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

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

This week's Sunday heartbreak comes from a new source! Pokerstars added a $5K 20-player winner-take-all tournament which I decided to give a shot. I'm an idiot and haven't fixed my laptop so I couldn't play Party Poker, and I couldn't deposit money onto some of the European sites I've started playing on either since I was in the US. That left a lot of open screen space early in the day when I'd usually play Eurodonkaments so this seemed to fit in the schedule pretty well. The field didn't look too bad, it was definitely pretty tough but there were some soft spots and most of the real top tier players weren't in it. I got off to a very slow start but as we closed in on the final 10 players I started making some hands and picking up a lot of chips. I won a couple huge pots against JCarver (taknapotin) when I flopped big hands. In the first he mistimed a big bluff and in the 2nd he ended up folding the river after putting in a fair number of chips against my flopped set.

Things were going well as we got to 4-handed play but I lost a key pot where I slowplayed QQ preflop just calling a reraise from TheCleaner, who would prove to be my nemesis. An A flopped, and when he checked the flop to me I knew I was in trouble. He bet the turn blank pretty strong and although I had expected him to bluff the flop with most hands I beat, I didn't really know his game that well and I decided folding such a strong hand for one barrel was too weak, and called. He decided to check the river so I got to see his AT. This hand really killed my momentum and I was shortstacked shortly thereafter as he was really attacking my blinds hard and I couldn't find much to defend with. I got lucky to suck out on the river with my KJ vs his KQ and then finally got action on a couple of my bigger hands against the other player (Rickiee I think?), winning AT vs A8 and AK vs A2 all-in preflop. I was still way behind heads up though and never got much going. I got as close as 35K to 65K but he played very well and I was probably a little unlucky also to not get much action when I had a hand. He ground me down and I ended up resorting to some really risky bluffs to try to hold my ground. In the end I moved in on one of his raises with KTs even though I felt he had switched gears and was not planning to fold to my push. I figured I wasn't in too bad shape against his range and I was so far behind and nothing was working that I'd rather just gamble to try to get some chips (of course my read could always be wrong also). He called with AQ and I outflopped him but he rivered an A for the win. Tough guy to run into HU, I'm told he's a very good Dutch midstakes HU cash player and he got the best of me. Anyways the exciting part of for me and all of you I guess is that the final table of this tournament will be replayed with hole cards of all players exposed, presumably some time during this week. So keep an eye out for that and we'll find out how badly I got owned or if he was just running good.

I had a few deep runs in some of the Sunday majors but no major cashes. I did however finally win a seat to the Aussie Millions main event. I've been playing the satellites on Full Tilt and Cake every Sunday for this and Stars finally started running some this week as well. I still run pretty ok in major satellites on Stars apparently as I won the seat on my first try. The play was really incredibly bad, it was kind of shocking. I'm used to playing against weak players who have won seats into these bigger buy-in satellites through small stakes subsatellites, but a lot of these guys were just on a whole different level of bad. Open shoving 10 times the pot with Q9o preflop in MP fairly late in the tournament bad (I obviously luckboxed into picking up KK to take the donation). So this saved my day more or less. Anyways I'm stranded in the airport for now, my flight is super late because of all the snow in Toronto. I thought it was only 5 hours late but it's actually going to be at least 7. Vegas was a lot of fun as always, but I think Australia is going to be even better.

Mike

VBlog trip report from Bellagio