own bomb recipe, and that he wasn't allowed to shoot me just yet - which suited me just fine. Instead of sympathizing and apologizing for the hassle, Dan just burst out laughing in my face, which probably confirms his Irish heritage. I don't know if he'd have laughed that much if I told him I still hadn't read his damn book.

Well, that was day one - except for the announcement on the ESPN website that pre-tournament favourite Phil Gordon was out. I come to Vegas a lot and for the last couple of years there's been a lot of talk about an inevitable water shortage crisis. USA Today had stated that Mr Gordon's regime for the WSOP included drinking a bottle of Water every hour during the Main Event, whether he was thirsty or not, so his untimely early demise must have come as a relief to at least some of Nevada's more concerned citizens.

Of course it's all a lot bigger now. The stakes are higher but so are the falls. For some it's not about winning any more. It's about being perceived as being a winner. I'm not talking about the prestige of being rated by your fellow pros, it's way bigger than that now. Sponsorship deals, endorsements, stock prices, TV stuff... that's where it's all at now. You've got to talk the talk to get into this game but if you can't walk the walk things can go horribly wrong. It's not like you can fall down, pick yourself up, go back to where you came from and come back again next year for another shot. If you fall down now, you're liable to be trampled on.

I've been here from the start. I've heard the talk. I suppose one or two guys wish they'd promise less... they might have accomplished more. But that's the game now. Poker can be a cruel game. It can find out some of the jokers... you know, the guys whose self-promotional skills far exceed their genuine ability. I suppose that's fair. But they are often joined in the losers enclosure by guys who just don't deserve to be there, even by some of the greatest players in the world. I suppose that's why they call it gambling.

For a competitive game, there's a lot of really genuine friendships between rivals. Maybe it's this camaraderie that makes the game what it is. I hate to see guys hurting, especially guys with heart. Nobody tries harder than Barny Boatman. His play may be a little unorthodox but there's often a method to the badness (so he tells me). He's played a zillion tournaments this trip and hasn't cashed once. The deck has been hitting some guys in the face and Barny can't catch a break, I doubt if he could catch a bus! He's gone really deep time after time, which means he must do something right. But like Cinderella, midnight, or bubble time as we call it here, is not his favourite time of the day. No ball for Brany. We had dinner with the Hendon Mob the other night. As the waiter offered Barny the dessert menu, I told him not to give it to him as Barny was due to be knocked out just before the end of the main course! It's a tribute to his great sense of humour that he managed to laugh.

Jessie May is in town. For a guy who can play the game as well as he can it's strange that he seems like he prefers watching. That's until you realise how sick he is and what he's really looking at. This week the seven high-lo and the limit holdem shootout were on at the same time and he couldn't wait to see who was playing in both. Evidently his theory was that at least a few guys would be playing both, who really shouldn't be playing either. It all comes down to the pain. This was followed by the five thousand deuce to seven no limit tournament with rebuys. I don't know how many guys where in this that really shouldn't have been but Jesse figured the first three hours would be way more fun for the spectators than the final table! I'm sure he was right but I didn't join him on the rail. I felt the pain. I don't need to see it.

I've been here almost a month now. It seems longer. The World Series is like that, you get so involved it's hard to believe that this isn't the centre of the universe. I watch the news every day just to remind myself that there is another reality. But it seems the same every day. I must have wasted almost 15 bucks on USA Today. Another leak. People start to get worn down and the game plan goes out of the window. You know the feeling. I played two and a half hours without winning a pot in the rebuy tournament the other day (I think these events can be great fun but awarding bracelets for them in my opinion devalues every bracelet every champion has ever won). To let off a little steam, I played a pot-limit Omaha hi game online that demonstrated perfectly what day after day at the World Series can do to you. One of my opponents has a bracelet but hasn't exactly set the world on fire here. And it showed. I was surprised when he raised from the blinds after several players had already limped. Everybody played and I called from around the back with 6 7 8 10 single suited, a hand much adored in Ireland (a lot of hands are much adored in Ireland). The flop came 3 4 5, giving me all sorts of goodies, including a straight flush draw. Check from the world champion. Check. Bet all-in from my neighbour. Raise all-in from me. Call all-in from the next guy. Call from the champ. Straight flush on the turn for me. I told you this was a great hand. Declaration time. The champ shows Q J 10 9 off which he'd hit a jack hi flush. That's what the World Series does to you. You have to have been here to understand. He reloaded. I thought things couldn't get any funnier. I was wrong. About a minute later, English player Jenny K., who's also in the game, asked the champ if he knew whether Robert somebody had made the final of the Razz. Two minutes of silence (not in my room). I don't know exactly what the champ was thinking, or indeed screaming at his computer, but to his eternal credit, he finally managed "I don't know, I'll have to look it up." I wonder if he ever did.

