Even though Krispy Kreme's invasion of the UK is well underway with about 40 proper stores - and a number of Tesco supermarkets also stocking their products - it's all down South still.  There's just four stores North of Oxford.

So today we drove to Manchester to buy donuts.  Well, it is my birthday.

I know for a fact I didn't ask for the two chocolate ring donuts, I think we missed out on glazed lemon filled at the expense of those, but it doesn't really matter.  They're all good.

I've learned that the Krispy Kreme at Trafford Park is open as a drive thru until 2am some nights, and they bake fresh until 11pm every day.  This is the actual definition of temptation.

The question of whether a 90-mile round trip is far enough to put me off returning without any other reason for being in Manchester has yet to be answered.

A month ago, I started playing the drums.

OK, that's a bit of a romanticisation.  What I actually mean is I started playing the drum part on the video game Rock Band.

Still, they reckon that if you can master the songs on "expert" level, you could sit down at a real drum kit, make the same movements and you'd be actually playing that song.

I'm sure that if real drum kits only had four things to hit, all of them being the same shape and each one always making the right sound at the correct volume no matter where or how hard you hit it, and with a couple of them doubling up as tom-toms and cymbals, then this would be true.

However, for someone of my limited co-ordination - and having never picked up a pair of drumsticks in my life before - I consider it something of an achievement that I got my first 100% score on hard level today.

The photo is horrible, sorry - I only had my phone to hand.  It just about shows Claire getting 99% on guitar (apparently just one silly mistake away from perfection, she's done it 100% before) and my massive 100% with a 1016 note streak, both playing hard level on The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go".  I will almost certainly make the effort to fetch a proper camera the first time we both nail it at the same time.

That has happened before, but only on medium difficulty (Pixies "Wave of Mutilation" is pretty straightforward for both parts) and we've already gained as many virtual fans in the "world tour" mode as we can without moving up to hard level.

I'm not unhappy at acing The Clash, but I actually wanted my first 100% song to be Weezer's "Buddy Holly" so I had an excuse to embed that video rather than just link to it.  Or Nine Inch Nails, because that sounds like it should be a lot harder than it actually is.  I've been very close on both.

Or for bonus cheese points, it could have been The B-52s "Roam".  I don't care what you think, it's great fun to play and I already had a 1600+ note streak and came within one brain fart of doing it perfectly!

So, for the next step in my drumming career, I need to decide which route to take.  Should I aspire to be as great as this guy, who owns every song on expert level, and has made many top quality videos to prove it?

Yes, he has socks strapped to the drum pads.  This is strangely appealing.  The only modification I have is a set of Hard Rock logo drumsticks painted with a flame pattern.

Or, should I paint my face blue and start hitting other things?  How would that be for a career change?

There's already an official "stage kit" with lights and a smoke machine due out this summer, but I haven't heard anything about a paint drumming kit yet.  It's inevitable though, I'm sure.

Apparently Neteller think I'm a VIP.  Not really sure how that happened, although I did notice that I now have more than a million Netpoints.  They're probably worth about a buck fifty.

All you can do with Neteller's loyalty points is use them to enter a prize draw that typically has thousands of entries, and although I've no reason to doubt the integrity of the draw this just seems like it would be pouring my points down the drain.  I'd rather have the impressive seven-figure balance, thanks.  Maybe they'll even let me buy a t-shirt with them one day too.

But this VIP promotion which I had in my email is very, very juicy:

It's taken a while to get my head around what I actually have to do to get some free money here.  I wrote to ask them to explain exactly how the calculations had been done, because whichever way I looked at my statement I couldn't see how on earth they had worked out such a high six-weekly average.  My total transactions since the start of the year are only slightly more than that!

They replied:

The six week average was calculated by taking the average of your weekly transactions between January 1 2008 and March 31 2008. Only weeks that you had at least one accepted transfer to a merchant were used in calculating your average. The weekly average was then multiplied by six to give a total average for six weeks (because the offer period is six weeks long we had to calculate your original average over the same time period).

