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When the unrelenting horror of Keiron Baker’s hack and slash style of play is unleashed on an unsuspecting poker tournament it becomes something akin to a scene from the Shining.

A surreal, murderous encounter played out between realities with diminutive ghostly figures looking on who have no apparent reason for being there. Had Stanley Kubrick been a poker director, Keiron would have been his kind of Johnny and a Fox £10 re-buy his kind of game.

There was an eerie feel to the evening - the cold dank atmosphere, the leaking roof, the smell of rotting apple crumble - as if the room had become a physical manifestation of Keiron’s subconscious.

After his victory last week, which has yet to be explained by the lab boys, a repeat appeared to be a possibility after a typically volatile re-buy period saw him enter the freeze-out stage with an above average stack, but became an almost inevitability mid-way through the tournament with approximately most of the chips in play stacked in front of him and everyone else reduced to all-in or fold poker.

It’s difficult to explain how without complex equations and a truly world class psychiatrist, but none of those things were available to those confronted with this pink shirted leviathan. Some truly creative play saw him bust Milo (8-8) and Wino (9-10 suited) in one hand when his Ace-8 somehow built itself into a straight. A few hands later a rivered deuce saw him bust Chris’ Ace-7 with a dominated Ace-2.

By this time Keiron was consumed with bloodlust fever and rapidly began loosing his sanity, his catatonic ginger railbird stared on lustfully and I fought hard to back swallow some sick as preparations were made for the final table.

As the final table began and a slew of bodies littered the card room, one expected the slaughter to continue. Not so much tentative stabs at pots from Keiron, as wild hacks with a metaphorical axe. But no!

One or two early blows to his stack saw confusion begin to set in and weaknesses exposed. Like poor mentalist Johnny scratching around in the deep snow howling at the moon desperately searching for his son in order to finish him off, Keiron, completely incoherent and delusional now, lost his way too.

Through sheer good chance however he was able to shove chips into a couple of pots at the right moments to eliminate a few players and although barely conscious by now he was able to make it to heads-up with a chip lead.

The final confrontation was not a long one however. Some misdirection from Richard Taylor and soon the chip lead changed hands and the final hand saw him take down the tournament with the worst hand, when he paired his Jack (ironically) and his five. Keiron, cold decked, was finally frozen-out.