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He took up serious poker in 1996 and three years later won £40,000 in the Channel 4 competition, watched by 1.7 million insomniacs in the final. He also won the 1997 World Championships and 2002 World Poker Open.His pearls of wisdom include: never play with more than 10 per cent of your “tank” (total playing money) in one session; don’t bluff a mug. You can bluff a good player, but not a bad one; try to keep the same expression (to prevent an opponent knowing what you’re thinking); and win the maximum, lose the minimum (stay in the game if you’re winning, but cut your losses fast if you’re losing big time).”You can get bad luck for a few weeks, but you just keep going until you win again,” he said “There’s no point worrying when you lose.”. Air travel crisis? What crisis? In spite of security jitters at British airports, the resulting disruption for the travelling public and the current political uncertainty, many holidaymakers are continuing to book.

Andre de Mendonca, director of the specialist agency South American Experience, said: “Bookings are very high for this time of year. Latin America is perceived as a safe destination, as it doesn’t involve flying through any of the more dangerous parts of the world.”A spokeswoman for Trailfinders, the UK’s biggest flight specialist, said: “There’s no immediate sign of any downturn in long-haul bookings.”Rumours were circulating about poor sales for traditional summer-sun packages to the Mediterranean. “If you’ve got kids to worry about and a bigger holiday budget to spend, you’re going to wait and see how things develop,” said Barbara Kurau of Cosmos.But destinations to the west – the Canaries and the Caribbean – are selling better than usual.”Alan Cornish of Corona Holidays reports a boom in bookings. He said: “Saddam Hussein is on our Christmas card list.” Mr Cornish’s company specialises in Spain’s Canary Islands, which are heavily booked for the schools’ half-term. “The same thing happened in the last Gulf War”, said Mr Cornish.

“The Canaries are seen as a quiet and safe place to go, and business is going like the clappers.”The notion that popular tourist routes are relatively safe was echoed by another industry insider.”I have a theory that hijackers don’t go for planes that are 90 per cent full, for fear of being overpowered,” he said. Most charter flights operate close to capacity, he explained, and: “If you’re going to brandish a gun, you want to put a bit of space between yourself and the crowd. So a half-empty aircraft is a much softer target than a full one.”. More than 5,000 guards at train companies all over Britain are to be balloted on strike action that would lead to severe disruption on the network. Industrial action could hit services run by 21 operators by the middle of next month ahead of a national strike being threatened by train drivers aimed at re-establishing national pay bargaining.Mr Crow said most operators had flatly refused to sign an agreement the union had reached with Great North Eastern Railway (GNER) to recognise the crucial role played by the guard. “This shameful cash-first attack on safety standards is a threat to everyone who works or travels on the railways,” he said.

“That means we have no other option but to ballot our train crew members – with a strong recommendation that they vote for action.”He said the safety role of guards was written out of the rule book just days before the Ladbroke Grove accident in 1999, which killed 31 people.The union said yesterday that most train operators and Railway Safety Limited had reneged on a promise to abide by an independent assessment of the role of guards, which found there needed to be specific provision for such duties in the industry’s rule book.”Under Railway Safety Limited, it seems that railway safety has become very limited indeed,” said Mr Crow. “For most operators, safety has come a poor second to profit.”A spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said: “Threats of strike action should have no place in this matter. There is an established procedure for considering changes to the safety role of the guard. The train companies are following that procedure and the RMT should too.”Operators not affected by the threat of action are GNER and the Island Line on the Isle of Wight, which agree with the union, Thameslink and West Anglia Great Northern (WAGN) – where there are no guards – and Eurostar, Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express, which are not part of the bargaining group.. The threatened invasion of Iraq has brought together a cast list to make any Hollywood producer weep with joy. From the leading ladies Julie Christie and Dame Judi Dench and their male counterparts Ralph Fiennes and John Hurt, to a hugely impressive supporting cast, the luvvies have turned out in strength to oppose the war. Most of those performing, from the shows Les Miserables, Chicago, Rent, Lion King and Taboo, will be on stage when today’s anti-war demonstration takes place in the capital.