"It's all about making history" Sometimes that Hellmuth guy speaks a lot of sense when you're not really expecting it. This is our Olympics and our chance to write our own little piece of history. Phil was on to this from way back. He may also have suspected that the money would follow the history, but I think he would have gone for making history anyway. Sometimes there's no choice. Playing poker is what we do. Most of us are crap at everything else anyway. Some of us are even crap at poker, but at least we're playing the game, and maybe that's what matters.
Inspired by Mr H. I made my own piece of history at this year's WSOP. I cashed for the third time in seven events when I managed to secure 40th place in the 2000 pot-limit Holdem event by very cunningly re-raising with AJ when my opponent only held a miserable looking AQ . Very unusually, I failed to suck out on him and received $ 3221 for my efforts. History at last. Three cashes out of seven, and I was still behind. Quite impressive in itself but I'm sure it's been done before. What made my achievement historic was that I was also an overall loser in the three events I cashed in (I'd shared 27th in the 10 000 pot-limit Omaha and received 6200 as a result). I got phone calls and emails from lots of my friends, containing all the usual words of encouragement. I hadn't the heart to tell them I would have been better off not playing at all, and at this steady rate of progress I'd be skint by Christmas. Anyway, I'd made history.
Three events later, two exits before the first break and a heads-up loss in the first round of the shoot-out to Layne Flack (who turned up an hour and a half late), I headed downtown for a little bit of inspiration. I didn't find it there but the taxi driver opened my eyes for me. He told me a story that I hope is true. He said a colleague of his had found a briefcase in the back of his cab. On opening it he discovered it contained eighty thousand dollars in cash. My cab driver was of the opinion that there were only two moves here : keep the lot or hand in the lot. He asked if I agreed. To be polite, I said I did. Apparently, his colleague found a third option. He handed in half of it. The cab driver was gleefully describing his buddy's interrogation as we arrived at our destination when an overenthusiastic hotel casino employee practically manhandled me out of the cab to let an important customer in. Obviously, I never did find out what happened but he did get me to thinking that maybe there were some options at the poker table in these big fields that I was maybe dismissing a little bit too quickly.
I'm not sure if this realisation almost led me to making more history in my next event, the $ 1500 no-limit Holdem, but something did. I held the chip lead for an hour or two, but managed to get myself back into familiar territory with great ease. I was on the verge of finishing about 120th and a historic fourth cash finish without being in overall profit in the four events when destiny lent a hand and things started looking up. Then history really started. I found myself at the final table of ten with 69 year old Boston Billy and 82 year old Mr McKinney. Mr McKinney, the oldest man to ever win a bracelet when he won the Seniors last year, is one of the great gentlemen of the game and it was an honour to play with him. Boston Billy, a long time highly respected pro, was putting in one of the great performances of this year's WSOP. He'd also made the final table of the $ 2000 event the day before this event started and could easily have won both without even a rest day. A remarkable achievement by a remarkable man who in his wonderful humorous fashion described himself to me a couple of years ago as being "in the twilight of a mediocre career"! With four players left and Mr McKinney and Mr Billy departed, we were level in chips, I was offered a four way chop. I think we would have got about $ 300 000 each and played for the bracelet. Money is money, but history is history. I figured it would be a lot easier to win the bracelet if we were still playing for the money. I finished up with neither but nobody said history came cheap.

