well done john

I first met John Tabba when he rolled up to the Reading uni poker society on behalf of pokerpanthers.com. He sat in the 10p/20p cash game with a wod of $20 notes and proceeded to donate about 300 quid to the rest of the table in about an hour. I knew he was a sponsored pro and i knew he was muffing about (in his own words; 'this is a lot cheaper than tilting $5/$10 online'), but i had no idea that 9 months later he would place 2nd in the WSOPE and pick up 570K.
When i turned up at the empire half way through day 3 i was star struck, Mel Judah was just leaving when i got there and Johnny Lodden was one of the first faces i saw when i got in the door; this was just the start!! The top pro's were all over the place and the great thing was that 90% of the people in the empire had no clue who these people were! Over the next 3 days i got to play cash with Todd Brunson and Marcel Luske and thanks to the limited amount of fans watch John play some awesome poker right up close. Although he was really cut up after he lost John can be so proud of the way he played; he got through 1 of the toughest fields ever and gained the respect of some of the greatest players in the world. When we asked Gus Hansen what he thought of John at the end of day 4 he replied, 'he was super aggresive, he got the better of me today', now thats a fucking compilment.
For me the highlight of the day was after the final table when John orderd a bottle of vodka and a rather impressive 27 bottles of champagne!! Seeing as there were around 15 of us celebrating getting through the vast majority of this was quite an acheivment itself. John is certainly the type to spend his money in a flash and seeing as he only had 40% of himself and 5% of Oyvind (the 4th place finisher) i hope the money lasts until the next big win; if he plays as well as he did in this tournement he wont have to wait long.