Pocketfives Podcast

Some time last week I received a private message on pocketfives from David Huber who does the pocketfives podcast, asking if I’d like to be on the show. I’m not really very involved at pocketfives outside being on their rankings and looking up players but apparently my being the second ranked player in Australia is reason to enough to justify an interview. I looked back on who else they’d had on the show and it’s mostly guys who are very involved or somewhat famous over at pocketfives, so I can imagine a lot of people there seeing the name Bond18 and thinking “who the fuck?”

Anyway, I fully intend on making this an interesting interview instead of sitting there babbling about how awesome I think I am at poker (which is not very). David has sent me a number of questions for the interview which I am to answer and submit to him in order to give the interview some structure, so I thought I’d share those questions and my responses with all of you. Also, some of the responses to his questions will be things I’ve already written and posted on tworags, so that will seem repetitive. So here’s the email I’m sending back to him:

David, here’s the questions you sent me. I’m not sure how much exactly you were looking for, but I’ve recently found I like writing so it’s going to be lengthy.

1. Brief autobiography.

I was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin but grew up in Madison. I went to school at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a theatre major. I did study abroad my junior year and when intending to move back to Australia after a few weeks in the states, instead found I was banned from the continent for 3 years. I went and did another semester in Milwaukee, then moved to China for 5 months with my girlfriend. After the 2007 World Series where I played 30 events and was an enormous failure, I moved back to Melbourne after attaining permanent residency and having my ban lifted. I’ve got one year left of college, which I ought to get around to finishing.

2. One or two funny or informative personal stories that may or may not involve poker.

I’m cross posting these two stories which happened during the WSOP 2007 from my blog at www.tworags.com. I’m sure if I thought really long and hard I could come up with some other hilarious shit, but these are not bad and they're already written:

Story 1:
WSOP Trip Report part 17 Additional
Last night was way too good to pass up writing about. I’m also having difficulty sleeping again so I might as well. It all happened after writing up the trip report last night, hence why it wasn’t included the first time around, here’s the story:

While writing my trip report I get a call from Sirwatts. He sounds a bit drunk and he’s telling me I really ought to come down to the poker room and play 4/8 limit with him and Grafyx since “we’re doing some stupid {censored].” I look at the clock, it’s only about 11:15pm and I won’t be able to sleep for a while. Might as well I guess.

I show up to the table 15 minutes later and unfortunately find it full. Both Grafyx and Watts are moderately drunk and laughing their asses off at every stupid thing. Grafyx says he needs to use the bathroom and to play his stack for him. I ask the dealer if this is okay and he says sure. I begin ordering Heinekens from cocktails and as I’m settling in to Grafyx’s seat the guy in seat 1 smashes his drink onto the table.
“DRINK DOWN ON 147!!!” I yell.
The dealer calls for a towel and the spill is small enough that we don’t have to move tables. I of course run sick hot for Grafyx including flopping quads and manage to get value out of Watts on every street. When Grafyx gets back seat 1 decides to leave and the wet spot on the table is open. I manage to talk the floor man on the board into not really worrying about the two people in front of me on the list and let me in the game. I go to the cage and buy $200 chips in white and $800 in black, all the ammo I’ll need for a game that’s sure to have a [censored] ton of straddles, blind 3 bets, and bets in the dark.

When I sit down I scan across the table to size up the opposition. The line up is as follows;
Seat 1: Me
Seat 2: Some young girl who has like 10 40 year old dudes coming up to her to chat whom she calls her uncles.
Seat 3: A young disabled guy who was by far the coolest person on the table.
Seat 4: Some middle aged guy who was pretty fun.
Seat 5: A pretty drunk Grafyx.
Seat 6: Some 30ish dude who was drinking with us and getting in on the antics.
Seat 7: Some 45 year old woman who is by FAR the biggest cougar I have ever met. She is also drinking heavily and straddling at every opportunity. She was also not above saying “this isn’t the only thing I want to straddle on the table.”
Seat 8: Some chubby 25ish girl who appears to be the cougars friend.
Seat 9: A pretty drunk Sirwatts.

I of course begin drinking quickly and raising in the dark as much as possible. With Sirwatts on my right doing the same, the pot is often 3 bet no look. Also, the cougar in seat 7 introduces the “Mississippi straddle” to the game where the button in fact straddles, so when she was the button she straddles, girl in seat 8 folds or calls, Sirwatts 3 bets dark, and I 4 bet dark. When the action gets to Grafyx he is of course peer pressured into calling any 2.

Early in the game the girl in seat 2 is helping the disabled guy in seat 3 move his chips into the middle. They seem to know each other from around and seat 3 is cracking me up while he hits on seat 2. When one of seat 2’s ‘uncles’ comes over and talks to her about her last boyfriend she mentions that he stood her up once on a clubbing date they set. Seat 3 responds with
”Think about it baby, how am I gonna stand you up when I can’t even stand up at all?”
Boo yah! I tell him “don’t worry, you’ll get her.”
Grafyx then informs seat 2 and 3 that I am an ‘internet celebrity.’
I tell Grafyx “there’s no such thing as a [censored] internet celebrity.”
Grafyx keeps talking it up, 40 something on pocket fives, blah blah blah, clearly enjoying making me look as stupid as possible.