The VIP bonus offer is based on your total transfers to merchants between April 20 2008 and May 31 2008,only transfers to merchants will be included in calculating your bonus (only funds that you send to merchants).

So it sounds like they've inflated the six-weekly average by ignoring weeks where I had no activity.  It doesn't really matter though.  They've said that this offer is based on precisely my next six weeks of activity - no further calculations required - and because they've told me what my target amount is, I can make sure I achieve - and surpass - it.

Basically, Neteller is going to pay back a percentage of their fees to users who exceed the target level of transactions.  Using Neteller to transfer money in and out of gaming sites costs the player nothing - instead Neteller charges transactions fees to the merchants.

They charge 3.9% on deposits (the same that you pay as a user for a person-to-person transfer) and 2.0% on withdrawals.  Getting back 1.5% of your total deposits amounts to nearly 25% "fee-back", however because you never actually pay those fees yourself, it's just free money.

It's Neteller that's the real winner of course - they just want to grab as much in transaction fees as possible - but it's a no-lose proposition for the player.  It'll be the casinos and poker rooms that get hit who pay for it.

Just think about the numbers.  I've started off abusing this promotion with a $1,000 deposit into UltimateBet, who were offering a 20% (max $200) deposit bonus today.  I already had more than $500 in bonus dollars sitting in my account that I've never had the inclination to play for.  Apart from a few satellites and the odd game of roshambo, I never play there.  Hopefully, depositing in response to an email promotion should make my deposit look a little less out-of-character than it really is.

This deposit cost UB $39, and I intend to cash it out as soon as possible which will cost them another $20.  This is one of the fussier sites in terms of getting your money back because you have to be seen to play some poker before a withdrawal is authorised.  Still, there's no way I'm going to generate $59 in rake before getting my money back.

Clearly, the optimal strategy is to cycle as much money as you can get your hands on as often as possible.  I don't think it's worth adding money to my Neteller bankroll just for this - you have to pay fees to deposit and then again to withdraw that will reduce the value of the promotion considerably - but certainly for the next six weeks my entire bankroll is going to be in play.  In, out, in, out, play a few hands, do the hokey pokey cokey and turn it around.

That's what it's all about - easy, risk free money.

I used to cycle funds like this at Party Poker all the time.  In the good old days, you could earn 1000 bonus PartyPoints just for making a deposit of $500 and not withdrawing it for a week.  This was way out of proportion to the number of points you'd earn from actually playing as a casual player (if I remember right, 20 raked hands earned 5 points) so this is the only reason I have so much Party gear.  At 2000 points for a polo shirt, you could order one for free after every two deposits you made - without playing a single hand of poker!

I've also been looking for a way to cycle money on a credit card that awards frequent flyer miles, worth about 3p per £1 spent.  The dream is to use up my entire credit limit every month, then settle the card immediately, rinse and repeat.  Unfortunately, unless it's genuine spending this is pretty difficult.  I've looked into laundering through online gambling sites but it doesn't work - you have to pay a cash advance fee on the deposits which costs more than the benefits you get from spending on the card.

No such problem with Neteller though, it's just money transfers and it costs me nothing.  As long as it's a casino or poker site that accepts payment directly in US Dollars, and I'm confident that I'll get my money back pretty quickly then it's fair game.  Even the Cryptologic cashiers that charge $1 for a withdrawal are profitable plays!

After I meet the $2,530 target, which won't take long, every $1,000 I can shift is going to earn me $15.  Doesn't sound like much, but don't underestimate how often I'll be trying this - I've got six weeks after all!

I thought it would be virtually impossible to reach a prize-worthy position in any of the new PokerStars Battle of the Planets sit-and-go leaderboards playing only single table tournaments, but obviously I just forgot how great I am.

Seriously though, look at this unbelievable run of results I needed to even get up to 8th place: 7 x 1st, 5 x 2nd and 3 x 3rd.