The World Cup and the World Series at the same time is my idea of the perfect way to spend the summer. Having to be in Vegas for the second half of the World Cup wasn't really a problem as I had been told in advance ESPN were providing lots of coverage. As ESPN's soccer commentary is about as useful as a chocolate tea pot, I watched a lot of the games in noisy bars and sports books where the atmosphere was best. I even had the pleasure of watching the Germany-Italy semi-final with some of the Germans poker pros in a bar which I was told was an exact replica of a Munich beer garden. I was very impressed with the Germans drinking beer out of glasses that looked like they held half a gallon of the stuff, though I considered their banging these glasses together with great gusto an unnecessary risk with very little upside. Nice to see the Germans play loose for a change. I forgot to mention to my German friends that I had bet on the Italians. Old habits die hard. I later discovered one of the loudest of my German companions had a few quid on Italy too. Nice to see a chink in the German armour.

The day before the ten thousand pot-limit Omaha event, I went along to give a little advice before the upcoming ladies tournament to the 888.com team. I don't know why I was invited to do so, I've never played in a ladies event that I know of. So it was no great surprise that despite looking fantastic, none of this very talented outfit made the money. I don't think it's an accident that I didn't hear any "See you next year" kind of stuff. We went to China Town for dinner with Mad Marty and the beautiful Catherine. We got a really cool soccer nut of a cab driver and he was delighted when Marty informed him that he used to live just down the street from David Beckham, that they'd been in school together, and that Beckham phoned him every few days to seek his advice on this and that. This was news to me. I suppose, at a stretch, you could call the M1 a street, but I firmly believe neither Beckham nor Marty were ever in school and if they were it was a complete waste of time. Furthermore, if I thought I needed advice from Marty, I'd be too upset to pick up the phone in the first place.

I'm not the only European for whom the ten thousand pot-limit Omaha at the WSOP is the biggest day of the year. Europeans in general have learnt not to play the Americans at their own game. Thankfully some Americans haven't learnt the same lesson. It would be easier to convince many of the brand name American players that the man in the moon was coming for lunch than that they are taking the worst of it in the pot-limit Omaha tournaments. Thank god for that.

Fair play to Harrah's. They know, and did the best they could to help the Americans out. And who could blame them. If the event was held in Europe, I'd like to think the Europeans would be given the best chance possible. The first master stroke was to start the event at noon. Just as the second half of the World Cup final was about to commence. Everybody knows Americans aren't too keen on any sport that somebody else might win at while the Europeans were up to their necks betting on the soccer and either missed the first hour and a half of the tournament or at best were only giving it half their attention. A good start for the home team. Last year, this event was fantastic, and a credit to the organisers. It lasted the full three days and was a true test. Master stroke number two to help out the home team was to cut the levels from ninety to sixty minutes, which ensured a lot of the favorites were eliminated in the earlier stages. I was fortunate enough to gather some chips early on, so it all worked to my advantage. Nevertheless, it inspired me to join the WPA the following day, as I don't want it to happen to me next time. This WPA is a great idea when you think about it. You give them fifty bucks every year and they try to sort out these kind of problems on our behalf. I don't know if it's going to work, but it's got to be value. I know if they give me fifty bucks and ask me to do for them what they are promising to do for me I'd think they were nuts.

I managed to turn six thousand into sixty thousand as the bubble approached and finished up losing with bad aces versus good aces. The dream is over for another year and I only got 6100 of my buy-in back. But at least I had a lot of fun playing against the best players in the world for a day in a Real championship event and discovered a very interesting fact : I noticed that most of the sponsored female players are a lot better in the looks department than average. This is no great surprise I suppose but have you ever noticed that a huge number of the sponsored guys are somewhere between not too good looking and plain ugly ? Food for thought.

I make mistakes all the time. Maybe the biggest one is sometimes not learning from the last one. Some call it stupidity, but I'm immune from that one because I'm Irish. In Ireland it's traditional to repeat mistakes at least a few times. It's all just part of the deal. It is a great comfort though to watch others make complete idiots of themselves in other fields. It helps with the self-forgiveness process. I was absolutely thrilled to hear the commentator in a recent world cup match come out with a classic "Usually you should have at least eight or nine players in a ten man wall". He can play in my game any time he likes. Then, one of the guys on the mike in the Rio (I think these guys are paid by the word or just love themselves) beat the football guy out of sight with the following "We had over two thousand players yesterday and had to give only one ten minute penalty for use of the F. word. Congratulations to all of you, including those who weren't here yesterday." Wow.

