If the terms "straight" and "flush" have more significance to you than the average, everyday meaning, than this might interest you. British columnist Vicky Coren became �500 000 richer last night after winning the London leg of the European Poker Tour, one of the three biggest poker tournaments in the world.

Coren, who writes the weekly column How to Play Poker for G2 for The Guardian newspaper and has presented TV poker shows, won the tournament after beating Australian rival Emad Tahtouh in the final hand.

Coren, who is the daughter of the humorist Alan Coren, is the first women to win the London leg of the tournament. Coren has been playing poker for 15 years and was completely shocked at her win. "I was totally dazed. I got lucky and had the enormous advantage of playing on my home turf," she says. Shocked she might have been, but professional she remained as she won through earlier rounds involving over 400 players to get a seat at the final eight.

Thanks to a series of bold calls and strong hands, Coren saw herself to the last three where she beat Norwegian Jan Sjavic. In the final hand of the night, Coren was dealt a 6,7 and her opponent Tahtouh an 8,8. The next three cards turned up were 5,3,4 giving Coren a formidable straight. But Tahtouh bet all his chips on his lesser hand, and so when Coren called, she won the event.

When asked what she was going to do with her lucrative win, Coren replied she was going to go out and play in other events and probably never achieve such an impressive result again. "Like Joseph Heller after he wrote Catch-22," she said.

The European Poker Tour is a rolling event that stages a tournament every month or so in different European cities. The London event took place at the Grosvenor Hotel's Victoria Casino.