WSOPace

I managed to spend one night in my own house after getting back from Vegas before I was off again. This time it was for a charity tournament on the outskirts of London. I decided to travel over the night before and maybe play in the Vic for a few hours, but I had a bit of a nightmare travel-wise.

I was meant to arrive in at 9.30 p.m., so I reckoned I could have been in the Vic for 10.30 and play for a while before I went to bed, but the night was one disaster after another for me.

Firstly my flight was delayed for two hours, then when I eventually got to the hotel they told me there was a problem with my booking and that I would have to stay in one of their sister hotels. I’d decided at this point that I was going to give the Vic a swerve and just go straight to bed, but unfortunately faith had other plans.

As I was sitting in reception waiting on my taxi, I got a phone call to the hotel lobby from Karen telling me that some drunken Australian had called her to tell her that he’d found my phone in the back of a taxi and that I could give him a call and come to meet him to get it back. I eventually got everything sorted and got my phone back and went straight to bed, as I was obviously too tilted at this stage to play cash games in the Vic.

The tournament the next day, the fifth annual World Series of Pace, was held by Norman and Beverly Pace at their home in Chisslehurst and was in aid of the Meningitis Research Foundation, a cause close to their hearts as their own daughter Holly is disabled after contracting the disease as a child. The tournament was a huge success raising around £22,000 for the charity, a lot of which came from the auction that was held during the dinner break.

The varied items on offer ranged from a week in a holiday villa in La Manga to a box of sex toys. Having had a skinful of Guinness at this stage, I was involved in the bidding on most of the items and managed to pick up a pair of Lennox Lewis signed boxing gloves for £500 and the EPT London seat for £5,000.

I’m not actually sure if I’ll be able to play the London EPT, as my Poker Million and World Open heats are on around the same time, but I thought it would be a shame to let it go for anything less than cost price, and hopefully I’ll be able to sell it if I’m not able to play it myself. I also went halves with Jon Kalmar on a pair of tickets to the World Snooker final next year, which I’m pretty excited about.

It was a great night out for everyone who attended, especially me, as it was the first tournament of the year that I’ve had any kind of success in. I managed to finish second, winning a tournament and hotel package for the IPF Killarney. I’d talk you through some of the more interesting key hands, only I was far too drunk from the off to remember anything about the actual poker.