I like Dan Heimiller, he's a very good aggressive all round tournament poker player. He raises more often than any man alive. He looks like he should be a rock but he's actually the complete opposite. He drives people nuts with his constant raising and re-raising and enjoys quite a degree of success. He's also a very amusing and enthusiastic beer drinking companion and can converse in a zany and entertaining manner on many subjects which don't involve a flop, a turn or a river. But sometimes he gets a little confused. During the dinner break in one of the two thousand no-limit tournaments, a friend of mine told me Dan had just been talking to him about me. It appears that Dan thought that I was giving up too much of my edge (I'm glad that at least someone thinks I have one) by putting my opponents too much at ease with my easygoing attitude at the table. He may or may not be right but the funny thing is that half an hour after having this conversation he asked me if I'd trade five percent with him. Sounds like an audition for a membership the Irish team to me.

I went over to the Bellagio the other day to play the thousand dollar no-limit holdem tournament that they hold every afternoon. Very player friendly. Five thousand starting chips and a tournament director and staff who know what poker and poker players are all about. It's a pity Jack McLelland is no longer involved in the wsop. After misplaying AQ to lose three quarters of my chips to KK (I should know that even the guy who's drinking gets a big hand just as often as the other guys) I then flopped a set of queens for the rest of my money, only to lose to A3 who hit a runner runner for a wheel. Good practice for the omaha tournament that's coming up! England's Ian Woodley, runner up in the recent Irish open, came out with a gem, which was almost but not quite worth the thousand. We were discussing the final of the pot-limit holdem event in 2005 where the USA's Brian Wilson (who also finished second in 888's televised UK Open) defeated England's man in form John Gale. Ian's theory was that these two guys were probably twins that had been separated at birth, and only met up at the final table. If you have played with them or watched them play, you'll find it hard to rule out this possibility.

Next up was the 2500 no-limit holdem in the Rio, which unfortunately turned out to be another practice session for the omaha. I checked top set to the button on an A K 2 flop (he's raised and I re-raised before the flop) and he stuck me all-in. A ten and a queen later, I was on my way back to the Gold Coast. I stopped on the Rio gift shop on the way to cheer myself up by purchasing and consuming a Milky Way. I consider this a very loose play as a Milky Way is a quarter cheaper in the Gold Coast but sometimes you've got to take the worst of it, just for the hell of it. The very pleasant Asian lady who served me looked at my shirt and said "888, very lucky number!". She's still alive but that's down more to my ignorance at the time of the status of the death penalty in the state of Nevada than to anything else.

He also told me his story. He came to town last August with ten thousand dollars in his pocket, dreaming of a career as a professional gambler and by October he was driving a cab. It seems roulette was his game. Obviously, he wasn't very good at it but he was determined to improve, and he feels he's making some progress in this regard. It seems his latest system revolves around winning a thousand a day. He said this wasn't as difficult as it sounded as one thousand is the unit he plans to operate in, so he only needs to win one unit a day. He asked if I understood and I assured him I was with him so far. He's an even money sort of guy, red or black is his game and the system is both simple and complex. Scenario A is easy : he chooses red or black for his first bet and if it wins he's out of there. Two minutes. A thousand dollars. The rest of the day off. The American dream at its finest. He lost me a little when he got to "what happens when, if ever, the first bet looses". I did manage to grasp that it involved heroic discipline in that sometimes you needed to study the numbers for up to an hour before you could be reasonably sure what the next colour was going to be. This is heresy to a seasoned steamer like me. But it's his system not mine.

He told me, in confidence, that fine and all a system as it was, it still needed a little fine tuning but he was gradually sorting out its finer points. I was hugely impressed when he told me that while testing the system he was temporarily using a five dollar unit, but quite reasonably pointed out that once he got it working for five bucks, the thousand dollar unit would quickly come into play. He seemed confident that the future was rosy. I hope his dreams come true.

