Allow me to rabbit on

I'm not quite sure how to start this post. It is the first time I have written on this blog for over a year; 12 months of hard work, a sticky mixture of enjoyment, disappointment, arduous hours, fun, excess... in fact everything you would expect from a journalist fish swimming in the very deep waters of PokerStars' day-to-day existence.

Let's rewind.

***

Over a year ago I resigned from a fairly cushy job at PartyGaming in order to take up the Head of Blogging position at Stars. It was, and still is, the shrewdest move I have ever made. PokerStars is the best at what it does in every sense of the word - by that I mean from a player's perspective, from an affiliate point of view, or (of great importance to me) as a member of staff.

It's no surprise, therefore, that since joining I have found myself working with the best people in the business. Fact. And it has afforded me a bizarre lifestyle of travel that, to be frank, I'm not sure any other job could provide. But I will put a little reality check in here (unusual for me, I know), it's bloody hard work and you need an understanding wife (which, thank goodness, I do).

Since I last wrote on here (I think in October 2008) I have been to:

Poland
Prague
The Bahamas
France
Denmark
Germany
Italy
Monaco
Las Vegas
Ukraine
Barcelona
London (maybe not that much of a thrill)
Poland again
Portugal
Prague again

Phew. That's a hefty schedule, but one I have undertaken with, as a British policemen may say, full due care and attention.

There's too many stories from that little lot to even begin about recounting here. Of course, many I would never even dream about disclosing.

But let's bring you up to date with a completely harmless and delightful anecdote from EPT Vilamoura a week or so ago....

The winner, Antonio Matias, is being interviewed by the assembled media in a round of what must be quite tedious interviews for him. He's just won more than €400,000, and while he's coping quite well with being asked the same questions time and time again (how's it feel like winning so much? Will you be back for many more live events? etc), it appears that his lovely wife is getting a little impatient.

Now, you can understand that she wants to take Mr Matias home for a 'celebration' - it's a life-changing pay day after all, but it seems Mrs Matias has another, more pressing engagement on her mind.

"We need to go now," she said. "I have a rabbit in the oven."

On board with PokerStars

I'm delighted to say I've taken up a new position with PokerStars, the place where I started my poker journey several years ago.

I will be Head of Blogging, running an ever-growing estate of brilliant blogs around the world. The main one will remain the .com version at pokerstarsblog.com.

We've got an outstanding team of writers, and our tournament coverage is second to none. Please do go and check it out.

Needless to say the Stars software is far superior to anything else, so please ignore the post below!

New PartyPoker table revealed

OK you lucky lot. As you may know I work at PartyPoker Towers, and so am close to the latest developments.

So here, reproduced faithfully, is the picture of our new table that I've just posted on our official blog.

Visit the PartyPoker Blog for more details of this exciting new table.

Anything to declare, Mr Glitter?

What if poker became an Olympic sport?

With the Olympics in full swing, I got to thinking that it would be fun if poker became a showpiece Olympic event. Mrs Punch laughed at me (not for the first time), saying all we do is sit on our @rses and as there is no physical or eye-to-ball activity, poker could not be defined as a sport.

Naturally I disagree. I used to be quite a good sportsman - I played cricket for my county at school (I appreciate it was only Suffolk), was once a decent football goalkeeper, and was pretty handy on the squash court - but as middle age has crept in, the closest I get to sporting action now is the occasional thrash around the golf course. There's lots of rabbits on my local course, and when I'm on the tee they all sit in the middle of the fairway where they know they are safe.

So I'm all for defining poker as a sport as it's something I'm good at (sort of) and it would be nice to be recognised as a decent sportsman again!

Imagine, then, that poker was introduced as a sport in time for the 2012 Olympics in London. What format should the event take? Who should represent your country? All questions that deserve some debate.

My feeling is there should be a series of MTTs covering different disciplines with the same players in each one. There should be a points scoring system, with all results added together to identify the winning country Team for Gold, Silver and Bronze, while individuals would be scored in the same way to identify their medal positions.

Team GB? I'd like to have Neil Channing, Roland de Wolfe, Julian Thew, Julian Gardner and Praz Bansi if I could select a team of five, with Keith Hawkins, Joe Beevers, John Gale and Marc Goodwin as reserves. I'd volunteer as team "coach", which would involve little more than getting the beers in and ensuring they all turned up in time.

So there you have it: 100 metres sprints, marathons, bikes, sailing and... poker. The perfect package for 2012.