The antics of the cougar also made the game highly entertaining. At one point before she realizes how ridiculous I am playing I 3 or 4 bet pre flop with KQ and bet a 49T59 board the whole way down and she stations me with A8 which is way good. Grafyx and Sirwatts go nuts with Grafyx screaming “OOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!! PWNED!!! YOU GOT SO PWNED BOND!!!”

The cougar explains her logic:
”I just had to call him down, he’s so cute. Hey boy! You single?”

This would be nowhere close to the end of her cougar antics. Later in the game the idea somehow comes up of her and Sirwatts getting married that night, then having it later annulled. As she puts it:
”Lets do it baby doll, lets get married. It’ll be the best sex you ever had.”
I freak out at the hilarity of this remote possibility.
“Do it Watts! I will give you $200, no wait, $250 dollars if you do it! How can you say no to $250?”
“Will you be my best man Bond?” he asks.
“Hell yea, I will walk you down the isle to be horribly molested by your future cougar wife!”
The cougar and I continue to pressure Watts for a while to get married that night, but he seems hesitant. I tell Watts that he is a pussy for not doing it and that I am gonna pull some huge stunt on either him or Grafyx, and probably both. I have a plan damn it.

A round or so later Watts 3 bets someone’s raise. I peek down at 73o and pick up my cards, then reach across the dealer and jam them into Watts cards attempting to get his hand mucked. The dealer chooses to look the other way on this altercation and takes my cards back and mucks them. Damn! My plot foiled by a meddling kid. The girl in seat 8 sees this and begins questioning me.
“Oh my god! Did you just try and muck his hand while he was playing?”
”He earned it.”
”You are such an [censored].”
“Your 3rd grade logic will not work on me, you’re only insulting me because its obvious that you like me.”
“Um, no I don’t. I’m insulting you because my Ipods batteries died and I have nothing better to do.”
”Don’t lie to me woman.”

A round or so later a very old woman sits down on my left. The guy sitting in seat 4 informs her of what a totally crazy game it is and that seat 1, 5, 7 and 9 will be raising and 3 betting in the dark almost every hand. “That’s alright, I don’t mind.” She says.

A hand comes up between the new old woman and I. I Mississippi straddle the button with what turns out to be 53o. The old woman in the SB 3 bets, Grafyx obviously calls, Watts 4 bets, I call, the woman 5 bets, we all call.

Flop: K T 3 rainbow
The woman bets, we all call.
Turn: 8
The woman bets, Grafyx and Sirwatts fold, I decide she obviously has AQ plus I have sick odds so obv=call.
River: 4
[censored], that’s not my out. The woman bets. I turn to her and say “ma’am, are you bluffing me here?”
”Always” she responds.
“Fine, you better not be lying to me, I call.”
The woman obviously flips up AA and I lose it.

“Watts! Watts! She [censored] lied to me dude! She [censored] lied! What the [censored]!?”
“Dude, Bond you got owned.”
”That’s [censored] bull [censored], she’s not allowed to lie. Dealer, is she allowed to lie?”
The woman laughs at me while she rakes an enormous pot.
“I like this game just fine” she says.

With the time approaching 1:30 I tell watts we should get some food and sleep since we have the 5k six max the following day. We hit up ping pang pong, an awesome Chinese restaurant in the god awful Gold Coast hotel and retire for the evening.

Aftermath:
Grafyx: Went on to still be an azzhole
Sirwatts: Still unmarried.
Cougar: Probably went on to molest a 17 year old pool boy.

The End.

Story 2:
WSOP Trip Report part 21, The Perfect Game, ME Day 1B

In all honesty, going into today’s main event, I’m not looking forward to it. In some manner of speaking, I don’t even want to play it. That doesn’t mean I actually wouldn’t, or I’m going to play badly. In fact, I know deep down I’ll play every WSOP ME until the day I die because it’s obviously the most +EV tournament of the entire year, and nothing comes close. It’s also incredibly crowded, noisy, disorganized, long, and miserable.

I head down to the insane Amazon room which is as packed as I can remember it. I’m seated way in the corner on table 153, which will be one of the first to break. My table contains nobody notable except for David Oppenheim, whose a few seats on my right and shouldn’t be a problem, especially since I’m just some unknown donk to him. The rest of the table seems pretty normal for the ME, nervous looking qualifiers and people with to much money who enthusiastically wish everyone “Good luck!! See you guys at the final table! Hehehehe!”

We start with 20k and 50/100 blinds, and at 200 BB’s deep with god awful players I am playing as many pots as possible. I overhear the guy in seat 8 discussing how good Stevepa is and ask if he knows him.
“Yea, I got 2nd to him at the PCA in 2006.” Good to know. The first interesting pot of the day comes up vs Steve’s old friend:

My stack: 18k
His stack: 23k
I hold J J in MP1

Preflop: Folds to hero, I raise to 300, MP2 calls, CO calls, button calls, SB folds, BB calls.