That's 15 in-the-money finishes out of 20 tournaments.  Call it a game of skill if you like, but that kind of form takes more than a little luck.

You can see from my profit graph that I've never had a streak quite like it before.  Isn't it pretty?

I know there's bound to be an almighty downswing waiting around the corner, but I can brag while it's going well can't I?

Each Battle of the Planets league ends on Saturday night and resets on Sunday morning so there's still two full days of play left and my position certainly isn't safe.  504 points was enough for both 7th and 8th place last week, but right now 8th place is the best I can possibly get with that score.

If I manage to stay in to the top ten, I'll win some cash (it's $80 for 8th) and a ticket to the monthly $50,000 freeroll.  It's a triple shootout format (729 players max) but with eight different leagues, two "orbits" in each and ten players winning a ticket each week, in a four-week month that's 640 tickets given away for the tournament.  Some players will win two tickets and some winners won't turn up so the value of the freeroll ticket must be at least $100.

If I don't hang on to the giddy heights of top ten stardom, there's still some prize money for finishing in the top 30.  I should have a pretty good shot at that at least.

I realised - completely by accident when I happened to load the right number of tournament summaries into Poker Tracker at the right time - that I'd recently reached $10,000 spent on these turbo SNG entries.  I only mention it because that same money (if I actually had it all in the same place at the same time) would get me one World Series of Poker Main Event entry.

Doing things this way involves a little less variance, though.  Sure, I'm not going to win ten million but I'm also not going to lose ten grand all to one suckout.  It'd take 625 different suckouts.

Here's the magic stats:

I still can't believe that this is close to being a reliable sample size.  My last eight results alone (1st, 1st, 2nd, 4th, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd, 1st) pushed the overall ROI up from the 16.6% shown here to 18.4%.  Maybe when I've played a few thousand I'll have a little more confidence in the numbers.

EDIT: 5 hours to go and I'm 10th.  Gonna be close.

EDIT: Sodding eleventh.  A big fuck you to "$tr8t Hu$tla" who not only has a shit screen name, he also waited until the very last minute to score 521 points.  I hope I get the chance to bust you soon!

As the Gutshot poker club no longer exists, while I was staying in London for work earlier in the week I headed down to the Powerhouse Sporting Club to enjoy their coffee bar and see if I could get a game of Jenga or Connect 4.

As it happened, there was a poker game about to start but of course it was definitely not for money. I did not pay £50 to enter, and there was no additional £5 bounty.

There was also definitely not any pressure for players to leave a voluntary donation.  I did not buy in with three £20s, so obviously they did not not offer me any change.

53 players turned up to enjoy only the thrill of the competition and to battle it out for no more than bragging rights.  It's a game of skill... yada yada yada.

We started with 3500 chips and I picked up pocket aces on the second hand.  Blinds were 25/50 and an early position player raised to 225.  His neighbour called and I was next, making it 800 to go.

The player to my left called in a flash and it got folded round to the early raiser.

"How much to me?", he said.  "Five... what.... six...? fift...?  seventy five?".  He figured it out eventually and made the call, but not before proving what I'd always suspected: a raise to a "normal" amount plus one small chip has nothing to do with any strategy, it's just so you get to see two different pretty colours tumbling through the air when you make your bet.  Wheeee.

I expected to see this player make a three-chip flop bet and show us all that he could count to 625, but in fact he checked, as did I and the third player.  The flop was a king and a ten and a seven, all different suits and I didn't want to get too excited with one pair so early on.  In truth, I wasn't really ready to deal with a tough decision yet.

The turn brought another ten - now I had two pair, for what that's worth - and the first player bet 250.  With all that pre-flop action, the pot stood at 2475 so it may as well have been a check.  I raised to 800, again a tiny bet in relation to the pot, but I hoped it might buy me a little information - or a free showdown - while still keeping the pot quite small.  This line is either genius or ultra-weak, I'll let you decide.

