On September 10th 2007, 361 Professionals and Internet Qualifiers entered the largest tournament in European history, writes Chris Edwards.

The actual starting number was 362, with the extra person being Martin Johnson, a complete novice who was sponsored by Betfair to take part and report on his experience at the WSOPE Main Event. And an experience it was. 

Prior to the tournament, his only understanding of Hold'em came from a brief phone lesson by Ben Grundy. Before that, it was watching the 1965 poker film The Cincinnati Kid where they played Stud. To say he was not ready to play would be an understatement, yet he went into the tournament fearless and motivated. He received a lot of media attention, so here we will look at his most memorable moments.

During the first day Martin was sat to the right of Phil Gordon and quickly got his attention. Being that this was his first live tournament, Martin was unaware of the necessity in concealing your hand. ‘Protect your hand' Phil is seen saying to Martin ‘Your showing them to everyone, one warning, im not going to tell you again'. He didn't need to as Martin took his advice on board, but slightly too much. Peeking at his cards in a very professional manner, Martin bet with what he thought was AQ but when he showed the hand down it was actually Q4 which was only good enough for a split pot.

On day two, Martin took a ton of chips from famous online player Johnny Lodden, when on a board of Qc 2c 4d 8d he moved in with Ac 4c against Lodden's 4s 2d. Although Lodden was a slight favorite, Martin had plenty of outs and was rewarded with the 6c on the river, much to the disgust of Lodden. With a sea of chips being pushed his way, Martin still looked very confused by the whole situation.

By the third day Martin was still going strong, but faced tough competition sitting next to Kenny Tran, or a '20 something Oriental plugged into an Ipod' as he described him. Kenny tried his best to read Martin, but after two unsuccessful attempts declared ‘Man, now you've got me on tilt'. During a break, Martin received some tuition from Kirk Morrison ‘We're always going to be shoving, we don't want the question put to us whether we have to call'. Disregarding this advice in spectacular fashion, Martin called a raise pre-flop from Kenny with K5o. On the river holding no pair he called a huge 10,000 bet, after which Kenny said ‘It's a good call, I missed'. Martin flipped his cards and received gasps from other members of the tables including Jonnhy Chan and Betfair's Annette Obrestad, while Kenny tapped the table. ‘If I never played another hand, I could dine out on that one.' Martin said afterwards. (Note: Watch Annette's chip stack if you see this hand as the player to her left steals a falling chip!)

Martin would exit when holding a Q high flush draw he called an all in bet from a player with a made flush. Martin received no help and went out in 33rd place, winning £27,150. Afterwards Kirk Morrison consoled Martin by saying: ‘Thats the beauty of poker, anyone can get out there and do it. You just proved that in a $20,000 buy-in tournament!'.