Britain is awash with high- stakes poker tournaments at the moment and for the brief moments when you can't play live, there are hundreds of online sites waiting to relieve you of your cash. It's all your average poker addict could want. But it wasn't like that when I was making my name in the 1990s - that's for certain.

Poker was often only available two or three days a week, and casinos would have to put a stop to the poker games by 4am. When you consider that most cash games didn't start until midnight...well, it just wasn't enough. A Friday night poker player may have found himself £500 down at 4am on Saturday morning, having to wait until Sunday evening to get even.

Thankfully, wherever there is such a need, there is usually a local entrepreneur who will step up to meet it.