I wake up at around 1pm on Christmas “morning”. It looks about 30 degrees Celsius outside and I go for a run in the heat. When I get back I call Alex and ask him for directions to his house for the BBQ. I assure him I’ll bring the Afghan white rhino blend my friend has hooked me up with for coaching him at poker.

I arrive at the house and we start cranking down beers while watching the end of a bowl game that Hawaii got crushed in. There are only three of us for the moment and we roll up the Afghan in a fat paper then head outside to begin the holiday festivities. I estimate that it is 2:30. The Afghan is incredibly powerful and the three of us are coughing like beginners. I scramble inside in search of water but am elated when I instead find beer.

As the afternoon continues more and more guys show up which results in more and more blunts being rolled (naturally.) At some point we make lunch but the grill isn’t working and there are no buns for the hamburgers. Instead, we eat them with a knife and fork on a plate. I continue to drink a variety of beers.

At around 6pm I find my way to the sofa. Despite being in a room with blaring Kanye West, a large TV on, and several people talking loudly I fall asleep peacefully on the couch and remain totally undisturbed.

When I wake up it is pitch black outside and everyone is sitting around the table about to eat. At some point during my slumber Alex has logged onto my facebook and written “Tony is stroking his moist vagina” (though I will not be aware of it for another 24 hours.)

After dinner we’re all standing around outside and local poker player slash self aware worlds most degenerate bankroll management extraordinaire Kaz suggests we should order strippers. One of Alex’s friends leaps on the idea and a phone book is brought out. The friend dials the number and requests two attractive girls
”No! No! Nooooooo! Dude don’t” Alex begs.
“Yea make sure they’re attractive.”
”No dude, stop this. I don’t want them here.”
I’m against the wall laughing “Man this is so degenerate” I say.
“No dude, I don’t want them here. No!”
”How much will it be for 90 minutes? $1200?”
”Yea that’s fine” says Kaz.
“Okay sure send them to…”
”NO! Aw man no I don’t want fuckin strippers over here!”
”It’ll be fine” Kaz reassures him.
“Okay send them to XX XXXXXX st.”
He hangs up the phone with a smirk. Alex continues to protest. I tell Kaz he’s my “favorite degen ever.” Kaz appears to be quite drunk and is slurring heavily.

At some point Alex manages to call them back and cancel the strippers. Kaz tries to convince people we should just go out to a strip club instead. I decline and go home and fall asleep very early.

The next day is Friday which I now always take off out of principal. I drive into the city and take advantage of the Boxing Day sales at Zegna. I find a sweet ass gray pinstripe suit and buy myself a Christmas present. When I go home that night I call the girl I’m seeing to ask her what she’s doing. She says we should hang out and maybe go out. She comes by at 1am and we head out into the city to meet some friends. We wind up at ‘Loft’, the first white people club I’ve been to in about two weeks. Everyone starts smashing down shots and vodka red bull. I get to see a girl punch another girl in the face on the dance floor (fucking awesome!) I later ask the girl who got jabbed “Why’d that other chick punch you in the face?” and she just shrugs at me. Not every day you see girls throwing right hooks.

Everyone starts really draining down the drinks but because I mostly stick to beer I’m considerably more in control. On the dance floor my date encounters the classic ‘club douche’ who comes on to her, gets rejected, then stands there for another 10 minutes trying any other attempt at game he can think of while literally getting a middle finger in the face. Eventually I tell her “Let me do you a favor” then throw my arms around her and we start making out while standing right next to him. Eat it stereotypical club douche.

By 4am the whole party I’m with is extremely hammered. I’d started on waters about an hour ago and feel okay. At 4:30 I tell them I’m going and I stand out and wait for a cab. My date chats with the driver the whole ride home, often asking him the same question multiple times. She sways back and forth and I’m worried she’ll vomit. I have the cabby stop a block short so in the event of vomiting I can direct it away from myself. Luckily, the fresh air seems to improve her composure. When we get inside I try to keep her up and force her to drink water. I get to bed around 6am.

I had the appointment with my immigration lawyer yesterday. I laid out the whole situation for him and asked how it would be possible for me to stay in Australia legally. As it turns out, it won’t be very hard at all. First of all, the two year visa I was given under Celina’s sponsorship still applies despite the fact that we’ve broken up. That means I have roughly another year of absolutely zero visa concerns. After that the lawyer said he will help me find a low intensity language course that will allow me to stay in the country on a student visa but not take too much time away from poker.