I didn't have a great handle on the situation, but I figured that if a player who had only called my re-raise out of position pre-flop now decided to 3-bet on a king-high board, pocket aces were almost certainly not good and I would be able to fold and still have more than half a starting stack to play with.

However, if the third player decided to stick around (he'd already called two raises cold pre-flop, why not call a bet and a raise again now?) I was going to be completely stumped.  I was very glad indeed when he folded.

In for two fiddy, in for eight hundy, the other guy called and we went to the river heads up.  I don't remember what card it was.  I didn't look until he'd checked, and I already knew I was checking behind anyway unless it was another ace.  I flipped up the aces and he slid his hand into the muck.

"I had pocket nines", he said.  And now, the punchline: "I put you on ace-queen".

That was as interesting as it got though, I hardly saw another hand worth playing before I ended up flipping a little pair against two big cards and losing.

I took a nice long walk back to my hotel, thinking about what I could have not won.

Harrah's love me now, it's official.

So I moaned a bit before about not having any good offers since I got Diamond, and they said it was because I hadn't actually played on any of the shitty games they had in Las Vegas.

Fine, I thought, let's give them some action and see what happens.

Claire and I spent not much more than an hour pumping money through the best video poker games we could find at Harrah's Las Vegas.  Tucked away in a bank of multi-line games there was one multi-line machine with 5c 10-play 9/5 Jacks or Better (98.5%) and the next best was 7/5 Bonus Poker (98.0%) at 25c.  Definitely not great, but the best of a bad bunch.

Between us, we racked up 355 base reward credits on my card which means we must have played $3550 in total.  If you reckon on a 2% house edge on those games, the overall expected loss is $71.  In fact we won a bit on the day because Claire of course hit about 25 royal flushes.

That expected loss number is not quite as bad as it sounds.  We also got a combined 606 bonus reward credits (how these are calculated at any given time is an official secret) taking the total for the day to 961, worth a whopping $9.61 in instant food comp almost anywhere at any of Harrah's casinos.

Except at Mon Ami Gabi.  I found this out the hard way.  You can't swipe your card there because it's not operated by the casino, although I asked at the players club about this later and apparently you can get a comp slip before you go to dinner if you care to guess roughly how much it's going to be.  However, our fake French waiter (who actually sounded Italian) didn't think to even tell us this, he just shook his head at my Total Rewards card and we had to pay using real money.

I'd be annoyed about this if it didn't mean I still had enough comp on the card to have to go back there again in the summer and do it right.  It was a fantastic steak with a fantastic view.  I'm kicking myself for only taking a picture of the latter.

Anyway, it seems that $3550 of action in Las Vegas was enough to get me on the radar for room offers worth way more than $71.

Finally, the Imperial Palace is free!  As well as a "Deluxe Room", sometimes their web site gives me the option to book a "Luv Tub" room (putting a Roman bath in the rooms in an Asian-themed hotel is obvious, no) completely free of charge, and for up to five nights!

That's pretty cool.  The reservations site says "sold out" for every date I've tried if I'm not logged in so I don't know what they usually go for (they might even be restricted to players club bookings) but on the dates I can't get a comp the Luv Tub rates are about $60 more than a Deluxe room.

We don't need any hotel accomodation for the summer, but I might just book it anyway and take the little bottles of shampoo.  Or if anyone out there is looking for a good deal and the dates are right, buy me a drink and I'll think about checking you in

There's also quite a few comps showing for me at Bally's, Flamingo and Harrah's and the odd night elsewhere, as well as reduced rates for all the other hotels.

The best bargain I found has to be four nights at the Rio at Christmas (the flights are already booked, need you ask) totally free.  In fact, it was only $50 to add a 5th night so I splashed out and went for that too.  If enough offers come along later to cover the rest of the trip, I expect I can always cancel that night anyway!

The best part is because every room in the Rio is a suite, I can finally boast about getting comped a suite in Vegas!