When I got to my destination, I tipped him five bucks. I told him I was lucky I didn't meet him in a few months, because the way things are going here for me, I couldn't have afforded to tip him at the targeted unit. I laughed. He didn't. But at least he got to share his dream.

Casting aside all my doubts, I went after my own dream in the two thousand no limit event. Nineteen hundred runners didn't seem too much of an obstacle to a man thinking as positively as I was. I flopped a pair and a straight flush draw, played it like I had a straight flush already and busted some poor guy, unlucky enough to have flopped top two pairs when I hit it for real. I had $ 8000 after two levels, $ 14000 after four levels, and $ 18000 at the dinner break. Simple game really when they give you something to work with. Four hours of frustration followed where, incredibly, I neither won nor lost more than three or four thousand in a pot and seemed to have about $ 14200 every time I counted my chips. I finally got caught in a battle of the blinds when my K5 in the small blind ran into KQ in the big blind. We both flopped an open handed straight draw but justice was done when we missed and the real hand won. As the river card hit the table, my opponent let out a roar that could have woken the dead. I like to collect as much information as possible, so I filed this guy under the "definitely has a TV, and probably doesn't get out much" category. A ton and a half of paperwork later, I was paid the princely sum of 2700 bucks for my efforts. The joys of the WSOP.

I knew my friend, top English pro Julian Gardner, was coming into town, so I phoned the Bellagio to see if he had checked in yet. I got a very helpful girl with a marvelous Southern accent who told me that he wasn't due to check in until the following day. "Thanks", I said, "I thought he was arriving today". "I know why you think that", she replied, "It's because you guys are in a different time zone". Quite surprised, I said "I didn't know that. It's three o'clock in the Gold Coast. What time is it in the Bellagio ?"

I played the $ 1500 Pot Limit Holdem tournament. It was very player friendly. Only ten to a table. The general consensus among the pros is that giving players double chips, i.e. 3000 instead of 1500 in this case, as they do at most progressive venues would be a lot more fair, especially when bracelets are up for grabs. I tend to agree with them but have pointed out to some of the moaners that perhaps Harrah's just don't have enough chips to go around. I like to be fair. I did much better in the pot-limit, I got to level 2. I got plenty of practice at set flopping as I got dealt a whole bunch of small and medium pocket pairs, but it looks like I'm no good at it for the moment. At the dizzy heights of level 2 I changed tactics and raced my pair against the over cards. One of us finished up with a set, but it wasn't me!

I had the next day off as I'm either too dumb or too bright to feel good about entering a Limit Holdem tournament. I took the opportunity to move from downtown to the Gold Coast. Close enough to the poker room. Far enough from the bad beat stories. A lot of Irish guys stayed here last year, so I decided to play safe and pretend to be an American. I shouted about three times as loud as necessary at the girl in reception and stated the obvious once or twice. I think it worked.

I was hanging about outside the impressive Full Tilt hospitality suite when a bell boy emerged pushing an empty trolley. My companion was impressed that Full Tilt even had their own bell boy. I told him he was need to wheel the egos in and out. It's hard to keep a good man down.

I did however enter new territory by level 3, where the binds were 50-100. A small stack limped in first position and Minh Ly raised. I had 88. I wouldn't normally be too crazy in this spot, especially with a limper, but the limper had been limping while short-stacked and passing when raised already. I knew I wasn't the only one aware of this, so I treated the raise with less respect than I normally would, and moved all-in for about 1700, thinking there was a good chance I'd win the pot there and then. There wasn't. The raiser called me with 99. The first card over was an 8! Well, it wasn't actually. It was a jack! Nothing else helped and I was walking again. Three events. $ 5500. Not the start I was looking for, but if you don't get off to a decent start in these events, you end up on a one-hand-for-the-lot strategy, which isn't ideal but you've got to play the game as it unfolds.

Interesting conversation between Irish pro Rory Liffey and English pro Gary Bush.

Rory : Did you play today ?
Gary : No way! It's like trying to find a needle an a hay stack.
Rory : So, are you going to try the $ 500 tournament at 5 o'clock then ?
Gary : Nope. It's a complete crapshoot !
Rory : Maybe the $ 1000 in the Bellagio would suit you better... Slow clock, lots of chips.
Gary : That's like a championship event, it goes on and on for ever...
Rory : Oh, OK.

