Shuffle up and deal....

It's that time of the year when, with work finally behind me, I start to dream of the glittering neon lights of Las Vegas in July. I know it's a long way off and I know I've only just got back from Sin City but I love the place and the thought of playing in the World Series of Poker again just gets me all excited.

In what other activity or sport are you able to pay your money and take your chance against the World's greatest players?
It's not possible to pay an entry fee and participate in The Open playing alongside Tiger Woods et al. It takes years of dedication not to mention amazing talent with a golf club to enter that particular tournament and at 40 years of age I don't think that's now going to be an option for me.

You can't just turn up in June at SW19 and start knocking a few tennis balls with Roger Federer.

How about paying your money and taking your chance alongside Rooney, Giggs and Ronaldo in the FA Cup? I don't think so.

But come July you just pay the entry fee and hey-presto you've got the chance to sit next to and play Doyle Brunson, Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negranu, Howard Lederer, Amarillo Slim and all the other great names. Not only do you get to play against them with a bit of luck you get the chance to knock them out of the tournament (no amount of luck is going to help you beat Roger Federer at tennis!). That's going to provide you with a story to tell and re-tell down the pub for years to come.

Did I tell you about the time I knocked Willie Tann out of a tournament? It was during the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour and while I'd love to say that I played some amazing poker and trapped him on the river with some great slow play the truth is a little less glamourous, I had Aces in the big blind and he was unlucky enough to have Kings. All the money went in pre-flop and my rockets held up. Nice guy too, he took it as well as can be expected!

Anyway I digress. The WSOP is the dream and this Blog will chart my attempts to be there in July, $10,000 clasped in my grubby little paws. Let battle commence.....

In fact I've made a start already. Going under the guise of 4KingAceBlog on Pokerstars I began my quest on Friday night with a few £16 2 table turbo's and made an encouraging start with a profit of $213. Not bad for 3 hours 'work'. I managed to squeeze in a couple of turbo's last night while the missus was fast asleep and added another $49 to the fighting fund.

You can see all my stats, figures, ROI and running total on this spreadsheet which will be updated everytime I play;

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pr2ePJ7sxXb8OQA84amVoDA

You can also track my results on Sharkscope by clicking Search Database, typing in the username 4KingAceBlog and selecting the Pokerstars site. This is an independent poker result tracking site and I'll be doing a feature on it later in my posts.

http://www.sharkscope.com/

I also tried to win a seat for the next leg of the Grosvenor Poker Tour last night but got knocked out in 4th (first two got a seat). I got my money back as the 4th place prize and will try again Wednesday. These tournies are on Blue Square and for this site I play as SuperGavin....

Okay back to the virtual felt to try and rack up some more $

Gavin.