PartyPoker.com Poker Nations Cup Diary

Sunday, April 6 -- 3 p.m.
It is snowing in the UK, chaos reigns at Terminal 5 at Heathrow, and I arrive in Cardiff on the eve of the PartyPoker.com Poker Nations Cup five hours late. To add to the mix, Cardiff City confirms a historic place in the FA Cup Final, and I hear the roars coming from the pub opposite my hotel as soon as I get out of the taxi. I walk through the lobby and see the Irish team discussing tactics for the next day over a number of pints. Ciaran O'Leary is there, horribly jet-lagged, Marty Smyth is getting stuck into a pint of Guinness, and with them is Darren O'Brien, the online qualifier. I decline the offer to sit down straight away, and instead head upstairs to freshen up. As I walk into the lift, out walks "Jesus," in the form of Chris Ferguson. Some of the world's top poker talent has invaded the hotel. I hope someone has warned the staff that these people do not go to bed early and are used to VIP treatment at Bellagio. It is going to be an interesting week …

8:30 p.m.
Team USA is in the house, and so is a very excited Montel Williams. The top U.S. TV chat-show host has brought along a crew with him to document his poker journey. Before that, however, it's time to pull strings like only a man of his stature can. Team USA is off to see the Beach Boys in concert at the local arena. Montel is friends with them. When I see them all later on, I ask them whether Brian Wilson and company are still performing on surfboards, even though they must be in their 60s, or thereabouts. They aren't. It must be hard to ride a wave with a walking stick, I imagine. Montel is great; he is in fact a lot more humble than a lot of poker players, but a million times more famous. This is a man who may well be in touch with the power brokers in the United States, but you would never think it.

11:30 p.m.
A lot of the players are in the hotel bar. Michael Keiner is more determined than ever to take the trophy to Germany, while Padraig Parkinson is in attendance without a drop of the black stuff in sight. Roland De Wolfe and William Thorsson haven't made their flights from Nice (that must have been one big session of Chinese poker!), but promise to follow the next morning. One big plus emerges: The night manager knows about poker and instantly recognises Jamie Gold. This should make things a lot easier going forward, especially as we agreed to get him a Team USA shirt signed.

Monday, April 7 - 2 p.m.
It's day one and a trend starts. Liam Flood makes wry comments when Vicky Coren is trying to do her links. Liam is the first person I ever spoke to in the poker world, and he pokes fun at me constantly. It is so good to have the Irish team back, as they add so much atmosphere to the tournament. I see Neil Channing and say how great it is that he has come to the tournament again as the interviewer. Roland had in fact called to parachute him into the team just after he had won the Irish Open. The side action is ferocious. Roland managed to get in from Nice just in time, and he's playing Chinese with Ian Frazer and Sebastian Ruthenberg. We then have a mini-crisis. The Internet connection in the green room has gone down temporarily, and that is big news when these players are getting stuck in online. It gets very quickly resolved. The great thing about the PartyPoker.com Poker Nations Cup is that the players are required to be in the green room even when they are not playing. The atmosphere continues to build, the most vociferous being the Irish and Dutch teams.

Tuesday, April 8 -- 11 p.m.
I go on a night out with Jamie Gold, Robert Williamson III, his wife, Cate, and Ciaran O'Leary. Cate tells me about how she and Robert decided to get married one night at Bellagio but ran into the problem that there was nobody there to conduct the ceremony. Chris Ferguson was there at the time, and according to the anecdote, it was quipped: "We've got nobody to conduct the ceremony, but Jesus is here; perhaps he can do it." I pick up the theme again later on when Robert and Cate, always some of the best value socially, go to bed early. They walk past with Ferguson, on their way to bed, and I say: "I've seen everything now; you are going to bed early and I have also seen Jesus." It turns out to be a great night. Jamie is great fun and I have to laugh when the bar manager comes up to me and says, "I've just been out in the back and Googled him. Oh, my god, did he really win $12 million!" Suffice to say, he was then in no hurry to throw us out.

Thursday, April 10 -- 1 a.m.
Great Britain has won a famous victory and Roland has gone upstairs, saying he will be back in half an hour. A likely story, I say, and at the hotel bar, William Thorsson gets on the internal phone, trying to remove the winning captain from his high-stakes pot-limit Omaha action. Roland makes a brief appearance, but an independent onlooker would have thought the Irish had won. It was a late one, but would have been even later if the Cup had gone to the Emerald Isle. I spend a lot of time talking to German players Benjamin Kang and Sebastian Ruthenberg. They are philosophical about losing out. Captain Michael Keiner wanted the victory so badly, but it just wasn't to be this time around, even though they started as the chip leaders in the final and were the favourites at the start of the heats. There were a lot of discussions about who had played in the final and who hadn't, as the captains could choose only four players out of the six. There is little doubt that even though this event doesn't offer the biggest financial reward, the prestige of being picked, performing, and winning was huge. Time for some sleep …