Over 200 players and wives/girlfriends and family assembled at Gatwick airport for what must be a first , a chartered plane just for poker players , the atmosphere was superb as we all left freezing Britain and headed to St Kitts in the West Indies .

We arrived to be met by cold beers and soft drinks before being ferried by taxis to the fantastic Marriott resort , i have travelled all over the world and stayed in some of the finest hotels from the Crown Towers in Melbourne to Bellagio in Vegas but to stay in a 5 Star resort like this on a beautiful Caribbean island was the best all round poker experience ever .

So many players had travelled with their familes and while the hadrcore players chose to play twice a day in the 2pm and 8pm tournaments most of us took the opportunity to relax and enjoy our surroundings , sunbathing and swimming in the sea or one of the three pools and playing in the evening . All the staff from Cryptologic along with everyone from the Marriott made sure our stay there went smoothly and with the tournaments run by Thomas Kremser and his superb team not one complaint was heard .

There were several Scandanavians who were expected to clean up as they have been doing recently all over Europe but initially they failed to score , the first 6 events were won by " name " players .

George Mc Keever from Ireland won the $200 No Limit Freezeout from a field of 200 , Paul Alterman UK won the $150 No Limit Rebuys , Tony Chapman UK picked up the $300 No Limit , another Brit Julian Thew was 2nd in the $500 No Limit to Kathy Liebert from the USA ( first ever woman to win $1,000,000 ) then Noah Boaken from Holland won the $200 Pot Limit Omaha , Steve Vladar UK won the £1100 No Limit then finally the Scandanavians hit form , first with Peter Dahigren from Sweden winning the $300 Limit followed by Eric Ottesen from Norway who won the $300 No Limit , the final support event $500 No Limit went to Phil Quayle UK.

The main event was won by a Norwegian Bjorn Wiik who qualified through a Freeroll and took home nearly $350,000 . A special mention goes to Dave EL Blondie Colclough , having started day 2 in the bottom 8 of 69 players with only 9000 and blinds of 400 800 he went on to make the final with 190,000 finishing 6th after his KK wwas beaten by AQ.

So while i will write a seperate diary for the main event , how did the rest of my week go.

First of all i decided to play very few events to be in top shape for the Main event , i played the Pot Limit Omaha and with 7 left was chip leader , missed two big draws in key pots and finished 6th , i only played two other events and in both never got started .

I did however play in two other special events , one was a $2500 Pro Am , this was comprised of 3 tables of 6 players with the top two going through to the final , all were televised . The first heat qualifiers were Xyguen Vladar and Peter Giordino , the last heat qualifiers were Rob Varkony and Brian Wilson .

My heat was in the middle and i was playing Tony Cascarino ex Ireland , Marseilles and Chelsea footballer in seat one , Phil " Unabomber " Laak in seat two , me in three , Steve Vladar in four , Willie Tann in five and Kathy Liebert in six .

We started with 10,000 in chips and 100 200 blinds , Phil was trying to run the table and took down a couple of early pots , my plan was to set him up , bully Steves blinds on my left in the later stages and move Tony off a pot , it nearly worked but i made a crucial error which in admitting i hope it will improve your game.

After some early sparring , i stole a pot with 5 high four handed to get back level then i flat called in FP with 66 , all passed to Phil in the BB who checked , flop was A 6 4 all spades , Phil bet 450 and as i figured he would have raised with an A i assumed he either had flopped a small flush or was betting with the bare K or Q , i flat called with my set , turn was a Q and Phil bet 1500 , again i flat called but said to the dealer " i need another spade " this was to stop Phil betting if he already had a flush and a spade came , river was the K of spades , we both checked and i showed my set , Phil had flopped a T high flush , he said " i can't believe you checked your set twice , i would have definitely paid you off if the board paired "

The very next hand i made a mistake , now in my defence , firstly i was still thinking about the last hand and what could have been and secondly i reacted to way the hand was played without following my number one rule .

In the BB i had 88 , all passed to Tony who raised to 600 on the button , Phil passed and i reraised to 2100 , Tony now instantly moved in and i instantly called , he had QQ , i picked up a straight draw on the turn but missed so let's analyze why i did this.

My rule number one written for these situations is " Think before you act " i didn't , i think the reason is as Tony was the " amateur " in the lineup my gut reaction was he was overplaying AK , however if i had stopped to think about it i would have reasoned my raise was to determine if i was against an over pair , having him move in should make it a pass .

Some pros may play the QQ the same however in my experience with the blinds still low if i had the Queens and was raised i would either think then call in position hoping to doge an A or a K on the flop or i would reraise after a short pause , when Tony instantly moved in i didn't give myself time to consider anything other than AK , read and learn !

The other event held was the first ever Poker Room Pride event , this consisted of 8 Cryptologic teams made up of licencees such as UK Betting and also an extra team fielded by the Marriott , so we had 36 players . We started with 6 tables of 6 and all places gained points for your team , the winners went to the final where points were doubled .

My team was Gunnar Johnsson , Danny Wu , Eoghan O'Dea and myself.

On day one my team performed fantastic , i had only had 3 hours sleep after the Omaha final but managed to come second as did two of the others with Gunnar Johnsson winning his heat , this gave us 34 points , we were joint leaders going into the final with Sun Poker but they had a huge advantage as two players had made the final.

I worked out we could win as long as one of the Sun Poker guys was out in 5th or 6th , Gunnar trapped one of them slow playing a turned set and he was soon finished off , now i told Gunnar to keep out of the other Sun Poker players way without a very big hand and let the others take him on , this also worked out as the remaining Sun Poker guy finished 4th , now the worse we could do was finish tied for first if we came third and be forced into a playoff , i told Gunnar if we finsihed second we win and he played superb , attacking the short stack to his left and keeping away from the chip leader until the short stack was forced to defend his blinds , when he did he lost and team UK Betting were declared the winners , as well as a trophy the team received $8000 .

On the last night an awards banquet was held and i had the pleasure of going up on stage with Gunnar and Danny to collect the trophy , i look forward to defending next year , it has already been confirmed that the CPC will be held here again and i am sure once the word gets out of what a great time was had here by all it will be even bigger , don't miss it !