British Poker Open

It's the second day of the British Poker Open today. Normally this doesn't mean much to me. There are thousands of the things every year and one tournament quite quickly looks like another. But this one is of the TV studio kind, and unusually for me, I have to go. Two heats today in a bunker somewhere near Hammersmith. I can't even remember what I need to be there for.

Ah yes, that's it. The Buffet. A friend of mine recently wrote how the collective noun for poker players should be a "buffet". Dead right. It sums up their only basic need outside of poker, and coincidentally the only subject some of them can talk about other than poker. So that's what's going on. The welcome lunch for press and hangers on. Get in, perform a quick buffet run, find a corner and try to make it through the afternoon unscathed.

The other thing is that it's actually work. This ruins a fool proof plan as I have to talk to people, and I can already feel deep down somewhere, half of my nerve endings putting on life jackets. The other half are clutching knives. This is how it goes with interviews. Find a good one and he or she will talk for ages, you press record and sit back. The rest have to be carved out of stone.

So this will take up the weekend, trying to get interviews and writing about the whole thing. It will be a bit of a test because things are a bit hectic these days. But hell, we're living the dream. Game face people.