A Grantham man missed out on the chance to play poker against Chris Eubank Jr at a London event after battling Storm Eunice on his travels on Friday (February 18).
Curtis Moore, 55, won an online poker tournament with 888poker to be in with a chance to face the boxer as he faced fellow poker enthusiasts and professionals at the VIP tables at Grosvenor Casino in Edgware Road, London.
The site manager pushed on a number of hands and was chip leader at one point but missed out on the final table in the afternoon's events for the chance to get the £10,000 bounty on the middleweight fighter.
Mr Moore, who won last month's competition too, said meeting the professional boxer and 888poker ambassador was a personal highlight of his.
He said: “Meeting Chris Eubank Jr was a highlight. Lovely guy, shook his hand and had pictures taken with him.
“He’s a very down-to-earth and sounds very much like his Dad. He oozes confidence when he walked into the room, he’s got that ‘wow’ factor about him.”
The Lincolnshire man started the afternoon's in a 5,000-chip hyper-tournament and even managed to knock out one of the 888poker pro's in the process as well as becoming chip leader on his table at one point.
However, he was shortly knocked out despite having a good hand to play with.
He explained: “I had king-ten suited which is a pretty good hand and I pushed and the other player came up with aces and I thought ‘oh Jesus Chris’. So I got knocked out.”
Mr Moore later played in the evening session where he played for close to eight hours 8 hours on the main event, pushing on a pair of nines and had three of a kind on the flop before another player managed to get the straight on the river, knocking the competition winner out of the evening tournament.
Alexios Zervos was the other player - who has won over $680,000 and went on to go to the last 10 in the competition.
"I was watching the final at home and was like 'that's him, that's the guy who knocked me out!'" Mr Moore said.
But despite being so unlucky to come home penniless, Mr Moore relished every minute and meeting the people involved in the competition.
So will he make a return?
He said: “Oh yeah, hell yeah! When you play live you get to know some characters and I love talking to the characters, I really do.
“The whole experience was fantastic but unfortunately I came home penniless but I got far more from than the money value.”
Curtis was part of the 888poker LIVE weekend at The Grosvenor Victoria Casino which started on Friday February 18.
