The countdown has begun for the biggest week of my poker life and I am feeling a balanced concoction of calm, excitement and nerves. I’ve spent the last few days researching my World Open Heat 1 opponents including Jean Robert Bellande, James Akenhead and Ian Frazer and with plenty of internet and TV coverage to go at, I think its safe to say I know more about them, than they know about me!

My preparation has been frustratingly blighted by a recent dose of insomnia, magnified by my car developing an alarm fault intermittently from 3am onwards yesterday!

This followed my trip to see Faithless at the V festival at the weekend so its ironic, that ‘I can’t get no sleep’!

With this in mind the online practice has been kept to a minimum to salvage the lost hours sleep, but with a deep stacked £500 freezeout scheduled in for Manchester on Sunday, this should be the perfect opportunity for me to try out a few gutsy bluffing manoeuvres in readiness for the WPT London big one on Tuesday 31st. I believe Phil Ivey amongst others, is booked to play in this one and so very much doubt a traditional straightforward strategy will be enough to get through the calibre of this field!

The poker Gods haven’t been too kind lately, so hopefully they are about to make their return and I can justify the fantastic backing Fred has given me.

What a week to come and if you would like to follow my progress, I will be updating on twitter under ‘leeavy’ from Sunday onwards.