This just in:

I used a few coupons at Circus Circus last month - a couple of table game match plays, $10 free slot play and a "get $15 in chips for $10" offer.  All this combined with a free monster hot dog at Slots-a-Fun almost makes a trip down there worthwhile.  Almost.

Circus Circus has a lot of haters, and after going back for the first time in a good few years I have to agree it absolutely deserves it.  Something about the place just started to drain my life force the moment I walked through the door.

And that was well before I had to negotiate any over-excited families of nine, kids eating candyfloss, adults chewing toothpicks, on their way to the RV park.  I can't explain exactly what the "vibe" was, but it definitely wasn't like you get at them regular casinos.

Maybe it was the promotional table game chips - you know it's a cheap-ass casino when they only have them in $1s.  This deal was meant to come with a pack of win cards, but they'd run out (long ago, I imagine, judging by the 30-or-so years of grime on the chips themselves).

Or perhaps the blackjack table I sat at had something to do with it.  It took the combined brain power of a dealer and a pit boss (and what was left of their life force) about ten minutes to figure out whether a coupon from their own "fun" book which said "good for any $1 side bet" could be used at their game.

The table had a side bet that cost $1.  So, yes.  It really wasn't worth holding the game up for.

Then one player asked the dealer, "do I hit that?" when he had a 16 and the dealer showed a ten.  "Oh that's a tough one, it's really up to you".  Great, it was well worth asking.  Do you not know, or have you been told to help the player make mistakes?

I'm guessing she wasn't aware of all the hard work that lasvegasdealertips.com has been trying to do for dealerkind.  "Your dealer will help you out because they like getting money" is the pretty much the message of that web site.  In fact, Circus Circus dealers get the worst tips on the Strip, and it's not close.

Anyway, even with this $10 free slot play still to claim, I'm still not sure I'll be back in a hurry.

I don't think there could have been a better time to decide to call it a night - and a trip - than after being dealt back-to-back pocket aces. I didn't make a fortune on them, but at least they held up.

The first time, I raised to $15 pre-flop after a couple of limpers and there was one caller who gave it up when I fired on a low, paired flop. Second time I got it all in against pocket kings, but he was short stacked, only sitting on about $50 at the start of the hand.

Even so, it was a three figure profit on the session and - as had been my M.O. that evening - I decided to quit with that profit as soon as the blinds came round again.  I'd been there an hour and thought I would playing a bit later on my last night, but this was always going to be my last session of the trip and I'd already realised the table wasn't that good. In fact, the few times I've played at the MGM Grand before it's never really been a great game.

I'd begun the evening at Excalibur, winning about $100 in an hour and moving on to Luxor. There, it took more like 2.5 hours before I hit a monster hand: nines full of threes. Yes, I had pocket nines, I can't believe you would even ask.

I flopped top set, bet the flop and three of us saw the turn as it completed my boat. I checked and we saw a free river card which happily completed another player's straight and he thought it was good enough to go broke on. I'm sure I would have done too, but I was the one running good this time.

One of the reasons I like to take in a number of different poker rooms in one night is that I just love soaking up the atmosphere around Vegas.  Strolling through casinos and between casinos, you get a chance to be around all the other action while you take a break from your own.

Starting at Excalibur I had options.  You can walk right through to Luxor, and then through again to Mandalay Bay without even stepping outside (and if it's fresh air you're looking for, staying indoors is usualy the right choice in Las Vegas).  There's a tram between those hotels, which I was going to use to get back if I went all the way, but for the time being I decided to take the walkway.

With half a dozen travelators to get you from E to L, it'd be just like an airport if it didn't connect a giant fairytale castle to an enormous black pyramid and just like an airport there are always people who just don't get the concept of a moving walkway.

In Vegas people must think that the 2mph conveyor belt ride is a free attraction, so it's only natural they would spread out to make themselves comfortable.

It's not called a moving standway, is it?  Shift yourselves, family of five..

So glad you brought the kids to Vegas too.  Don't get me started on that.

Except to say that despite Luxor's attempts to de-theme and make itself "hipper", the faux-Egyptian cheesiness is still alive and well and living in the gift shop's children's clothing section.

