POKER: My gambling addiction

You may remember from a previous post that I fell head over heels in love with playing poker - the game of Texas Holdem to be precise. Originally, I wrote a feature about online poker that allowed me to get lots of free money to play with (God I love my job). Also, Victor Chandler invited me to a couple of journalist poker tournaments - I came second in one and was only a busted flush away from winning a £5,000 seat in a proper tournament.

Since then I've been a founder member of the London Meetup Poker Group, which meets in a pub once a month for a game. However, since we started getting 40 people turning up to play and it was getting a bit obvious that cash was illegally changing hands (we're only supposed to play for chips as there's no gambling license) the pub told us to stop coming. We've found a private venue that gets around the problem, but that's my favourite monthly activity on hold until it gets sorted out.

The saviour for me has been the Friday Night Poker Club. This collection of London poker players advertises a number of home games, although you have to sign up quick as the eight or nine seats go really quickly. And the results of the tournaments get posted on Dave Potts' 7-2 Offsuit site. Right now I'm fifth out of 56 people on the leaderboard. My next goal is to build on my success in single-table tournaments and move onto the multi-table events like the ones you see on TV. I'll let you know how that goes.

STOP PRESS: Looks like I may get on TV sooner than I thought. Barney Boatman of The Hendon Mob is filming a series where he visits your poker home game and plays against you. As one of the original players and fifth placed on the leaderboard I'm going to be at that table. Can't wait!