So I bubbled both of these. I played pretty well though, there were some sweet hands. In the first round of the HU I played Doug Lee. As far as I know he's basically a terrible spewbox, but I didn't play very well against him and didn't make many hands. Fortunately I luckboxed some coinflips to scrape by after losing the first game in the best of 3. In the next round I played Anna Wroblewski. I thought she was spewy aggro too but she was actually kind of solid but on the passive side. Anyways in this match I stopped being a pussy like I was against Lee and started trusting my hand reading to make some good river calls.

Hand 1: She limps and I check T3o in the BB. Flop J73 chk/chk. Turn Kc starting a possible flush draw. I check/call her bet. River K, I check, she bets and I figure enough draws and stuff missed that I should call and beat her 45.

Hand 2: She limps I check 96o. Flop 644, both check. Turn 5, I bet 3/4 pot she calls. River 2, I check and she bets some normal amount. I don't think she'd call the turn with just a 3, but probably would with a 7 which she'd be likely to bluff with here, so I call and win again.

I ran pretty good against Anna and made some hands at key times to win the match 2-0. In the third round I played timex though and he kicked my ass. I got behind in both, then won key races to get the lead, then lost really key races to lose. Fortunately we had traded a lot of % so I still got some money out of this tournament.

Today was the $2K 6-max which had a really great structure. I was doing really well for a while, and played some pretty interesting hands, unfortunately I busted 29th when 24 paid in the end though.

Hand 1: There's an aggressive player on my left who's 3-bet light already preflop against other players but not me. I can tell from the way he's played other hands though that he really knows what he's doing, he's not just some crazy spewtard. At 75/150 I open A6s UTG 5-handed to 450 with about 12K. I've been semi-active and as Im putting the chips for my raise in the pot I'm thinking this guy is going to 3-bet me soon, possibly this hand in fact. He quickly makes it 1350 and it folds back to me. It's a lot easier to trust your read and make a biggish move in a situation like this when you can predict his move, so I make it a goofy 3350 representing a monster but leaving room to fold to a push and he folds.

Hand 2: I've since 4-bet the same guy again, this time with AK, and had him fold again, and also been raising a ton of pots since I keep picking up pretty good hands and opening. It folds to me in the SB, I now have 15K and the BB covers, and I raise to 450 with A4ss. BB calls and we see a flop of 663 2 spades. I bet 600 and he makes it 1600. I don't really believe him because he's some middle aged guy and they would almost always slowplay trips here to trap the young overaggressive kid, but we're deep enough that I don't really want to pop him back since if he does happen to have a big hand I would pot-commit myself in a bad spot. Also my ace-hi can easily be the best hand if he's bluffing so I don't necessarily need to bluff him back. The turn is an offsuit 8, I check and call 2500, still hoping to make my hand but also thinking my ace may well be the best hand. The river is another 6, I check and he bets 3500. At this point he's representing basically nothing. It's so unlikely he has quads (he was already unlikely to have a 6 because he didn't slowplay, and now with 3 of them on the board and his small bets it's almost certain he doesn't), and he wouldn't play a 3 or 8 this way, he'd check at least one of the turn and river probably. So A-hi basically looks like the nuts to me here, pretty sure he has to be bluffing, so I call and he taps the table and says nice call. Then turns over his ATo. Damn.

Hand 3: So I'm down to around 7K, then get down to 4K. Still 75/150, CO, button and SB all limp. I check Q3o in the BB. Flop QT3 2 clubs. I lead 450 and the CO calls. Turn K, I bet 1K and he calls. River T, counterfeiting my hand. I check with 2850 left and he quickly put me all-in. I'm pretty frustrated, but then start thinking about what could he possibly have. I dont think he'd bet a king this big. If he was ahead on the turn he would have raised. How can he have a ten? JT maybe makes sense. So does busted clubs though. Eventually I stick it in, and he taps the table (he didn't accidentally have a better hand this time). Nice.


Hand 4: I win a race with KQ vs A8 aipf to get some chips, then pick up KK and AA and bust players on consecutive hands to get to 55K at 200/400 a50, around a twice average stack. Then I donk a bunch off though at 300/600 a50. It folds to the HJ who is pretty new table. As far as I can tell he just plays every pot. I can't recall a time in the 3 or so orbits he's been here that it folded to him and he didn't raise. He makes it 1700, and I find 66 in the CO and decide to just reraise to 5100 and take my chances since it seems like he's so ridiculously out of line. Instead he moves all-in for 20K more and I'm getting too good a price to fold against a guy who as far as I know could just be a psycho. He has JJ though and I lose half my pretty stack. I really hate playing for so many chips prelop with 66 I would never normally do this, but as far as I could tell he was raising practically any 2 cards.