I headed down to the Rio after the game to register for the first few events. Half a dozen people (four of them strangers) asked me if I was here to do something for TV, one guy asked me if I was here to write something. Only Nolan Dalla was polite enough to mention that maybe it was about time I won a bracelet. He's a good judge that Nolan Dalla! I love the start of big tournaments. Everyone is in good humor. Two of the ladies at the registration sang happy birthday to me after examining my passport .They stopped pretty quickly when I joined in. !

It didn't take me long to make my first final table. Unfortunately, I was there as a spectator sweating my friends Mike Sexton and Andy Black, who both made the final table of the two million dollar free roll Tournament of Champions. A strange name for a tournament where eight of the players qualified by losing (at the final table of last year's WSOP) while genuine real world champions like Berry Johnson weren't even invited. It was nonetheless a star-studded final table, with Mike and Andy joined by the likes of Chris Ferguson and Daniel Negreanu. Andy had a bid chip lead and Mike was pretty short stacked. The first big move of the day didn't even involve the final table. It was an announcement by some excited guy in a suit that the 1500 No Limit Hold'em event would be played eleven handed, and involve over 400 alternates. He didn't tell us when, if ever, the real poker was going to start. Andy came over to the rail to talk to me, and seemed in good spirits. I was delighted to see him doing well as I'm not the only one who thinks he was the best player at last year's final table. Ten minutes later, I nearly threw up when Andy blew up and gifted three quarter of his chips to Daniel. If Andy ever stopped beating himself, we'd all have to watch out. Back in my hotel room, I emerged from a jetlagged sleep from which I emerged about every hour to check the chip-counts in the Rio. Mike against Daniel heads-up, you couldn't make this stuff up! What TV! Great poker played in the true spirit of the game. It went on for hours, during which Daniel got the aces four times, but couldn't find Mike with a hand. Finally, Mike emerged a winner and gave half the million he won to charity before Daniel could suggest doubles or quits on the golf course. It was a good day for poker. The last time I sweated Mike at a final table was when he finished second in the Seniors at the WSOP a few years ago. He needed the money and wanted the bracelet that day, and was absolutely gutted when he lost. Sometimes, you only find out how much a guy really cares when you see him lose. There's a great line from a classic NBA final's commentary, where the announcer remarks "Maybe you have to have your heart broken before you can become a real champion". It seemed more than appropriate here. Few of the enthusiastic crowd even knew that Mike had won a bracelet in the 80's, had won a European Championship in exhibition style, or was regarded by his fellow pros as a truly world class player. Well, now they know.

I was with Mike the next day, when the Cardplayer guy, Mr. Belski, interviewed him. The interview began with Rick congratulating Mike on winning one of the most exciting heads-up he'd seen in many years. I missed the rest of what was said because I was so busy laughing because the interviewer looked to be about seventeen.

I wasn't quite so successful myself. The end. I'm only joking. I played my first eleven handed WSOP event. Ten of us were seated with one empty seat beside me. Veteran John Bonnetti was the only one I recognized. The eleventh seat was taken by a guy who was probably one of the three biggest guys in the room. I asked him if he'd be staying long. "Probably longer than you buddy". Ouch. My cover got blown a bit when Robert Williamson III (I think he's called the third because he's only a third of the size he used to be) and Warren Karp dropped by to say hi. But it didn't make any difference. Before the end of level one, I limped into a pot with the Qs 9s and a guy bet into me after a flop of Qd 8s 4s. I raised, hit the flush on the turn, and got the rest in after he checked. He had As 7s. I stood up to go. Of course the big guy was still there !

As I left the room, I stopped to say hello to Mark Sief. Mark is great. He loves a gamble and a smile is never far from his face. I like him extra well since he won the two bracelets last year. Every time I look at him, I can't help thinking that I only play half as bad as he does, so one bracelet should be quite easy!

I've seen a great Brunson T-shirt. It says "Courage doesn't necessarily mean an absence of fear". Or if you're Irish, substitute "brains". God bless Ireland.