After the appointment I met Stevo at ‘Number 8’ in Crown for lunch. That restaurant never fails to be delicious and the host knows me well enough at this point that we often chat for some time about our preferences in high end men’s wear. After lunch Stevo and I made our way over to St. Kilda road to check out more apartment possibilities. We fell in love with the third apartment we viewed and will be lodging an application to rent it. It can be seen here:
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=105349054&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=79116794&s=vic&snf=rbs&tm=1230095990

The building is across the street from the Botanical Gardens, a roughly two minute walk to Albert Park, a 5 minute walk to Fawkner Park, a 10 minute walk to Crown, and a roughly 7 minute walk to the city. I’ve already claimed the bedroom with the direct view into the city, something I’ve always wanted. However, we have to have Steve’s dad lodge the application because not too many real estate companies are going to rent an apartment like that too two 24 year old professional poker players. I normally wear a suit when going out to look at apartments which prevents unwanted questions, though it occasionally encourages some less expected ones such as two the agent gave me this time; “Do you have a business card?” and “Have you got any children?” I’m disappointed in myself for not being on the ball enough to quickly quip back “Not any I’m aware of” but you live and learn.

I’ve had a pretty lazy week work wise (though I am sitting here grinding on Christmas Eve) and will continue to do so. My Christmas plans involve going to my friend Alex’s BBQ and getting incredibly hammered while taking photos of myself pointing and laughing under the sun to put on my facebook and show friends back home in Wisconsin. I won’t be working Friday or Saturday either (because I just don’t anymore) and will likely use the time during the day to go outside and play sport then spend some serious time in a café working on my book. I’ve decided to approach it without the slightest alteration in my style or vocabulary (it’ll have swearing!) though I will have it professionally edited because I still make some God awful grammatical mistakes.

The time I spend between now and New Years should end up making for some interesting stories, though very little of it will be poker related. So if you’re opposed to reading a blog entry about my getting drunk, best to avoid this until January.

It’s a bit of a strange period in my life right now. It’s come to my attention that because my relationship with Celina has been dissolved my legal ability to stay in the country of Australia is now very much up in the air. I’ll be calling my immigration lawyer tomorrow to set up a meeting and discuss what my options are (if any) when it comes to staying in the country. Otherwise I’ll have to figure out a new place to live, and at the moment I have no idea where that’d be.

I’ve been talking with my friend StevoL about getting a place together and we checked out an apartment right across from Albert Park a couple days ago. Here’s the link for those who are curious: http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=403404735&f=90&p=30&t=ren&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=30244994&s=vic&snf=rbs&tm=1229569787
It’s got pretty much everything we’re looking for although I wish the view of the city were a little better, as the picture provided is at an angle you really have to stretch to reach on the balcony. Also, the bathroom in the master bedroom is encased in see through glass, meaning if you had someone over and needed to use the bathroom you’d have to kick them out of the whole room for privacy, which would make for an awkward conversation
“Listen baby, I know you’re exhausted from the 92 orgasms I just gave you, but I need you to slide your sweet ass out of bed and wait outside for a while cause I need to take a monster crap and you’re not gonna wanna be here for this.” Yea, that’ll go well.

Meanwhile, things have been going spectacularly in poker. My first few days back I blanked out but after that I’ve hit a massive streak of positive variance. In my last five days of play I’ve hit scores of $5600 for 1st, $5600 for 2nd, $18,000 for 6th, $5300 for 1st, and $8000 for a tie for first in an Aussie Millions satellite. I’ve been extremely productive in creating Pokersavvy videos and managed to get back to a lot of old PM’s sitting in my mail boxes. I’ve recently gotten an avalanche of new ones, many of which I plan to respond to tomorrow since I’ll be working most of the day. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, anyone who reads this is free to PM me with whatever questions they have, as long as they don’t mind the possibility of my going AWOL on the response for up to a couple weeks (though because I’m at my computer much more lately my response time is normally within a couple days.)

Every now and then someone will PM me and ask why I write the strategy articles I do, or why I’m willing to answer people’s questions without any real monetary motivation or compensation, or continue to post thoughts on 2+2. While standing in line at ‘Subway’ today I read a quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw that summed up my thoughts on the topic rather well
“If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples we each have just one apple, but if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas we each have two ideas.”
To me, the knowledge I have isn’t something I own. It’s not for my personal keeping and profit. I’ll never learn anything keeping all my thoughts to myself, because without those with differing experiences and knowledge giving feedback, thoughts, and edits, I’ll never be able to improve. I’m not quite smart enough to figure all these things out on my own, and pretty much every ounce of poker knowledge in my head was the original thought of someone else. As a result, I’ve been thinking about how to approach the poker book I plan on turning my articles into. It’s occurred to me lately that finding a publisher for a poker strategy book full of vulgarity and absurdist humor will likely be no easy task. As a result, I’ve decided that if after finishing it and submitting it to various outlets they aren’t interested, I’ll simply turn it into an Ebook and release it for free. Then when people read it and point out where I’ve fucked up, I’ll really learn something.

