The morning after clinching the Manchester trophy, there was no time to bask in glory as I raced to get on my 8am train to London for the WPT London Classic.

I was scheduled to play in Day 1b and arrived to hear a lot of the really big names including Phil Ivey and Erik Seidel had already played the previous day and built up some big stacks!

After doing some media work including an interview for nuts tv, I settled down at a cosmopolitan table that included the World Series player of the Year – Frank Kessela!

He was predictably the most active, most vocal and had already made some chips, when I played just my 2nd hand in the first hour and tied him in knots for a lovely early double up!

Raising with J9 off from early position brought 3 callers along for the ride and when the flop fell 10 8 7 rainbow, I was licking my lips!

With the unbelievable deep stacks of 400 big blinds starting stack, it was still going to be difficult to stack someone, but my fast play on the flop and then the turn led him into a 4bet on the bricked turn that got all his chips in with top two pair. He basically was convinced I had a monster pocket pair, couldn’t possibly put me on J9 and subsequently fell into my trap! Happy days!

The rest of the long long day, saw me yo yo up and down around that 80k stack, before I eventually I made some progress just past the 100k mark at the same guys expense when I turned a full house with A9 and again he took me on with his two pair!

The day finished with a dip when the day’s Chip leader was placed directly to my left for the final hour or so and he proceeded to totally run over the table.

But it had been a terrific start and I went into day 2 with 80k against an average of 70k and in great spirits.

Poker has a funny way of biting you though, just when you think things are going great and Day 2 turned out to be as sick as they come!

On arrival to my table, I was delighted to have the enigmatic Tony G sat to my left with the added bonus he wasn’t chipped up!

But it was the later arrival of a German qualifier who went on to finish 4th that mostly shattered my stack when I got him all in for a 110k pot with JJ V 10 10 only to see him spike the 10 and set off a trio of suck outs that finished off with my KQ beaten outdrawn by 56 for my final 16k and sent me reeling to the rail.

Hey, that’s poker unfortunately and I set off back home in the comforting knowledge that I had played my ‘A’ game once again with no regrets and I still had the World Open to look forward to.