Getting Better

Lovely evening with the 888 chaps, Shane Warne and invited VIPs, guests and media last night and I think it's fair to say poker and I are falling back in love again.
Gorgeous place The Red Room, part of Les Ambassadeurs club, Hyde Park Corner; elegant furnishings, lots of space, friendly people, not up its own ar$e at all as I totally expected it to be. The nice man in all black who was stood near the bar when I arrived - I guess he was some kind of host, although I thought he was security for a bit - came straight over and offered to give me a guided tour of the club; it was like a stately home indoors and a luxurious, holiday, adult playground outside - it was just missing a huge hot tub as far as I could see. The beautiful, exotic slender women in their sexy but classy after-dark-air-hostess-like attire brought round endless trays with tons of mini cheeseburgers, kebabs, prawns, scallops and other nibbles on. Schoolgirl error to have eaten just before coming out.

Roland de Wolfe strode in at about 8.15pm. As you do. He went over and patted Warne on the back and manly hand-shaking and banter ensued briefly, before he disappeared again like a genie ducking back into his lamp.

I think the majority of the players will admit the poker was, for the most part, loose and aggressive; one of the pros, 'fresh' from Vegas went out pretty early, closely followed by Warne who got them in way ahead but was sucked out. Then somehow 2 went together in a huge 3-way all in not long after.

There looked to be only realistically 1, maybe 2 winners, one of which was the big boss of 888 Poker, who I guess couldn't really win the 5k prize; well, I figure he wouldn't really call all ins for half his stack with 3-4 normally...
The whole tourny was over in around 2 hours, won by one of the 888 VIPs who isnt even playing that much at the moment and didn't go to WSOP because he couldn't be bothered(!) After the interviews, last photos etc, most people (the core drinkers/organisers) stayed around for a couple of hours more - there was only around 10 of us left by 11pm, hoovering up the last of the bar tab, but it was great, if a touch surreal, to just sit there, all in a circle, some pros, some journos, some marketeers, and just talk poker, life (and a bit of nonsense), but certainly like we'd known each other longer than 4 hours.

After a unanimous show of hands to gague interest in the group, we tried in vain to allow them to give us a set of cards, chips and the run of the vacated felt for a turbo SNG, but alas it was only added to the marketing notebook as an idea for 'next time'.

Still, good to see cards in the air and feel the excitement, even if only stood 2 metres away and without influence or consequence. Going to find an appropriate time and place to get back into it. I knew I wouldn't be able to stay mad at the game for long.