I was only in there looking for socks, obviously.

I was done at Luxor about half past midnight and I wasn't sure how late the tram would be running.  I didn't fancy the thought of walking all the way back from Mandalay Bay to the car if I got involved in a long poker session there, but I wasn't quite ready to go home just yet and I hadn't brought my camera (otherwise I would have gone straight up to Mandalay Bay and taken the slow way home) so I wandered back to the MGM.

I'd parked over the road at the Tropicana.  You have to fight with taxis at their bottleneck of an entrance, but dumping your vehicle in valet parking is the quickest and most convenient way I've found to get down to the South end of the Strip.  You can jump out of the car and straight onto either of the escalators to the walkways across the street without even setting foot in the Trop itself!

But I did call inside after I was done with all the winning to donate a few dollars to the massage chairs before driving back to the hotel.  They were a great find - I didn't think any casinos still had them.  Some people think them tacky, apparently.  The Tropicana either doesn't, or doesn't care.

I don't know why I felt compelled to take - let alone post - this picture, but here goes anyway.

That grainy exposure from my camera phone in dim light really doesn't do the shirt justice - it's much worse than it looks.

Despite owning just about every pair of casino-branded or loosely Las Vegas-themed socks that are available (as well as some that you just can't get your hands on any more, like the threadbare Orleans socks that I just can't bring myself to throw away) I always seem to manage to find more.

This time we even managed to get his and hers.  The question is, can you tell which is which?

If Les Dawson was still alive, completing the following might have won you a fabulous reading lamp or a candelabra.

"Welcome to the Four Queens.  We hope that you enjoy your... (blank)".

In case you're stuck, there's a visual clue.

The biggest problem with moving around several hotels in one trip is the difference between check-out time at one (usually 11am) and check-in time at the next (usually 3pm or 4pm).  At Harrah's and Terrible's they'd let us check in and then leave the bags with the bell desk until the room was cleaned.  At Four Queens they just stamped "early check-in" on our registration forms and said that the room might not be ready yet (which it wasn't, and that was a bit weird) but at least we could dump our stuff there.

Although it was clear we were in an older part of the hotel than last time, the "recently remodelled" room was identical.  I could care less about the flat screen TV, but the coffee maker made mornings much easier.

I didn't end up spending a lot of time downtown.  I quickly realised that the morning poker tournaments at Binions, which I expected - along with Krispy Kreme from The Fitz - to be a great start to the day, had been murdered.  The price has come down from $70 to $52 in the morning for a 3000 chip game with 15 minute levels.  Compared to how it used to be, it's a slightly faster clock (4 levels for the price of 3) and they removed the single $40 rebuy.  I usually take the rebuy option as soon as another player at the table doubles up in those structures.

The evening game has a pretty good format now - 6,000 chips and 30 minute levels.  However, playing it after a late one the night before was a mistake and I could barely hold my head up off the table after a couple of hours.  The "no jitters - no crash - as seen on TV" energy spray I'd come prepared with just wasn't working like it should.  Looking for any opportunity to double up (and hopefully energise myself) or go to bed I check-raised all in with a flush draw and gutshot straight draw and got caled by king-queen for top pair.  My ace was live too, but I missed everything and went to get some zeds.

A couple of dealers had said that the revamped tournament schedule was been bringing in more players to Binions, but it's nowhere close to the three-figure fields they were getting a couple of years ago.  The 10am game I played in had 34 runners, and the 8pm game had 44.

There's some other changes afoot now that Four Queens management have taken over Binions and hopefully they'll get this casino back on track soon.  Most noticable was the removal of the Binion Dollar Babes stage, which they had already started to replace with more table games.  Kudos for not just wheeling in another bank of Wheel of Fortune machines, at least.