Flop: A J 3
BB checks, I bet 800, folds to CO (seat 8), CO raises to 2400, folds back to me, I deliberate and reraise to 7500. Seat 8 tanks for quite a while now and considers his options. He more or less has no idea who I am or how I play, just that I seem pretty agro. Eventually, he stacks up his chips and pushes them into the middle, I instantly call. He knows he’s screwed and flips up AJo.
Turn: X
River: X
Boo yah, a very early day double up.

I continue to play very LAG and my stack stays around the mid to high 30’s. Eventually the guy in seat 5 (I am in seat 4) shows up an hour late and is roughly 21 and smells AWFUL. He smells like he has been rolling around in [censored] for 2 hours while smoking weed. Numerous people on the table immediately begin to ask “Is there a skunk in here? What’s that smell? It smells exactly like a skunk.” I am a little tired and very infuriated that some stupid [censored] who shows up a hour late didn’t even bother to shower and I spend the rest of my time at the table distracted by his god awful smell and desperately resisting the urge to strangle him and throw him in the trash. At one point where a floor man I’m friendly with comes over and looks at our table (as we’re about to break) I stand up and start chatting to him, loud enough so that I let anyone at the table whose listening hear me.
“Hey man, we’re breaking next right?”
”Yep, you guys will be broken in a few minutes.”
”Oh thank god. The [censored] on my left shows up an hour late and smells so [censored] awful the people at the table think there’s a skunk in the room.”
”You’re kidding.”
”No, it’s so [censored] bad I can barely concentrate. I can’t really sit at the table.”
”Hmm, ya know in one of our meetings we had discussions about this sort of situation, whether one of the floor persons should inform these people they need to go back to their room and freshen up.”
“You might wanna let this one know. His tables will complain, I promise.”

Finally our table breaks and I get moved to a table full of guys mostly in their young 30’s with about 35k in my stack. I get my stack near 40k when a weird hand comes up. The villain in question was a guy I had been cold calling a lot and taking pots from post flop, it seemed like every time he had a hand so did I, and that I caught better post flop. He had yet to get the best of me in a pot and I sucked him out with 5 outs once when I floated bottom pair intending to take it away on the turn or value him if I hit (which I did, in both regards.) The UTG player in this hand is very weak/honest.
Hero: ~40k
MP2: ~30k
UTG: ~25k
Blinds 100/200. I hold 8c 8s in the SB.

Preflop: UTG limps, folds to MP2, MP2 raises to 900, folds to hero in SB, I call, BB folds, UTG calls.

Flop T 2 T
I check, UTG checks, MP2 bets 1100. That’s a tiny little bet into this pot and I’m fairly sure he’d C bet weak like this with over cards. I intend to call once and give up to further action on the turn. I call, UTG folds.
Turn: 5
Now something really weird happens. The physical button in this hand is kind of between me and the player on my right, making it ambiguous as to who actually is on the button. While i'm staring at MP2 for a few seconds to see if he reacted, he checks out of turn, and from what i can tell, totally honestly. He literally thinks I'm the button. I decide i've likely caught him with overcards and bet 2300. He calls without to much thought. Okay?
River: 3
Now he sorta looks over and goes "wait, wheres the button?" I inform him i'm the SB. He thinks it over and leads out 1000. What. The. [censored]. Okay, fine, i call. He shows QQ. Masterfully played sir.

This pot knocks me down to the low 30's and i try to play aggressively until i get moved tables. I'm sent to a new table that's again a very soft line up, except there is one online player, Polpolpol, who turns out is from the island of Cyprus. We discuss in depth whos good and bad at poker, mostly online players, and become friendly. I am still new to my table (been there a few rounds) when the following hand comes up:
My stack: ~32k
CO's stack: ~20k
Blinds 200/400 with 50 ante. I hold A Q in the SB.

Preflop: 4 limps to me including the CO, i raise to 2700, folds around to CO, CO calls. CO is youngish but clearly not an online player. He seems nervous and unsure of himself but also not clueless.
Flop J 5 5
I bet 3400, CO thinks for quite a while, looks over his stack, mulls it over, and calls.
Turn: 4
I check intending to see him bet most if not all his remaining stack and blow me out. CO thinks over his options. His stack contains two orange 5000's, a few yellow 1000's, some green 25's and a few black 100's. He gathers up all his non orange chips and bets them, roughly 3-4k. This is kind of weird. Why not bet the oranges? Why bet so small? I think it over and decide there is no hand he holds considering preflop/flop action that can call a shove here unless he's bad enough to limp/call JJ. My line will look like a big pair and freak him out, i'm almost certain he'll fold despite having half his stack in. I shove. CO looks totally disgusted and after 5-10 seconds, folds his hand. Polpolpol begins laughing "holy [censored] dude! you just pulled one off!"
"I did?"
"Yea you did?"
I flip up my hand. "Holy [censored]! I totally did."
CO looks like someone ripped his heart out. Polpolpol can't control his laughter, the table freaks in general.

