So, Lucky Jimm returns to the Gutshot! I was a regular in the Gutshot's raucous Internet room from late 2005 to early 2007. In the absence of a career I'd spend my working days temping amid aloof and conservative lawyers and their yakking secretaries, and my nights with a cast of degenerates at the Gutshot. We celebrated each other's wins and offered sympathy or friendly ridicule at each other's losses. In the week I'd arrive at 6pm and leave at 2am, 3am, often later. I'd spend my weekends there experimenting in sleep deprivation, sustained by jumbo fries, near-fatal quantities of tea, and other people's Marlboro Lights. I’d play till I lost my money by accident or misadventure then cycle the ten minutes home. But despite all the ill-judged shots at bigger tables, despite all the tilt, despite all the playing through sleepless eyes, I was still just about a winning player.

Then in spring last year I moved to the wastelands of West London, and the ninety-minute, multiple-night-bus journey home soon lost its appeal. So instead I played in Internet cafes or at home. Without the bonhomie of playing in company I found myself playing short impatient sessions at higher stakes. I'd play once or twice a week, depositing my wages for ill-fated adrenaline-fuelled "spin-up" sessions in which I however much I briefly won I went down, down, down. I lost everything each week for a good many months. At the Gutshot you can find someone to chat to or something else to do, but at home it's hard to break out of the gambling trance. The silence is broken only by the siren song of the higher tables.

I stayed away from the Gutshot for eight months. Then fortunately I was able to move back into my old flat nearby, and returned to the club on the night of the Goscars ceremony. Nervous walking in the door, I drank four or five glasses of champagne in quick succession, later to be revealed to be cava. The Gutshot is a second home for many people and the crowd hadn’t changed. During the ceremony Barry called me on stage to collect the Best Forum Poster award on behalf of the absent Ron Burgundy. As he handed me the microphone, I looked out at the expectant crowd and had a flashback to a school drama performance when in a pair of too-tight trousers I'd forgotten my lines in front of my entire year-group. I mumbled something, tried not to drop the statuette, and hurried to the buffet downstairs.

Since then I've been going to the Gutshot most days, if only to avoid my cleaning-obsessed Italian housemate. I'm pleased to renew so many friendships and acquaintances, and to hear of players who've had great successes in the last year, and great failures. Although I'm sure many Gutshot members hold respectable jobs and make outstanding contributions to society, I feel I'm amongst fellow degenerates, some much worse than me. Recently I saw a young player, long in need of a win, split a $3 Hold’Em rebuy tournament for $2500 then lose it all in several hours playing PLO. Easily done – except he lost it $80 at a time, reloading every hand. I asked another player what he was going to do with nearly a thousand pounds I’d seen him win a tournament. He answered "Pay tomorrow’s rent." What he’d have done otherwise, who knows.

Few of my friends have regular jobs. It’s easy to turn up to an office every day. It’s much harder to make oneself a successful creative life. One friend who’s succeeded is the artist Jasper Joffe. On Friday I went to the launch party for his 'Beauty' show which took place in two rooms in the V22 gallery complex in Dalston. It’s a huge old building, formerly a school or community centre, which has been converted into studio and exhibition space for artists. The exhibition, themed around ‘Fashism’, featured large oil paintings inspired by the models in 1970s Vogue photoshoots; and smaller paintings of Nazis. One room was designated for ‘ugly people, another for ‘beautiful’. The starkest contrast in the crowd was between the casually dressed artists and the pin-striped art collectors; between poverty and money. I was talking to a broadsheet music journalist when a friend tapped my shoulder and told me there was someone I really ought to meet. Bizarrely, this turned out to be the Global Marketing Director for Poker Stars. I took his card.

Since the start of the year I’m up £250 across five sites. That’s better than losing, but I’m some way off being able to spend nights at the Gutshot, sleep in the morning, and see friends, read books and write in the afternoon. Instead I'm compelled to wake at an unnatural hour and be in an office for 9.30am. I've just started temping at a large law firm for £16.50 an hour. In my first two days in the office I was given perhaps an hour's work to do, and spent the rest of the time writing, posting on poker forums, and making cups of tea.  At least I'm being paid for what I'd be doing at home.

My time at the firm started with a three-day training session alongside two fellow secretaries - a kindly Irish girl and a sexy-trashy pseudo-Sloane approaching 40. The trainer was a bald-headed easily-distracted 35-year old from Essex who likes to play guitar. My new best friend Sexy-Trashy-Pseudo-Sloane joined me in asking him obviously stupid questions. We learnt his views on the veracity of the Gospels and what happens when we die. Then he told us that I.T. trainers are all frustrated performers. A classic rock man, he's happiest onstage with a wall of amplifiers behind him. I named bands from Aerosmith to Whitesnake and he offered his anodyne opinion. He said he liked Guns & Roses and Motley Crue, with one caveat. He didn't approve of their drug-taking. He said he'd lived the rock and roll lifestyle himself but had been able to resist taking drugs - so why hadn't they?

Sometimes in life, as in poker, there's just no answer.

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