The Four Queens got enough video poker action from us (mostly from Claire, although her hot streak had come to an end) to ensure we would get invited us back.  Their best machines are 99.5% payback, but with 0.3% cash back it's almost a break-even game.  Looks like we cycled through about $15k over four days for a theoretical loss of $75, but with $45 cash back and a bonus $40 free slot play from a mailer, they still ended up paying us to stay there!

The very best part though was the totally free "jeweled rat" gift for a belated Chinese New Year.  It's almost impossible to say no to free shit, especially when you can't see it beforehand.  So what the hell are we going to do with this?

A cafe menu at the Gold Coast.  They may as well have spelt it Duece's.

I was just getting ready to rack up and stop playing at the Flamingo. The table really didn't seem that great and it wasn't much fun.  I had one player two to my right who said he recognised me from Christmas (possible, I guess) and then as the game went on he said it must be me because how he remembered how tight I played.

Dude I appreciate you letting me know you're paying attention, but I don't think anybody else has really noticed so would you please STFU?

Then a new player sat down and everything changed.

"I'm just here to get drunk", he said, and he made sure we all knew it. I took this with a pinch of salt to start with, but my new best mate started bragging about how much he'd made from this guy the night before so I thought it might be worth hanging around a bit longer.

The clincher was when a dealer who was just passing, coming back off her break made a point of fetching him another cup holder.  One drink at a time wasn't enough - he had a shot with every beer. "He split it all over my cards yesterday", she told us.

But our new friend was quick to set the record straight. "One card. It was one card!  It's Vegas, dog. They always gotta blow it up. Like the World Trade Center, man."

While the bad taste jury was out, we carried on playing cards.

In a $300 max buy-in game, Snoop had bought in for $299.  He sent the chip runner off with $200 to start with but when the two stacks of red arrived he pulled out the rest of the notes from his gangsta wallet and counted them out.  "I'm gonna need all this" - it was everything he had.

"If I lose I'm going to the pawn shop.  I got about 5 ounces of gold on me".  He knew his bling.  "I'm from the hood - I pawn everything", he said and I had absolutely no reason to doubt this.

I thought now might be a good time to top up myself, which I did before waiting extremely patiently for my chance to get rich or die tryin'.  Others tried and failed as he bullied the table with $20 pre-flop raises and big aggressive plays with marginal hands.  Sometimes his king-rag hit and sometimes it didn't.  Sometimes he got paid off by a very weak hand by other players who had spotted his wild tendencies but had got a little too greedy and a little impatient.

Me, I sat tight and waited for the nuts, and eventually there it was.  I limped with a jack-queen on the button in a 6-way pot and the flop fell perfectly: nine-ten-king.  With two hearts on board I wasn't about to get tricky but the rest of the table took care of making life sweet for me.  The small blind led out for $10, the blingmeister made it $40 and I pushed forward one stack.

Apparently it wasn't a complete stack as the dealer broke down the bet and announced $95.  Whatever.  "You know I'm calling it, right", he said - virtually jumping up and down at the thought of all that action coming back his way when he already had one pair.  I can see how the cards (sorry, card) got wet the night before.

The small blind, a local player who had been sitting pretty tight all night, eventualy folded.  I think he thought this was his payday too and hated to fold, but he could tell how powerful I was.  He later told me he laid down two pair (K9) but I expect he would have folded a set there too.  My hands had been doing that wobbly thing you do when you have a monster and I wasn't doing a very good job of hiding it.

If they let him bet the bling I'm sure that would have been in the pot too, but all he had was chips.  Plenty of chips, more than me and I had already topped up to the max again not long ago.  He moved all in and obviously I called straight away.  His king-six was top pair at least, but he needed to cach two perfect cards to win, and they didn't come.

I don't remember the turn and river cards, nor do I remember exactly how much I won from him.  While the dealer did the business I took the opportunity to exhale and try to think of an unpatronising way to say "man you're unlucky".  I definitely need practice in that area.

When I stacked everything up, I was looking down at $625.  Hardly a world record and it might not even be the biggest pot I've ever won, but it was the most satisfying.  Definitely worth hanging around for.