That pot puts my stack to around 40k again. I continue to play aggressive and often c bet, as well as hit hands. I get my stack to around 50k when the following hand comes up vs polpolpol:
Pol: 5400
Me: ~50k
Blinds 200/400 with 50 ante. I hold Ad 3d in the BB.

Preflop: Folds to Pol UTG+2, he considers his options and limps, folds to me in BB, i check feeling very suspecious of him.
Flop: 7 8 9
Well, no getting away now even if he limped aces. I check, Pol bets 600, i make it 4000, he insta shoves, i obv calls. Pol flips up 88 and his set holds putting him around 10k. Fair enough, no harm done.

I continue my absurdly aggressive play and nobody bothers to make a point of stopping me. I continue to rebuild my stack when another hand comes up vs Polpolpol:
Hero: ~50k
Pol: ~10k
Blinds 200/400 with 50 ante. I hold K K in the BB.

Preflop: Folds to Pol UTG+2, Pol raises to 1200, folds to me in the BB. I call.

Flop: K T 7
I check, Pol bets 2000. I grab my stack of yellow 1000's and jam them in the middle. Pol tanks forever. He stares me down hardcore and even tho i'm wearing sunglasses i playfully put my hands over my eyes. He tanks, tries talking to me but i won't respond. He mutters out loud "i've seen you do this twice now with a bluff or semi bluff. Do you know how weak you look?" He tanks some more, and finally, slides his chips into the middle. "Top set" i announce. "Shiiiiiiiiiiiit" he flips over his T 8 and is totally destroyed. Turn/river don't bring his running quads and we shake hands as he walks off.

With Pol gone my table is totally devoid of a player aggressive enough to shoot back. I go berserk. Unfortunately a little while after he's gone our table gets broken up. I mutter to myself about how unlucky this is, that i can't possibly get a table softer than that.
WRONG.

I show up at my new table. The mean age was probably 50. It was just incredible, a bunch of middle aged and old nits and a few very nervous 30 something online qualifiers. Everyone is playing INCREDIBLY weak tight and i absolutely go to town. I was playing roughly 40/35 poker and showing all my good hands just so people might think i was just running hot. I was also friendly and talkative and got everyone on my side of the table to like/respect me so nobody felt like giving me any trouble. My stack goes from 65k to 100k without a meaningful showdown, or having to turn over to weak of a hand. It feels amazing. I feel like an all star major leaguer who's brought in to play 12 year olds at wiffle ball, it was just way to easy. Everyone at the table seems really nice, but they were missing really really basic stuff. The guy on my right's open raise is to 5000 at 300/600 because he's scared to play post flop. Nobody knows what a resteal is. I would randomly 3 bet people with ATC when i felt like taking a pot and am never opposed. I raise the button/CO with around 95% consistency and am only 3 bet once, though often called and check folded to on the flop.

With about 2 or 3 minutes left in the day i have worked my stack up to an almost exact 100k at 400/800 blinds. The player in seat 1 (i am seat 9) is a very old super nit whose blind i have been destroying for hours. The following hand develops between the two of us:
His stack: 65-70k
My stack: ~100k
Blinds 400/800 100 ante. I hold A A in the SB, he is UTG.

Preflop: UTG raises to 4000, folds to me, i raise to 12000, BB folds. It's back to UTG who takes a second to think. Now the oddest thing happens, that at the time, i was completely unaware of. A 30ish player in MP who was the only semi aggressive player on the table assumes that UTG will stall out the remainder of the tournament clock and immediately tells the dealer to clock him. This apparently annoys UTG hardcore who grabs all his orange 5000's and throws them into the middle, making it 49000. I sit there stunned for a moment, i can't believe my luck. I calmly announce all in. UTG calls immediately. The entire table wonders if we both have AA, considering how tight this guy is i kinda expect him to fold AA here. I show my AA and UTG mutters "[censored]" and flips up AKo. I can't believe my [censored] luck. Like 85 BB's with AKo 2 minutes before it ends from a super nit? I pinch myself forcefully to see if i am dreaming, but fail to wake up drenched in my own tears as normal. Looks like this is real.
Flop: K T 4
Oh come on dude, no way. That would be to sick.
Turn: J
No please. No win for him, no chop pot. It's my turn damn it!
River: 5

Boo yah!!! The entire table is floored. I am stunned, a MASSIVE pot is shipped my way. I shake hands with UTG who politely wishes me luck. The table CAN'T BELIEVE he put so much money in with AK. MP2 informs me that he called the clock on him and jokingly says i should thank him for that pot. I ask the dealer if i can tip MP2. The dealer is also stunned.

