Ok , first of all a review of the last weeks action including how Ram did in the $5000 .

Having started the day chip leader Ram made the final but things didn't go his way and when they were down to 4 he was shortest stack with only 39,000 with the average nearly 10 times that , fortunately he was the only one willing to gamble as the other 3 seemed content to play for second , he moved in 4 times in a row then won a couple of pots an regained the chip lead .

It looked like he was going to win but finally he came third after two confrontations with the chip leader winning $101,230 , the heads up lasted one hand as the players were dealt TT and QQ , Dimitir Savelyevs' QQ stood up for $365,995 and a seat in the Championship event . What a difference 2 spots make !

The second week has been a repeat of the first , in the $1500 top European was Robin Keston in 16th of 483 , then in the $2000 Willie from Poland was 6th , another Swede Pawel Bielewicz was 8th and yours truly finished 13th of 316 , in the $2500 Ken Lennard chalked up a 3rd win for the Europeans picking up $241,920 having gone in 6th chip leader to add to his 8th place last week with yet another Swede Jan Backstrom in 7th , the $3000 had yet another European in third place , this time Anthony Lellouche from France .

The $5000 is due to conclude today , as with all this weeks events the fields were bigger , this time 234 entered for a first prize of $435,980 , there are 16 left , Ross Boatman was just in the money in 18th spot , our chip leader with 364,000 is Ron Rose double WPT Champion and WSOP Seniors champ , while for the Europeans we have Joe Grech in 5th place with 198,000 and the man on fire Swede Ken Lennard , fresh from winning the $2500 is 8th chip leader with 129,000 .

Also starting today is the PPT , this is basically a who's who of poker , some qualified by results , others were picked by a committee , the list includes all the Late Night Poker champions apart from myself a point spotted by Nic Sczeremeta and also has missed players like Julian Gardener .

I knew it was a long shot but i asked CEO Steve Lipscombe if i could play as i was here but he said unless your on the list your out , he suggested i win a WPT event to get a 3 year card ! Thanks for the advice Steve .

The fact the players are getting a shot at a $500,000 freeroll was not the attraction for me , more the opportunity to play on a table with all the top players , on one for example i saw Devilfish , Sam Farha , Men Ngyeun , you get the picture . As play commenced i actually felt sick at not being able to play , guess i'll have to win a WPT event or finish top ten in Europe this year .

After coming 13th in the $2000 , report below , i played the $3000 , this was basically a repeat of the £750 at the Vic , my best hand was 33 and the one time i had AK it was a split pot but i still can't wait for the $25,000 .

So now the good news , in any sport performance is based heavily on confidence and recent form , having had a few near misses this year i have started to hit form at the perfect time having finished a confidence boosting 13th in the $2000 No Limit , beating 303 players .

I had a good start early on then during the last 7 hours never had more than average chips but played a good survival game and i had some hands .

In the second level i limped with two black Kings , the flop was 7 9 T all hearts , SB checked BB bet 400 , i called sure he would check a flush and the SB called , he was capable of having either a straight draw or a flush draw , turn was an offsuit 4 , SB checked , BB bet 1000 leaving himself 1100 , i had 3000 , my read was the BB had either the bare A or top pair with a flush draw , i decided to get it heads up and raised his last 1100 , to my surprise the SB flat called so now i knew where the A was , the BB decided to call all in , river was the Q of diamonds , SB checked as did i , SB had the bare A , BB had KT with the K of hearts and i picked up a nice pot .

To my left were Antonio Esfandiari and Eric Lindgren both WPT winners , eventually our whole table was moved to the main cardroom and having gone card dead i was down to 2300 on the SB with 66 , passed to me moved in and Antonio called me immediately with AK , my 66 held up and i ended the level with 5200 .

Antonio and Eric liked to defend there blinds so i waited for a real hand , when i finally got JJ i raised to 2000 on the button , Antonio reraised all in and i called , i had him covered by a few 100 , this time he had AT , my JJ stood up and i had 14,000 chips .

I then got a gift , i had been strategically picking up blinds when in mid position i picked up KK , this time i raised to 1800 and all passed to the BB who decided to make a move with JQs , all in for 6500 , no bad beat and i was up to 24000 average at the time .

My table was broke and with my rack of chips and building belief that today could be my day i sat down at my new table . Here i was faced by a chip leader 3 to my left with 50,000 , on my first BB he raised double to 1600 , next player called and with A9s i paid 800 to see the flop which came 9 4 3 with two hearts , i checked the raiser bet 4500 , limper passed back to me .

I had just sat down so didn't know his play , usually a double BB raise smells danger ( that's a key tell , alarm bells should go off if you see it ) but with his chips maybe he was using that size raise to steal blinds , i put him on AA , KK or AK of hearts but decided if i flat called he would put me on a flush draw and i may be able to steal on the turn or if i hit the A or 9 i might get paid , i called , turn was an offsuit 6 , i checked and he moved in , after some time i passed flashing the 9 to get a look at his hand ,he obliged and showed me KK .

I was talking to the player on my left who was short stacked in the BB when all passed to me and i looked down at AA , i had to check twice i haven't seen them for so long , i raised he passed , 2 hands later the chip leader limped in the same player who called his raise before raised to 2400 and i looked down at AA again , i was sure i hadn't kept them so couldn't believe they were there , yep still AA , ok how much to raise , he had 17000 left so i popped it 10,000 to look like AK but he passed .

That was the end of my big hands , i was back up to 24,000 but below average , by the dinner break there were 41 left , 27 get paid and i had 13,000 left , i was going to have to change gear !

After dinner i moved in a couple of times to buy some breathing space and this worked , i made the money and redraw at 27 , i then got JJ so when David Levi raised 4500 in FP i moved in for 16000 , he eventually told me he could beat 77 , i said so can i and he showed 99 , he was never calling in my opinion .

A few round later i moved in with AKs against another FP raise , no call and i made the last 18 . We redraw again and i find myself between John Juanda and Berry Johston , this is the time you want to hit hands , the player on my button moved in for 23,000 and John called with TT , he had KK and doubled up , then Kenna James moved in on the KK players BB , this time he had AA !

Meanwhile the blinds and antes were now 1500 3000 with a 500 ante costing 9000 a round , i had to find a hand once a round just to survive , the player i had A9s against earlier was in seat 2 and when seat 1 moved in for 40,000 had an easy call with AA .

I did get a pair at one stage 66 in FP that i picked the blinds up with when moving all in , i then picked up the blinds again when Berry passed to me then in the SB i moved in against the BB who passed , in three hands i went up to 41,000 average was now around 80,000 .

Blinds now went to 2000 4000 with a 1000 ante costing 16,000 a round , i lost one round and was down to 22,000 with 13 left , next out got $5875 , one more spot it rose to $7000 but i wasn't playing to win an extra $1000 i wanted a shot at the $200,000+ first prize so when i saw KTs and knew i only had the blinds to beat i moved in , unfortunately i ran into QQ in the BB , flopped a T but didn't get lucky when it mattered , the same player in the next round took out 77 with KK had 200,000 in chips but i later learned finished 10th !

I am delighted to get this deep in a major event , i know i played well and this has boosted my confidence for next week but before i go let me tell you about the hand that knocked out the 12th player , i was getting paid when i heard this huge roar so went over to see what all the fuss was about .

Preflop all the chips went in for a 200,000 pot , one player had AKs the other 88 , flop was A K A , turn 8 , river 8 , now that's a bad beat ! Tomorrow i am playing the $2500 Super Satellite to try and win $25,000 then Sunday off ready for the main event . I am in perfect sync and feel great so there will be no excuses if things don't go to plan .