Oh, and for those of you who tell me to stop writing this stuff and educating the masses I have only this to say; Quit bitching you lazy bastards. Odds are you’re smarter than me and can probably figure out a way to counteract what I’m imparting if you just apply a little effort. Poker is constantly evolving and so too should your own game. As if you didn’t get your poker education from external sources anyway.

I was sitting outside at a neighborhood café today looking to get a 1pm breakfast of pancakes and coffee. I’d taken the day off as I had some things to take care of during the afternoon. The café is on a fairly busy street with considerable foot traffic in a neighborhood that’s a pretty eclectic mix of people.

As I was sipping my coffee two “girls” walked past me, one on the phone. The one on the phone was staring right at me and smiling then pointed at me to “her” friend. I smiled back and as “she” walked by “she” said “Heeey!” Neither was particularly attractive but I smiled and said “Hi” back because whatever. The “girls” walked past and down the street, out of view for a period.

A couple minutes later the “girl” that wasn’t on the phone came walking back towards the café with a slip in paper. “She” walked right up to me with a smile and said “This is for you” and handed me the piece of paper with a number on it. This person handing me the number was clearly a dude. The name on the slip of paper was “Leilani”. It was written in blue ink and the dots above the ‘I’ were not written with a heart. Clearly a fucking dude.

Now I know how you all feel about pictures, but unfortunately in the moment I didn’t have the focus to whip out my phone and tell the “girl” handing me the number to “Hold the fuck still while I take a picture.” As a result, I have scoured the internet and found a similar looking transvestite to help with the imagery of this story.

A few people have asked for summation of how I got to where I am in poker via forums or in PM’s, so I’ll try and write everything relevant to my evolution as a player and the events that brought me there and now, here.

I suppose everything started back in high school. During that period I went through five jobs that paid the standard shit wage they give teenagers for unskilled labor. My first job ever was as a ‘peanut guy’ during Badger games, which in retrospect was not so bad a job since there was no direct boss, I got to watch football, and the money was pretty good for the hours put in. At the time I was a very small guy so carrying around the bag sucked but other than that it was a good time. After that I got my first proper job as a ‘Sandwich Artist’ at Subway for about three months, which was boring but tolerable with terrible pay. After that I got a job as a dishwasher at ‘Morels’ restaurant which was very dirty work for little pay but the bosses always treated me with respect and my coworkers were fun so it’s the job I have the fondest memories of.

The following summer I got a job as a shoe salesman at ‘Finish Line’ which was, without a doubt, the worst job I’ve ever had. Although the work itself was likely the easiest and cleanest of any of my jobs, most of the bosses were colossal dick heads and the whole sales industry made me sick. I was taught to try and figure which accessories to try and sell customers based on race, age, and gender and was under constant pressure to keep my sales numbers up despite not receiving commission. Any form of small talk or fraternization with my coworkers was discouraged and occasionally punished and my head boss Dan had some of the most absurdly retarded working policies on the planet. For example, we had large columns throughout the store and while waiting for a customer to make their decision I would occasionally lean on to take the pressure off my feet. When Dan would see me doing this he would come over and nag “George I don’t wanna see you leaning! Leaning is for the lazy, there’s always something you can be doing.” I eventually quit that job after a few months and credit it to this day for jading me about the legitimate working world.

My last job after that was a brief stint as a host at ‘Damons’ restaurant during my senior year where I was a terrible and apathetic employee who eventually got the firing he deserved. Around this time I started taking a considerable interest in the gambling world and started reading about blackjack card counting and decided to start my own enterprise as the school bookie. A lot of guys in the school liked betting $5-$20 on the various college or professional football and basketball games during the course of the year, and I became their outlet for whatever they needed. I had a paper full of the lines which I would hand out to guys in my classes during school, which eventually got me called into the principal’s office where I claimed I was just having a few friendly bets with friends. They gave me a lecture and told me not to disturb class and I was sent on my way. The bookie thing never made me much money but it was enough to keep me from being totally broke through high school. During this period I was obsessed with bodybuilding and had a bit of a mean streak for anyone who crossed me so nobody really screwed around about not paying except one guy who suddenly vanished from school one day.

Near the end of 2002 I thought perhaps playing poker with friends might be a better alternative to the sports betting and we had our first game. I got absolutely killed during our first session, playing 5 draw at the time as Texas Hold’em was not yet famous. After that I went over to the local bookstore and looked for books on poker. Over the next couple of years I wound up purchasing and reading over 40 poker books, which at the time naturally turned me into a huge nit (thanks TJ Cloutier.)

