Many players have contacted me re Blackpool saying they wouldn't have took being unable to play so graciously , they point out that the previous event started 12 minutes late and i was told by one player as i walked in they had just started the second hand on his table . As far as i am concerned all events have published start times and just because historically i have never known a Grosvenor tournament of this size to start within 15 minutes of their time , and admittedly i was unlucky under the circumstances , i should have planned to be at the casino at least 15 minutes before .

Here in Paris i didn't make that mistake , we started 15 minutes late as usual and there were 125 players , i have been asked to add more tells when doing this diary , i pointed out i have covered most of the obvious ones but as i have now written approx 100 diaries since commencing my sponsorship with UK Betting and only the last 15 are usually archived , for those that are reading this for the first time i will try to include some each month , it is always good to refresh your memory as you don't kow when it will come in useful .

Ok , tonight was pretty ABC , there were a lot of new players here and they had trouble adapting to the chips and structure . Except for the WPT , here you get the buy in value and a structure to suit , so we started with 500 and blinds of 2 5 , for players used to starting tournaments with 10 25 this meant lots of preflop overraises , eg the player on my left opened one pot for 60 , 12 times the BB !

During the first 3 levels i held 55 and AQ , i picked up the blinds once , then having been moved i raised in early position with 88 , facing a reraise and an all in re reraise it was an easy pass , the first raiser called , he held JJ the other player QQ , a J on the turn won the pot .

I blinded away to 260 then got a fortunate double up , the player who had won with JJ decided to limp for 30 leaving himself 140 , the button called and i checked in the BB , flop was A K 4 , i checked and the limper declared all in , button passed , i was sure my A8o was good and called , he had slow played QQ and now compounded the mistake by moving in on a terrible flop for that hand !

After four levels i had 460 , average was about 900 . The dinner break here is from approx 10.30 to 12.00 and for some reason they have substituted the usually fabulous menu for a set price choice of 2 starters and 2 main courses , very disappointing .

I won one pot with AK then with the blinds at 25 50 i called a FP raise with TJs , 2 reasons , first the BB was absent and secondly whereas normally this should be a big pair , i had been watching this player and put him on a big A , passed to the SB , he now exhibited a standard tell , he asked the raiser how many chips he was playing , this will usually be followed by " i raise " and sure enough he moved in , the FP thought for ages , must be AK thought i , eventually he passed , all in showed QQ and FP had AK , personally i would have called .

One round later i was in the BB with 85o , flop was 8 6 2 rainbow , i moved in for my last 140 , one player called and the AK player reraised to get it heads up , he had A8s and with no 5 appearing i was out .

Tonight they hold a super satellite , but as it starts at 10pm and will go on till late morning i am going to have a night off and go to the cinema , tomorrow is the €1000 main event and i am as confident as ever , one thing i've learned is not to become dispondent , if you always are prepared to learn and can be self critical , never give less than 100% each time you play eventually the results will come .

I look forward to sharing the success and failures with my usual candour over another 100 diaries and hope that even if you only learn one new tip it helps you win in the future .