Norman Pace is a comedian. You notice it when he tells his poker stories.

"What happened, Norman?" I asked, catching a glimpse of the funnyman by the bar, manifestly out of his debut EPT tournament.

"Well, I had a pocket pair and I stuck them in," he mused ruefully. "He's got two overcards and I'm outdrawn." He didn't say "c'est la vie", but he thought about it.

"How big was the pocket pair, Norman?" I asked, sensing we're not necessarily going to need a High Court ruling on this miscarriage of justice.

"OK, they were twos," he confesses. "But he might have had undercards. I actually put him on aces."

Beverley and Norman Pace: poker's dynamic duo

In truth, Norman was down to the felt by this point and the chips had to go in with any pair. He ran pocket jacks into slow-played aces, with five undercards on the board. That knocked him down to 2,500 and although he built it back to 8,000 at one point, he was cold-decked for the rest of the night.

Pace won a PokerStars media and celebrity tournament held on the eve of the London EPT event last month. There, he beat off competition from Greg Raymer, Chris Moneymaker, Isabelle Mercier, Luca Pagano and even your humble blogger.

But the stiffest competition came from a lady named Beverley. That's Beverley Pace, his wife. They were heads up at the end, but house bragging rights went Norman's way that time.

The prize was a trip to Dublin - and an awful lot of overcards.