It's a full week now since I played the Poker Million. Things have started to sink in now. I don't really get nervous whilst playing poker, even in events like these, and I found myself pretty much on auto pilot for the final. I knew what I needed to do and I was extremely focussed.

I hadn't played with all of the players before but I'd done my homework on them and was able to pick up some pretty precise reads which helped me out a lot.

The results that I've had this year have given me so much confidence. I really believe that a positive frame of mind leads to positive results and everything started off well in this final. I picked up a couple of nice hands and was able to exploit the players on my left and pick up the chip lead. Everything was going well but with the extreme structure I knew that all the chip lead meant was I could better recover from a set back than anyone else. When I got into the big race against Luke with AJ vs his 9s I really thought that was the tournament for the taking, and when I lost it was hard to avoid the feeling of things slipping away slightly. However, if it's one thing my time at the World Series taught me its that keeping your composure and concentration at times like that can reap great rewards.

I knew what I needed to do with my new stack size and I was able to manoeuvre it sufficiently to get myself heads up against Juha with only a slight chip deficit. The heads up was quite intense. Despite not having the financial pressures that a situation like this would usually create this would still be my 1st major tournament victory and that brings a new level of pressure by itself. I had a good feel for how Juha would play. Despite most of the final being played out very shallow, there was still some play at the headsup stage and this is why I was able to fold the pair of 4s when Juha just moved all in early on. With 18bb I wasn't going to call it off when his most likely hand was going to be 5s or 6s, despite the fact that in most heads up situations any pair is massive. I was able to gain the chip lead through a series of well timed pushes and fortunately found myself on the right side of the big all in situation.

Winning this title means a lot to me and really crowns off the year. Once again I have to thank everyone for the overwhelming support. I think I had something like 95 texts when I turned my phone on, simply crazy. I won't be playing much now before the end of the year but will try to put another update up before Christmas if anything exciting comes up.

James