For the rest of my senior year I went and played home games with friends a couple times a week for what was normally a $10 buy in and made a relative killing for me at the time (probably about $30 a night.) After a while I got a reputation as the best player in the school and games would come to me as guys wanted to take shots at me. It was a ton of fun and although I wasn’t really making any serious money (and was terrible at poker) I still look back at that phase of my poker playing with much fondness. When Chris Moneymaker came on TV in early 2003 with his WSOP win all of a sudden everyone wanted to play and I knew I wasn’t going to have to go back to work for a while. I made my first deposit online in February 2003 on Paradise poker, which was the largest site that had up to 4000 users online at a time. I deposited $75 which I turned into about $400 in $10 SNG’s before my mom found out about my gambling online and flipped out. I told her I wouldn’t play there anymore, which was true until I got to college.

In the fall of 2003 I entered college at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and within a few weeks was back online playing SNG’s, this time at Party Poker. Thanks to the WPT the game was blowing up and even when I didn’t feel like playing online I could always find a home game.

For the next year or so I kept playing smallish stakes SNG’s online and worked my bankroll up to perhaps $3000. I barely played any MTT’s and rarely played cash, and during that period I think I made one final table in a $30 buy in tournament on Party Poker, which I considered the greatest accomplishment in poker history (I got 6th.) In late fall of 2004 I played a $39 winner take all SNG satellite that fed into the weekly $360 buy in satellite for a package to the Aussie Millions in Melbourne Australia. I won the SNG and played my first major satellite not long after. I ran like God in the satellite and remember sucking out KK with 99 for a huge pot and flopping a straight against a set on the final table which held to put me in position to win. Five packages worth $13,200 were awarded and I wound up getting one, by far the biggest win of my career. I remember running around my dorm floor yelling with elation then pumping myself full of alcohol, then realizing at 4am I needed to write a paper, despite being wasted. I wrote the paper and fell asleep then dragged myself up at 10am, walked into class, turned it in, then walked straight out. I got an ‘A’ on it.

My trip to Australia was my first time out of the country outside stopping by a resort in the Dominican Republic, which isn’t exactly a culture shock. Neither is Australia really, but it was different and new enough at the time to amaze me (it still amazes me, but for different reasons.) Back in those days when I met poker pros I was stunned and almost speechless, addressing them with the utmost respect and awe. I remember Scotty Nguyen ordering me a triple tequila while watching his table then spending the rest of the trip hanging out with me and talking poker strategy. Previous to his 50k HORSE final table Scotty was one of my favorite people in poker as a result of that trip, and his alcoholism back in those days was of the much more hilarious and recreational variety.

The package entered me into two events, the $1600 AUD buy in (about $1200 US at the time) speed poker championship, and of course the Aussie Millions main event. I managed to run pretty good in the speed poker event and made the semi final stage where they broke the remaining 36 players into 6 tables of 6 which played as shootout to reach the final table. I got heads up against Swedish player Michael Thuritz. Going into heads up he had me about 70,000 to my 55,000 and was easily the better player. Despite those factors, he offered me a 15% even swap. I instantly agreed and our heads up was over in two hands when we both got it in with massive draws, his winning. I got $4000 AUD for my finish and Michael went on to win for $100,000, instantly handing over the $15,000 he owed me. What was most startling to me about the whole exchange is that when he won Michael didn’t so much as blink, but when he came over to give me the money and I thanked him he had a big smile on his face. It was a gigantic score for me at the time.

I came home and started planning my return to Australia via my school’s study abroad program. I also wrote my very first trip report, an absurdly long, terribly punctuated log that will forever show how awful I was at poker once upon a time, as well as how totally naive I was about the world. It can be read here: http://www.parttimepoker.com/poker-features/articles/aussie-dunst.htm
I mostly played small stakes limit online during this period, doing some propping to try make the income more steady. I returned to Australia in July 2005 and went to live with a woman I’d met during my previous trip (a platonic friend) and went to school at a university that wound up being a two hours each way commute. I spent every evening at Crown Casino playing 10/20 and 20/40 limit where I ran incredibly good my first couple months and won around $15,000 AUD. This hot streak birthed my Crown Casino nickname of ‘Lucky Tony D.’

