How to make $10,000,000 in Two Weeks

At the moment, I am getting rather excited by something called the World Series of Poker, which is currently taking place in Las Vegas. (Where else?) It is a bit like the Olympics or the Wimbledon of the poker world but, unlike those events, anyone can take part. All you have to do is put in $10,000 of your own money (hmm) or win a place through one of an increasingly huge number of qualifying events. In 2003, a guy with the appropriate name of Chris Moneymaker qualified by this route and then ended up winning the whole thing.

This year there are more than 8,000 competitors and a quick bit of maths reveals that this results in a prize pool of $80 million, of which the winner will get about $10 million - very nice work if you can get it. However, this is not like the lottery - poker is largely a game of skill and so an incredible amount of talent as well as, admittedly, some luck is required in order to be successful. Nevertheless, there are a lot of amateur players, including myself, who have a burning ambition to one day play in the tournament, just for the sheer thrill of it.

This is the first WSOP since I started becoming interested in poker about a year ago, and I am already finding myself obsessively reading live updates. As well as the one on Cardplayer.com, there is a more entertaining but less thorough service provided by the Gutshot Club, who also run a card room in London. They have some extremely good players, one of whom came 14th in last year's event. I visited the Gutshot once to play a few hands but my money did not last long.

Naturally, the updates begin by focusing largely on the big names of poker and the celebrities who take part (and usually get eliminated within a few hours). However, as the tournament progresses over the fortnight, there is a strong chance that some new names will emerge. If I happen not to blog very much over this time then you'll know why.