99 Slobbering idiots

For most blokes in the poker world a night making sure Isabelle Mercier has all she needs is the job only God himself can hand down. And only then when he's drunk.

She was coming to Gutshot to play a tournament. Crowds would be heavy. The booze bill heavier.

Isabelle is one of the first ladies of the game, if you can discount the 'old' connotations to that. She has a WPT win, makes a killing online and after a recent bad run has started to get the results together. She gets a lot of stick, but she's nice enough. And all I had to do was take her picture a few times, ignore the ribbing, and leave her to it.

She's also one of PokerStars' sponsored 'ambassadors'. A few months ago, when I was in the grooming stages of my current job, I used to hate PokerStars. I wrote terrible things about them thinking I was making a stand against the Poker Corporates. Well that's kind of what I thought. Mostly I thought I was being clever. I got nothing out of it, but the boss got a letter asking us to stop being nasty. I remember he didn't like the 'us' part.

Now of course, I think PokerStars are great. I have my reasons. Yes, I sold out, but who really cares? They let me go to their tournaments around Europe and give you hats and t-shirts and chips and things. And who amongst us could turn that kind of crap down?

But all this Isabelle stuff was a bit of a drag, with other things occupying my mind. But she was friendly, made polite conversation, didn't;t mind poker players "just squeezing past", and bumped up the numbers for the £100 freezeout at Gutshot. That's why we gave her lots of free drinks...