After this we play one more hand which the aggro player raises and i let him take with Q4o (3 betting would have committed his stack, and i don't think he would have minded getting chips or going home, he seemed pretty smart) and we wrap up the day. Allow me to give you some interesting end of the day statistics:

Starting stack: $20,000
Ending stack: $168,900
Sets flopped: 5
Aces dealt: 2
Kings dealt: 3
Queens dealt: 2 or 3
Jacks dealt: 2
Suck outs i took: 0

It was very possibly the smoothest day of poker in my entire life. Truly, it was the perfect game.

3. How did you get your start in online poker & live poker?

I started playing with friends way back in the pre-Moneymaker days of 2003. I wanted to win money since I was sick broke after being fired from my job so I went to the bookstore to read up on poker. I started looking up more online, and found you could play online. Eventually I deposited $75 into the biggest site of the time, Paradise poker, which back then had up to 4000 players during peak traffic. Everything I’ve made since has been from that $75.

4. What do you consider to be your largest online tournament win or cash game session? Why?

The Sunday Mulligan on Full Tilt for 27k. Because it was for the most money.

5. How many hours of online poker do you usually play per week? How many tables do you usually play at a time? And which online game do you play most-frequently?

I normally play 7-9 hours a day, every day, taking a day off once every couple of weeks or something. I don’t really care for days off, even though I have enough money to do whatever I want, and lots of movies and video games to play, I find I’d rather just be playing poker. I usually play 6-12 tables at a time, averaging 8. I’m buying another monitor whenever I get my lazy ass to the computer store, and I’ll probably start averaging 10-12. All I really play is tournaments, but I’m starting to get coached in cash because I’m god fucking awful with deep stacks and really shouldn’t be.

6. What are some of the things you do in your personal life to relieve the stress from playing so much poker? Do you sometimes find it hard to balance life & poker?

I’ve started working out again, I go out to eat a fair bit, I see lots of movies, read a lot, read 2+2, have a girlfriend, smoke cigars, and when the mood strikes me get drunk and cause some trouble. The hard balancing part I find is in getting little things done, though overall I feel I get a lot done in a day.

7. Please briefly describe the games of 2 or 3 online players whose games you respect. Why?

A. Adam Junglen. He was my first very serious MTT coach back around Aprilish and he really elevated my game and thinking to the next level from where I was. He’s an absolutely phenomenal player who constantly seems to be one step ahead of everyone else. As far as I can tell, his potential is near unlimited if he can find the motivation.

B. Ansky aka Supernova9. Ansky is a huge time poster over at 2+2 and it just seems whenever he answers a strategy question he always knows the right answer and why. He doesn’t play a lot of tournaments (in favor of cash) anymore but when he does he goes deep over and over.

C. Thayer and Shaundeeb. I respect both these guys because they play an enormous amount of tables and poker at a time but keep the level of their play consistently high and are always having results. They also manage to do this and fit in a truly epic amount of weed smoking. I’m not sure where they find the time.

8. Please briefly describe the games of 2 or 3 online players whose games you do NOT respect. Why?

A. Tmay420. Tmay is a pretty high volume player, and almost every time I’m on his table I see him do something that is very clearly a wrong/spewy play. I’m not saying I always know what’s right, but I know when I see a bad play, and I see more from him than any other ranked player who comes to mind.

B. Lilholdem. I see Lilholdems play as capable of crushing bad players in huge fields, but against thinking players he seems really exploitable and spewy. Also his claims that Stars must be rigged just because he had 1 losing month is totally absurd and shows and failure to have even the most basic understanding of variance.

C. Bond18. Seriously, I make so many god awful fucking mistakes on a daily basis it’s not even funny. I do things, then sit back and go “Jesus Christ, if I had thought about that for just 5 seconds I could tell why it’s so bad.” I push to hard in spots where the villain is unlikely to fold, and my play with a stack of 50 BB’s or higher is just atrocious. I’m also pretty bad OOP. Luckily, I’m working really hard to improve a lot of this, but I’m still pretty bad. I see my winning as a result of everyone else being so god damn awful, not my being so good.

9. Briefly describe your experience in big live tournaments,, and compare them to online tournies.

Well, I had some success in Australia in 2006 then went to the WSOP where I went 0 for 9 in pre lims but went deep in the main only to lose AK<AQ for a large pot and finish 198th for like 43k. Then in 2007 I was backed by Timex and played 30 events in the Summer in Vegas and was a total disaster. I cashed 4, made 1 final table, and lost $61,000. I wrote a series of what ended up being 24 detailed trip reports of how it all happened, and that can be found at www.tworags.com Quite honestly, I think online poker is a more pure game because more information is available to you and its cleaner, where as live is slow and vague. There is something so tempting about live, despite it always ending up being so fucking slow and painful and, considering what most good players hourly is online, probably a waste of your time in terms of opportunity cost. However, I guess a life spent in front of a computer all day every day is a boring life indeed, so some live poker now and then is pretty fun.

