New York’s poker princess, Molly Bloom, fails to win an Oscar, and the state throws a bottle of champagne at the invisible walls of the largest poker room to open in the land of big fruit. 

Four times I thought I was a goner.

I was 18. I snogged with a Cypriot girl in a Cypriot nightclub. I’m not Cypriot. Her brother and his mates were. I received 23 stitches in a knife wound.

Moving into my late 30s, and I was in Tallinn, Estonia for the European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event. One night I hopped in a cab with two UK poker players heading to a restaurant. As these two prats talked about how many millions they had won playing a game of cards, I was sure I was about to be kidnapped and buggered, as he pulled into a disused industrial estate only to see the guiding light of our restaurant.