That was then, and this is now. A team event (especially involving the Danes) in February and the World Series in July are worlds apart, and I generally try to take the World Series as seriously as I take the silly season frivolously.

In the early nineties, I was broke, which explains why I spent several weeks watching world chess champion Kasparov defend his title against England's Nigel Short live on TV. Live chess. Well, I did say I was broke. It proved to be an experience that changed my life. With all due respect to Nigel Short (I'm glad my parents didn't call me Nigel), it was a complete mismatch. Even I knew that. What fascinated me was the way Kasparov prepared for the match anyway. Hours in the gym. Salads. Hours and hours of mental preparation. If it were me, I'd probably have turned up half asleep or half drunk, or both, and expected to win anyway. I got the thinking that if a genius like Kasparov prepared like this, that perhaps a less talented individual like myself should possibly consider minor adjustments to my life style, particularly in the four or five months leading up to an attempt to win the World Championship. Just in case you don't know, it hasn't brought me a world title, but it's kept me alive and solvent, which wasn't really the plan, but it's not too bad.

This explains why I arrived in Vegas a couple of days ago 17 Lbs lighter than my Nation's cup fighting weight, and ready to play as well as I can.

Having been lucky enough to attend every WSOP since 1996, 2005 was a bit of a blow to the system. Our annual convention had been taken over by the bean counters and stripped of its soul. Bean counters do what bean counters do. The romance of Binion's Horseshoe had been replaced by the factory-like Rio. Everyone was just another number. It seemed like we had all been sucked back into a system we spent our lives escaping from. The scary bit was that it all happened so fast.

I'm not very proud at my performance at last year's WSOP, I played a few of the earlier events, I managed just one dinner break. I didn't play particularly badly, I suppose I could argue I was a little unlucky but that's not really good enough. The truth is I didn't play any way near my best and got fed up with the whole thing and went off and amused myself by joining Jessie May in taking an irreverent look at the poker world in The Poker Show. For a finale I played four or five levels of the main event before heading happily to the Bellagio bar.

Never again. For ten years, I've played my best poker at the World Series, and I know there's no excuse for leaving this town knowing you gave it less than 100%. I swear if I ever let it happen again, I'll never come back. To make sure this doesn't happen, I headed downtown to the Golden Nugget as soon as I arrived in Vegas, I might have to play the World Series in an atmosphereless casino, but I don't have to live there. Just being downtown, everything feels different.

There's something about Binion's that sets it apart. Maybe it's the dark seediness of the place. Maybe it's the comfortable acceptance of the dignity of old age. But for me, I think it's the ghosts. You can feel the history of the place. The battles won and lost. The champions crowned. The hearts broken. I can't walk by the wall of pictures of past champions without feeling a tingling in my spine. An excitement in the air. The certain knowledge that it's way more than just a game.

That's why I found myself at 5 am on my first morning in town, gazing at the photos of the greats, searching for inspiration. Of course it worked! I forgave myself for last year and can't wait to be in the middle of the action.

Feeling a lot happier, I wandered through the card room and remembered some of the fun times. I remember standing on the rail watching, with great interest, Phil Hellmuth playing a holdem tournament. Scott Gray came by with comps for the buffet. I told him I'd rather watch Phil for a while than eat, to which he replied "Come and eat anyway. If he's any good, he'll still be there when we get back!" He wasn't.

Another classic occurred when I was sitting at the bar with Scott in an almost deserted Binion's at the end of the World Series in the nineties. The immaculate Mike Laing walked by, carrying a suit whilst dragging two enormous suitcases behind him. I asked Gray why anybody needed two suitcases to go to play poker. "One is for the hairdryers." was his immediate response.

Gray himself got nailed a few years later by a graveyard dealer "You're a pro, aren't you?", says the dealer to Scott as he played in a Omaha game. "Yes", replied Gray chuffed that the dealer had spotted his prowess at the game. "Figures" said the dealer, " you've got that poker room pallor!" You can't win them all.

You can't take the historic atmosphere of Binion's to the Rio, but looking back at where you came from just might show you where you're going. I hope.