10. What are you short & medium-term goals with poker?

To make a lot of money and get really really disgustingly good at the game. I’m paying 3 guys to coach me right now, and I post a ton of strategy hands over at 2+2 daily. I find substandard play completely unacceptable, especially coming from myself. I want to know the optimal play in EVERY situation, no matter how much time has to be spent in review. I’d also love it if some site picked me up as a sponsored player. I’d absolutely love to sell out to some site and run around saying something to the affect of “Bodog is the most awesome fucking site ever. I practice poker there every day and that’s why I’m so good.” As long as I’m getting paid, whatever, I’d make a great shill. One beautiful part of being a poker player is we basically spend our life in pursuit of money by taking advantage of +EV spots. In less fancy talk, we sit around all day trying to come up with ways to make money. We’re pretty much sell outs to the normal social system and there’s nothing in the poker world demanding we have a huge amount of a huge amount of integrity compared to say, an actor or politician, who really has to watch what they say and what they stand for. Like Dave Chapelle said, throw enough money at me and I’ll tell you both Coke and Pepsi are the greatest thing ever, and truth is, I can’t tell the difference.

11. Please be prepared to talk tournament strategy during interview.

No problem, it’s basically all I do all day every day.

12. Please tell us what your main interests are... are you a sports fan? have a particular hobby? consider yourself an expert at something? (please provide an in-depth answer to this)

I love football but in Australia it’s pretty hard to get American football. I’ve really started getting into working out and weight lifting again, which before poker was my chief obsession. Poker has a way of turning you into a flabby, noodle armed fat ass, and I don’t intend on letting that happen to me. Among my other poker playing friends I’m considered a pretty fashionable guy, though I’m not really sure I’m an expert, but I have a subscription to Esquire which keeps me at least moderately in the know, at least compared to most poker players who show up to live events in pajamas. Not that theirs anything wrong with that, wear what makes you comfortable. I’m also a pretty big movie snob. The biggest thing I’ve gotten into lately is writing on trip reports on 2+2 and my blog at www.tworags.com To be honest, when I see a lot of peoples trip reports and poker blogs I get revolted at the repetitive and stale writing, so it’s important to me to try and make it really interesting, even if I go off on random tangents sometimes. Finding good material to write about, and a fun way to write about them is on the top of my priority list. At this point, I might travel to a tournament way out of my way just to get the story, which is all fun for me in the end.

Cheers David, hope this is what you were looking for, Bond18 (Tony)

On a near daily basis, someone PM’s me or IM’s me asking to be their coach. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally flattered at the requests and the fact that people respect me enough to ask, but I need to make one thing clear; There’s no such thing as coach Bond.

There are numerous problems with my trying to be a decent coach for someone. First of all, I’m a busy guy. Outside of playing 9 hours a day I’m pretty active socially, going to the gym again, read for hours, and watch a lot of movies. On top of that, I’m extremely flaky. One of the pleasures of this occupation is almost never having to keep a schedule or appointment, and as a result of this lifestyle over the last few years I often fail to show up for things or remember to get things done in a timely fashion.

When left to my own devices I have difficulty accomplishing the little things in life that aren’t urgent. Take laundry for example. I’ve accumulated in the area of 50 pairs of underwear because over the course of time I would forget to do laundry for weeks on end, and as a result simply jump in a store while out somewhere one day and buy a few new packs and BAM, problem solved. Then there’s getting a hair cut. When I came home from Australia the first time around everyone was constantly asking “So, what made you decide to grow your hair out so long?” Laziness. I just never could find the 60 minutes of free time to run out and get it cut with so much poker to play.

The next problem I’d have with being someone’s coach is the money involved. To make it ‘worth my while’ I’d probably want a truly absurd sum in order to commit my time and brain to it. I think to seriously consider coaching someone I’d have to be offered like $300 US an hour, and it’s just retarded to pay me that when you could get Ansky or NoahSD.

However, my biggest problem is that I feel people are expecting something out of coaching I can’t really give them. I think a lot of people are looking for me to tell them what to do, give them ‘the secret to pwning’. It’s kind of like when I play with a person like Imper1um who destroys poker and I wonder “man, what could that guy tell me to get so sick good.” The answer is likely not very much. The players that are better than me are better in spots where they find equity in places I haven’t known to look yet, or find lines that are more optimal to accomplish what they want in a hand than I do. Overall though, their likely not doing anything THAT different than me.

Most of getting good at poker is massive trial and error. For months I posted hands that I played like a retard on 2+2 until the right moves got drilled into my head. No, you can’t call early position raises in the BB with Axs in the 100r. No, you shouldn’t be raising the flop with a high top pair weak kicker 50 BB’s deep. No, you can’t call off 1/8th of your stack in every situation with a pocket pair before the flop just because that’s roughly the odds of hitting a set on the flop. God it’s still so tempting though, sets are very sexy. Getting good requires an enormous amount of self analysis and review, and a thick skin for criticism. There is an absolute ton of little things and errors that have to be ironed out. Even worse is the fact that I still make so many mistakes on a daily basis, so who am I to coach when I haven’t figured them out yet?

