Yorky Pud

I am writing this blog from the 22nd floor of the luxurious Swissotel in the heart of Tallinn, Estonia, which is by all account the 2011 European City of Culture. Not exactly the place you would find Yorkshire Pudding but I am here reporting for PokerNews on the Tallinn stop of the European Poker Tour.

My journey into Tallinn was pretty non-eventful, which compared to my recent trip to Slovenia was welcomed indeed. I flew from Manchester to Copenhagen and from the Danish capital to Tallinn in Estonia. At Tallinn airport I met up with fellow blogger Lee Davy and he was with two poker players, Jeremy Nock and a certain Martin Jacobson, the latter won an award last year for being the best online qualifier for the EPTs after he came second in Deauville and then fourth in Berlin. We had to hand around for a while as both Jeremy's and Martin's bags didn't make it through to Estonia but you could tell they travel a lot because they didn't give a monkeys, they just filled in a form and we jumped in a taxi. I'd be having a bitch fit and running around like a headless chicken!

Anyway, we got to the hotel and it is, as the cool kids say, pretty sick! My room is amazing, I'd have been happy with it if it was only the size of my bathroom. The bathroom looks the mutt's nuts and the bath probably holds a couple of hundred gallons! If I had any complaint it would be the sink is a sod to empty just because of it's design and this morning the shower leaked onto the bathroom floor, but I was in there 20 minutes, plus this is just nit-picking. I'm going to have to get rich at some point so I can show the Mrs some of these beautiful places, until then it's Premier Inn darling!

After we had checked into the hotel Lee and I had a couple of drinks in the hotel bar and we were joined by Martin and then two British pros in Dan Carter and Matthew Frankland, the latter having gone really deep in the WSOP Main Event this year. Joe Ebanks, the man who won the $10,000 No Limit Hold'em Six-Handed Championship in Vegas this summer, beating Chris Moorman, also joined us and we headed off into town for some grub. It was a little bit surreal sat eating a steak dinner with a WSOP bracelet winner and some poker hotshots but full credit to them, they never make you feel like an outsider and there is never any bragging about money or anything like that. Martin, Joe and Mathew mainly spoke amongst themselves about poker whilst Lee, Dan and I talked about everything and I was a really enjoyable night. When we got the bill it was something like €230 and they played credit card roulette for it but being the hobo that I am I bought out and they didn't have a problem with that and even used the money I paid as a prize for the second to last card to be chosen!

Yesterday was Day 1a of the Main Event and it attracted 92 runners, which is lower than expected but with the close proximity to the WSOP and the fact that you can't play poker in the States so players won't have been able to enter the online satellites it isn't a bad turn out for a €4,250 event. We are expecting around 200 runners today which will make it much busier but we are also only playing seven levels so we should be done and dusted by around 2030, which is great and means I can catch up with some work that I find difficult to do when the Main Event takes up so much time. I'm really looking forward to today as some of the bigger names will be playing and one of those names is Annette Obrestad, the former Betfair sponsored pro, I've never seen her in person but how she approaches the game is superb and I'm looking forward to seeing her in action.

I've also played a little online poker myself but the less said about that the better at the moment. After running like baby Jesus for 10,000 or so hands I have come crashing back down to Earth with a bump and although I am still up more than 20 buy-ins after 13,700 hands the last 2-3,000 hands have been a LOLfest with villains catching miracle cards and me playing like a donkey. I'll try do a poker related post again this week as I should be moving up if I can log enough volume in the next couple of days.

Until then, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

**late edit** A massive shoutout to my mate and fellow Raise The River member Dave “No Shoes” Garden who won a seat to the Palm Beach Big Game the other month and he has only gone and taken it down! Looks like he chopped it because the Hendon Mob page says he won £30,100 but his Facebook says £22,000 and change. It's great to see “one of my own” having some deserved success at the felt. The field was stacked with pros too like Toby Lewis, Neil Channing, Karl Mahrenholz and James Akenhead!