About a month into my trip I asked friends over dinner whether any hot girls actually hung out in the poker room. They mentioned that there was a girl named Celina but that a lot of guys chased her. When I was eventually introduced to her in the poker room I had been out at a $1 beer night at a near by bar and was incredibly wasted. I still had the good sense to meet her briefly then immediately ignore her though, and a couple of meetings later after much flirting I asked her if she wanted to play pool with a mutual friend at a Crown bar. When we got there she asked what I wanted to bet on the game and I quickly replied “Dinner.” I kicked her ass in the game and on our first date made her buy. A week later we were moving in together (mostly for logistical reasons, as we both needed to move out of the suburbs and I didn’t have any processions.)

I attempted to juggle going to school with going to Crown every night. My studies eventually became neglected and I kept grinding the limit games. In the late part of the year I began a massive downswing from a combination of running bad and being a complete moron in regards to bankroll management (as well as playing NL games and tournaments, which I was terrible at.) I managed to piss a $15,000 roll down to about $1,000 and was feeling pretty desperate. I talked to my good friend Rob online and asked him if he’d be interested in staking me. We agreed to a $10,000 (USD) stake where I played low limit ring and short handed games online and if I lost the whole of the stake money I would pay him back $5,000. In exchange he got 33% of all profits (plus his original stake back of course.)

Around this time I asked Australia’s best limit hold’em player how he’d gotten so good so fast and at such a young age (he was 19.) He told me to go read 2+2 forums so I logged on and started posting in the limit forums. At first I found the forums difficult to maneuver with their elaborate lingo and fairly elitist tone, but I quickly realized the information they were distilling was of such a higher quality than anything I’d found in books. I began reading and posting voraciously and was on my way to developing a better overall thought process about the game.

In January 2006 the Aussie Millions were on at Crown and I asked Rob if it was okay if I played a couple tournaments. He agreed to put me into the $1000 AUD buy in preliminary event and I wound up finishing fourth for about $19,000 after taking the most absurd string of bad beats in my life (still to this day.) After that I continued to grind online and read 2+2, trying to work out the kinks in my limit game. As the WSOP approached I told Rob I wanted to shoot for winning a main event seat. I started reading the tournament section of 2+2 and playing many more tournaments online. God I was so incredibly bad, if someone wanted to laugh their ass off they could go to the archives and search for all strategy posts made by me in 2006 and have a blast gawking at my stupidity.

Bodog poker ran a promotion where they had a WSOP weekend running an incredible amount of satellites with overlay, and on my fourth try I got a main event seat. Rob won his on the last one they ran and we were off to Vegas. I was planning on going for a few weeks then coming back to Melbourne afterwards.

A few days before my departure I got an email from the Australian immigration department that told me I was in violation of my visa and needed to come to their office to prevent any chance of deportation. I emailed back that I thought the mistake was on their end since I had been going to school the entire time (which was true.) They told me the mistake most certainly was not on their end and I needed to come in for a talk. I stopped in the day before I was set to leave and they informed that while I had indeed made an honest mistake violating my visa like this (I had been staying illegally for five months, I was supposed to renew it at semester but was simply not aware because I’m a moron) was going to result in a three year ban. So I went to tell Celina that we needed to pack up our entire apartment that night and that when we got to the United States we’d have to consult ways on getting the ban overruled or simply finding another method of getting me back into the country.

When we got to Vegas Rob and I decided to put me in some of the small preliminary events. I was still quite bad back then, but compared to the fields I was easily a +EV investment. I ran very bad in my first few events, but previous to the $2000 buy in event I asked Mark Vos for a 5% swap and he agreed. Vos wound up winning the event and having to hand me over $20,000, a major shot in the arm to the bankroll I was growing for Rob. That said, neither Rob nor I was very bankroll aware at the time, and we definitely spent too much on putting me in the preliminary events, which I blanked out totally.

In the WSOP main event I both ran well and played pretty well and wound up making it to late in day 4. I eventually got AK all in vs AQ pre flop for a considerable pot but the other player hit a Q and I was sent packing in 198th, good for $43,000 and change. Rob finished only a few places further down.

After that I moved back to Milwaukee and decided to do another semester at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Celina had to go back to Australia within a few months when the US government told her they wouldn’t grant her a long term visa so I was left in Milwaukee attending school for a major I cared very little about (theatre) and little reason to go out so I wound up spending nearly all my time playing poker and reading the forums. I became a very frequent poster in the MTT sections and was quickly learning what I was doing wrong with the help of the regular posters. I had a four day period where I chopped two tournaments for about $5000 a piece then on the last day won a tournament on Bodog for $6250 and my bankroll was suddenly surging. I’d made more money in a weekend than I did playing limit in what was likely my whole life. I’d found what I wanted to do with my life.

Coming in part 2: Adventures in the land of staking under Lord Timex, living in China, creative writing, a trip around the world, a taste of success, and the story of a man they call Adam Fucking Junglen.