The only person I’ve spent a really high amount of time coaching has been my girlfriend. For a long time she was fairly good but still way to passive. Then recently with my being able to coach more hands on she’s really started crushing it. In the last 3 weeks she’s won the 11 rebuys on Full Tilt 3 times for about 4k each and just tonight got 3rd in the Tilt $150 for over $8000. So I guess yea, eventually I was able to teach her how to pwn at poker, but what that mostly consisted of was my watching her table and as she moved her mouse towards fold screaming “FOR FUCKS SAKE RAISE! GOOD GOD WOMAN THEIR GONNA FOLD! PLEASE RAISE!!”

Still, having a girlfriend who gets poker is pretty damn cool. I’ve probably gotten too used to it, as both my girlfriend and the girlfriends of many of my degenerate friends understand it on a pretty good level. God forbid I have to try dating again and while telling a girl over dinner “I’m having a rough day cause some fucking spastic decided to limp reraise all in pre with ace queen and 3 outed my ace king for 30% of the chips in play at the final table” and having her looking at me blankly and confused, resulting in my storming off yelling “Useless!” half way through my veal (I don’t care, cows were put here for me to eat. Even the little ones.)

Besides, serious online poker is a two person job. I’m always curious how guys out there who 8 table alone find the time to eat, drink, and most importantly, use the bathroom. Last time I tried that I ended up at numerous final tables with my bladder about to explode and urinating in a Gatorade bottle to prevent missing a hand. When my friend Jensen stopped by later I offered him the bottle innocently “Thirsty Jensen, care for some Gatorade?”
”Sure.”
Then at the last second swiped it out of his hand yelling “Don’t! It’s my urine! Hahaha!”
Wacky college kids.

Somehow my girlfriend manages to masterfully play 3 or 4 tables at a time, cover my tables when I have to go, and make lunch while I’m playing. She’s overall learned pretty well, but still doesn’t quite like the idea of doing things that are “scary.” Shoving K4o over a raise is never easy, but often necessary. Like ordering a possibly suicidal charge on a hill, risks must be taken for ground to be gained. Or maybe I just shouldn’t use references after watching The Thin Red Line the previous night, which was much worse than I remember it being. I mean seriously, no soldiers in the history of war ever sat around speaking in metaphor with each other all fucking day. And certainly no war ever had so many highly unnecessary star studded cameos for 3 lines of cliché dialogue. That means you, Clooney.

Coming back to coaching though, I guess if somebody really wanted me to coach them and threw enough money at me, then sure, I’ll sell out. I’m a poker player, it’s not required of me to have integrity. Though, I think people see me making a lot of final tables and get the wrong idea, because I’m not really THAT good, I just play THAT much. So I guess if I had to give you the one secret to MTT success, it’s play like 8 billion tournaments a day, I promise you’ll make a couple final tables eventually.

Growing up as a kid I was really skinny. How skinny? While walking into a taco bell at the age of 13 some random dude on the steps went “Daaamn boy you betta get some meat on them bones! Get some meat on them bones boy!”

Yep, I was thin in my day. Then in sophomore year of high school I got busted drinking and the only place wasn’t grounded from was the gym. A few weeks into lifting and dieting and I was a full blown addict. I went from 5’10” 130 to 6’1” 192 in about a year. To say I went off the deep end is an understatement. For almost 3 years I ate the same meals 5 time a day 7 days a week with almost no variation. No sweets, so soda, no fried food, no alcohol, no desert, almost no saturated fats, and constant monitoring of calorie intake. I worked out 4 days a week and missed probably under 10 work outs in a 3 year span. I took protein, creatine, glutamine, if it was legal and could make me bigger I wanted it. Sure I was a little psycho with it all, but man I looked like I could whoop some ass. People at school would ask if I was the running back since “you look like you could run through a brick wall.”

Then I went to college and picked up poker and suddenly routine became impossible. Just college is hard enough with maintaining one, but throw in an addicting and time consuming game that also allows the possibility of making more money than I ever dreamed (Holy fucking shit dude! I just won a 30 dollar Sit n go for 150 dollars! I’m fucking rich!!!) and the obsessive work out routine and diet found itself forgotten.

Cut to 3 years later. After spending 5 months cooped up in an apartment in China with nothing to do but play poker, and 6 weeks in Vegas where according to Elvis even 64 hours a day isn’t enough time to get some sleep, let alone a work out in, and I look like shit.

Lucky for me I’ve got a pretty easy, non time consuming routine going and there’s a sizeable gym literally 3 buildings over. Before I started working out last week I stepped on their scale; 90 kilos. What the fuck is this kilos bullshit? Fucking Australians and their English systems of measurement.

One online conversion system look up later, I find out I am roughly 200 pounds. “We here at Google conversions regret to inform you that you are a fatass. Please lose some weight lardo, thank you.”

200 pounds, are you fucking kidding me? Even at my biggest in the bulking phases of the weight lifting I was 193, and my weight sat around 185 for most of that period. Two fucking hundred? This will not stand.

