London Baby!

We all would have liked to have stayed longer but unfortunately I wasn't able to, as I had to fly to London for my poker million heat. I'd played in the previous three poker millions and have made the final for the last two years, so I was really excited about the prospect of making the final three years in a row; which would be a ridiculous achievement really.

Even before my own success in the tournament it was an event which I had always looked forward to seeing on TV - I remember watching John Duthie destroy a final table including Barney Boatman and Tony Bloom in the first one held on the Isle of Man, so I was both excited and a bit nervous when I discovered that he would be in my heat.

Another previous winner who was also drawn in my heat was Joe Beevers who I came second to in last year's final, and we also had well known American Pro, Mike 'the mouth' Matusow. The other 2 opponents were internet qualifiers, although one of them was a young online professional who I had met before and I knew was going to be a good player. This was going to be a tough heat, although, so was every other heat and to be honest, I was just glad that I wasn't drawn in the afternoon one with Eoghan O'Dea, Ram, Annette, Tony G, Stuart Fox and John Magill.

I don't want to give out too many details of the play in my heat, but I got a few nice hands, which all held up and I was able to keep out of trouble and ended up winning the thing without really having to do anything too fancy. I'm not sure whether it's ok for me to disclose the winners of any of the other heats, but the information is on the net and will be reasonably easy to find if you go to the trouble of looking. I will say however, that my semi-final in December will be very tough indeed, and that the Irish are very well represented in both semis.

When I won the World Open back in April I kinda thought I had had my result for the year. I would have been delighted with just winning one major tournament, but things just keep getting better and better for me. I've had a good deal more than my fair share of good fortune this year and I know it has to stop sooner or later... hopefully it'll hold out until after the live final in December though.

Unsurprisingly, the next 2 days involved a lot of boozing. I went for dinner on the Tuesday with Paul and Ciarán, who had come over to watch me play, and we met up with Neil Channing and Murray who are both old friends of Paul's. Over dinner, I was introduced to the joys of 'black velvet' which is basically half a pint of Guiness mixed with half a pint of Champagne... I wouldn't recommend it to be honest. We ended up in O'Neill's Irish bar beside China town and I eventually made it back to the hotel at about 2.30 am, having had about 6 beers more than I should have had.

The next night was a similar affair, again ending up in O'Neill's with Jesse and Mickey May, 'Mad' Marty Wilson and Katherine, and a few of the guys who had played in the heats after me, including Eoghan who was also in celebration mode (I know I said I didn't know if I should give out any more results, and technically I haven't... maybe Eoghan had just won on the horses?).

I stayed over in London for the rest of the week and played a couple of tournaments at the new Empire Casino which was having a festival that weekend. Nothing went right for me in the £500 one and I played fairly badly and exited early, although, I got another good result, finishing 4th in the £1000 main event at the weekend. I thought it would get 100+ runners and would be a pretty soft line up, but it was a fairly small field (67), and there were actually a lot more familiar faces around than I was expecting.

So anyway... I'm back home now after another profitable and very enjoyable trip. I think I've spent less than 1 week in total in my own house since May and things aren't about to change any time soon. Tomorrow I'm off to make the long drive to Kerry after a night in Dublin, and I'll be staying down for the Macau festival in Cork the week after. I've never been to Kerry and only had a couple of fleeting visits to Cork, so I'm really looking forward to the next couple of weeks.

Good luck for now.