The fifth day of action at the Triton Poker Series sees nine people make it to the final table of the HKD 1,000,000 buy-in Main Event led by Steffen Sontheimer, and including the defending champion Manig Loeser.

In the beginning, about nine of us made the annual trip to Blackpool. November. The Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour (GUKPT). We always stayed in this shack of a hotel. But it was ours. We played poker in the back seat of the car, on the pool table at the hotel. On our beds, while we took turns in the shower.

At the venue, the nine of us wanted to play together. We might as well have not left Ogmore Vale. But we loved it. We didn’t want to play with anyone else. There was no talk of finding weaker players that we could rob. We would chance our arm in the tournaments, but when it came to the cash games, we shared the same table.

Here at the Maestral Casino in Montenegro I see a similar pattern. I’m here to interview poker players, only the poker players don’t want to be interviewed. It’s partly fear, a little bit of privacy, but most of all, they don’t have the time. It seems it doesn’t matter what stakes you play poker handcuffs you to its britches.