From there less interesting stuff happened. I got into shortstack ninja mode and did my thang. Eventually with 30 left, 24 getting paid, Joe Sebok limped UTG at 800/1600 a200, CO limped, and the button raised to 8500. He was very aggressive so I figured he could easily be raising pretty light. I found 99 in the SB and shoved my 29K stack, and he called with J9s. Door card J, fun way to spend a day. Tomorrow is my last day here in Australia. There's a $1k event. I'll see how many players it gets, decent chance I'll play I suppose but I may just pass on it and make the most of my last day here instead. I did get around to going to watch some Australian Open tennis a few days ago which was really fun. We didn't get to see any big names, but watched some pretty competitive matches and I got a nice sun burn. OK bed time for me I guess. Later,

Mike

Yet another early bustout for me in a major tournament. Considering how conservative I tend to play this is getting kind of ridiculous. My table draw wasn't especially good even though there was only one good player and he busted very early (Brandon Adams). I had terrible relative position though, the two maniacs were on my left and three nits on my right. After the maniacs was an aggressive young Norwegian player so I was basically forced to play pretty ABC poker. Anyways I won and lost some small pots for the first 2 levels. Got up to 22K but then started bleeding off some chips when the maniacs on my left reraised me a few times or I missed flops and either gave up or fired once and then gave up.

I was down to about 15K in level 3, 100/200 a25, when I found QQ in the hijack and made it 600. The Norwegian kid made it 2000 from the SB. I considered my options and decided to just shove to make my hand look like AK or a frustrated bluff since he'd reraised me a few times before. He called after a short think with JJ and I was looking good for a double up until a jack turned. Anyways, there are some more events here later in the week and I do really like this city so things could be worse. I think the Australian Open tennis has started too so I definitely want to go check that out at some point.


Mike

Yoooooooooooo. So I was playing some drunk kickball with the rest of the poker nerds today. Team Goggles kicked some ass imo. After that great victory all hands headed to the Belgian beer garden to continue the good times. I don't think I should have to explain why drinking Belgian beer surrounded by gorgoeus landscape and Australian women with all my homies was one of the best times ever, but in case it's not obvious I loved that place. Then we went for a great meal at the Meat and Wine Co. After that we went to a bar where a seemingly low key night took a turn for the potentially epic when Mark Vos showed up. Several shots later we were headed to the infamous Spearmint Rhino, but they wouldn't let us some of us in due to our kickball attire. Despite our best efforts to bribe the bouncers several of us could not get in. The bouncers were being dicks, so I finally just told them to **** themselves and walked back to Crown by myself. Pokerstars had already bought me into the main event so I stopped by the poker room just to register, planning to play day 1B because I'm kind of drunk right now. As it turns out I was signed up for Day 1A by default at the feature table. I'm not sure if that means TV coverage or not, but I know the table is next to the rail at least so friends here can sweat me. I could have changed my Day 1 but that seemed worth keeping I guess. So I'm going to bed now so I can be ready to ship it crucial tomorrow. I suspect Day 1A will be the softest day 1 so I don't mind playing tomorrow anyways. Table 31, seat 7. Holla back,

Mike

So I've arrived in Melbourne for the Aussie Millions. Today was the first event, a $1K NL event with 537 players. I just busted out after losing a flip, but I'll talk about that in a bit. The trip down here took much longer than any other I've been on. I believe it was around 22 hours in the air and close to 30 hours total. Despite not feeling well for most of the trip I managed to sleep a bit and arrive in relatively good shape. However, in the future I won't be booking any 14 hour flights with United, they just don't offer very much in terms of TV/movies and I can't sleep 14 hours straight on a plane. My bags arrived with no problems, however I was still missing a lot of stuff because Air Canada had lost my bag on my flight from St. John's to Toronto earlier in the week, and failed to deliver it before I left for Australia. So while I did have all my shorts and sandals that don't play so well in the several feet of snow in Newfoundland, I was rather low on some essentials such as socks and underwear. This meant the first order of business once getting checked into the hotel and cleaned up a bit would have to be Australian shopping spree.