So that’s it. I’m gonna do it all over again. The 4 work outs a week. The bland and totally lacking in variety diet. Hell, I may even spend half an hour a night standing in front of the mirror yelling “Nobody likes you fatty!”

Don’t get me wrong people, if you are overweight but happy with yourself then all the power to you. However, for someone with my quantity of vanity and insecurity, it just isn’t a realistic life style choice.

Meanwhile, in the me not bitching about things area of life, I am running absurdly hot at poker. Two nights ago I played incredibly awful poker but still managed to get heads up in the Full Tilt winners choice and made a deal with phatcat where he just sends me $5000 and keeps the 12k in the package, plus the $600 I got for 2nd. However, to say I played bad that night is a great insult to people who play badly. So bad spectators were asking if I was Phil Gordons secret account. It was a disaster and although I got second I still considered stabbing myself in the stomach with a long sword afterwards to preserve honor. I ended up playing video games instead.

Then last night I played inspired poker and came back from a short stack to win the Full Tilt 50/50 for $9,555. In totality for the week I won 5 tournaments, ‘chopped one’, and made what I think turned out to be 15 final tables. Every day but one I felt like I played very well, and a coaching session with NoahSD where he pointed out some post flop leaks of mine really helped my deep stacked game. Coach Junglen is busy crushing live tournaments so I haven’t worked with him for a while, but the sessions I’ve done with both Adam and Noah have been enormously helpful.

In other news, the United States passed a law that requires that tournament scores within the United States in the amount of $5,000 or more will be subject to having 25% of the winnings immediately withheld for tax purposes. In response I would like to say; FUCK YOU UNITED STATES AND YOUR JESUS LOVING SODOMITE LEGISLATORS. Perhaps you think my anger stems out of the lost money I was going to embezzle through tax fraud. Your wrong though, as I’m way to lazy to go through the steps it would require to hide money and would much rather just pay my taxes as quickly and honestly as possible so I can go back to playing poker. My anger stems from the fact that 25% of the money that would have been spewed back into the poker economy by the donks who win a tournament is now going to be held in safe keeping by the “We know better than you for you” government. Awesome. Also, this creates several annoying problems in regards to backing deals, and god forbid you have a vicious downswing mid year and have a big chunk of your bankroll stuck in the bureaucratic system. Meanwhile, the government may get to collect interest on your money (possibly, I don’t know how/where it will be kept but I bet they get to make money) while you sleep in a cardboard box eating dog food wishing you’d been born a few hundred miles north in Canada.

Since my temporary retirement from the live scene I’ve been able to really hit the online grind again. I’ve moved back to Melbourne Australia, and I was fortunate in that I didn’t have to bribe or kill anyone at the airport to get in. I’ve got an apartment a few minutes outside the city in St. Kilda with my girlfriend, and before I got down here she was nice enough to go out and get the monitors I need to get a full on poker set up.

Because of the time difference here my waking up for tournaments at 8:50am is 6:50pm US Eastern time. I play from 9am to what normally ends up being around 5pm. Of course some days you finish earlier and some take longer, but on the whole it’s very often right in the 8 hour area. So for the first time in years I’m living a fairly normal life and schedule. I have time to get to the gym next door, go to dinner with friends, see football games, see movies, whatever. It’s not bad actually. Unfortunately, it’s sure as hell to make for boring fucking writing.

So what’s next on the live poker schedule? It looks like this:
September 28th- September 30th AAPT in Seoul Korea.
October 26th-29th Poker News Cup in Melbourne Australia
Early November Betfair Asia Poker tour in Singapore
November 22nd-27th Unnamed event in Macau China
December date TBA AAPT in Sydney Australia
Mid January Aussie Millions Melbourne Australia

If you haven’t heard of some of these events it’s likely because I managed to attain I guess what you would call ‘inside information’ on some of them, though I doubt it’s that much of a secret. There’s also an event in Adelaide Australia somewhere in there, but I doubt I’ll get out of the comfy leather chair in my living room to go to Adelaide for one 3k event. Though, that’s basically what I’ll be doing with Korea, but that’s as much a holiday as anything. I fully intend on eating the country out of their stock of Galbi and Bulgogki.

Until then, it’s up to me to horde money for expenses and talk Timex into more staking. At this point I’m pretty sure he’s up for most things, and as he knows I’m working very hard daily to improve my leaks online. However, running the numbers shows that I’ve lost him in the area of $80,000 US. Man that is a sick sum of money.

So how have I been doing online since getting back? Ridiculous. At the start I could feel how rusty I was with the flow of the game, patterns, and players tendencies. After a week or two, I was back to normal. As for this week, I’ve won 4 tournaments and made in the area of 13 or 14 final tables, with a few days left to go in the week. Unfortunately, none of the scores have been very large with my biggest since coming back only $6,500.

One unfortunate aspect of my current schedule is that I miss out on a lot of the massive value that is Sundays (in the US.) