During the rebuy period the only real hands i played were 55 and 99 , you'll get some idea of the action on the first one , there were two limpers , flop was 3 4 6 rainbow , i checked as did one player , the next went all in for 1100 , i also went all in for 1975 to get it heads up , the last player said " i have to call " The first all in has AK , the second had KQ ! turn was a Q , river a 9 , rebuy .

With the 99 i limped , one player went all in for 825 and i called , he had J3o , i won , at the end i had doubled to 5175 and with the top up had 7675 .

The action continued after the break , i called a raise with ATs , flop was A 6 4 rainbow , raiser moved in for 3200 , about half my stack , i called hoping he was representing the A , with these guys he could have had K2o , unfortunately he did have one with a J kicker .

A couple of rounds later i found QQ in the BB , there were 2 limpers , i moved in for 2050 and was called by one player with J8o ! The cash games here must be good . I doubled up only to lose it all on the very next hand .

FP raised double , all passed to me i called with 55 , flop was Q J 5 with two spades , i hoped he had the AA or KK his raise normally represents and as he had plenty of chips instead of check raising i moved in , he called with KT of spades for a big draw , turn was a blank , river the 8 of spades and that was it . The eventual winner beating 146 players was my good friend Tom Gibson , Lucy Rokach's partner so another No Limit trophy heads to Stoke , well done .

Foe me however , another unsuccessful trip , but my next venue is Amsterdam where last year i won the €500 Pot Limit Omaha to finish No 1 in Omaha in Europe , my recent form has been awful , however the last two finals i made were both Pot Limit Omaha including the $10,000 at the WSOP so i can assure you i will be trying to use this event to motivate me to get a good result , wish me luck , if i come up against players with the starting hand requirements that some of these had today i'll either be busted early or get a big stack .