Timex's bags did not arrive in Melbourne unfortunately, so after a brief delay for that we got a cab to Crowne Plaza Hotel where we are staying for the duration of the trip. Unfortunately the Crown Casino was sold out when I got around to booking, but the Plaza is still a very nice hotel just across the street, and our room is quite acceptable, though I'm told the rooms over at the Crown are incredible. As luck would have it, I was able to get a hold of Tony aka Bond18, another online player/friend/TwoRags blogger who lives in Melbourne now, and he and his girlfriend Celina were already planning to do some shopping that afternoon. A quick cab ride later and I met up with them. We ran around Melbourne all afternoon/evening for various errands such as food, shopping, and Crown Lager. I bought a bunch of clothes, though I may actually need more before the end of the trip. Between the travel, heat, beer, and my stomach not feeling so well, I was exhausted by 8:00, when we met some other poker players for more asian food. The following story is completely irrelevant, but was so bizarre I feel have to share it.

I decide to just order a coke since I've got no appetite, and they give me a glass with some ice to pour it in. As I said I'm completely exhausted and basically just trying to make it through the meal so I can get a ride back to the hotel. So I pour the coke into the glass, and as I'm putting the can down I hear the sound of ice and coke spilling out all over the table and feel coke dripping down onto my shorts. As exhausted as I am it takes a moment for me to process what is happening, and I am particularly confused because I am fairly certain I did not knock over the glass, nor can I remember hearing the sound of it smashing against the table. Finally I react to stand up and move out of the way of the spill, and as I do I notice that the glass has split right in half directly down the middle. As far as I can tell this seems like something that should basically be physically impossible, but all I can really muster as a reaction is to stare with a blank look of bewilderment on my face and point at it. In the end everyone has a good laugh, at my reaction as much as what happened, and I got another Coke and glass which did not explode.

After dinner I got dropped back at the hotel. My final errand of the day went smoothly fortunately. Instead of wiring money down, I was able to arrange to trade online money for Australian cash here with an Australian pro named Gary Benson at a reasonable rate. He has a cashout service for Aussie players on Pokerstars, but during tournaments here he also trades cash for online $$ for foreign players coming into town. I must say it's sure is a lot more convenient than dealing with a bank. Just send the transfer online, meet him down in the poker room to pick up the cash, and you're already over there to register for the tournament the next day. No annoying paper work and waiting periods like with banks. Anyways so far I love Melbourne. The people seem friendly, the accent is pretty cool, the women are gorgeous, the weather is beautiful, and what I've seen of the city so far is great, though I think I've mostly been in the nicer parts. What an awesome place to come lose $30K.

Oh yeah tournament report. I got my money in as a 2:1 dog twice and won, then got in as a coinflip twice and lost. I also made one rather awful fold preflop which I'm kinda pissed with myself about, but whatever. So I guess I'm not going to get around to that tournament report after all. If that's all you were looking for and I tricked you into reading all this then good, at least someone got through all my ramblings.

Mike

I kind of don't feel like writing a big long year in review, so I'm going to do the cliffs notes version instead. I started the year with basically a $50K roll online not counting the money I won live over WSOP that I didn't want to touch, and a PCA seat. In 2006 I had pretty decent success at the bigger tournaments online and had started learning 3/6 and 5/10 NL cash games online with a lot of initial success. Enter 2007, here's a post I made from 2+2 in an end of year reflection thread with some grammar fixed and extra details added:

Man what a sick year I had.... I started the year playing most of the big online tournaments and having a lot of success learning cash games playing 3/6 and 5/10 NL on like a 50K roll. I continued to do well in those games and also started shortstacking 25/50 and killing it. I was running good and winning pretty big, and I also had a few 20-25K tournament scores. Then I began taking shots with timex shortstacking nosebleed cash games on Full Tilt. Initially we just crushed the games, but we eventually went on a big downswing and quit as the players were adjusting, but still finished up pretty huge overall. During this time I had also moved up to fullstacking 10/20 and 25/50 cash games when they were good and continued to run really hot. Next, the World Series came and I didn't do anything great despite having a bunch of cashes, but I won Super Tuesday online for $75K while I was there.

When I got home from WSOP I decided I just couldn't deal with grad school anymore and there was no way I could finish. I dropped out and grinded 25/50 on Cake back before all the 2+2ers invaded when the games were really soft. I immediately put in a +$200K month, and decided this going pro thing was pretty ok. Since then I've basically just been losing a lot, but I'm still so far ahead of where I ever thought I'd be on the year that it's hard to be too upset. My goals for 2008 include breaking out of 0/17 slump in 5K+ buy-in events, first 6-figure tournament score, win anything on a Sunday, get back to putting in more cash hands, and the usual trying to live a bit more healthily. Monetary goals are kind of foolish since all you can really control is how well you play and the variance is pretty big (especially playing so many big buy-in live events). Also, you never how good the online games will stay as time progresses, but that being said, I'd like to make a million this year.

Mike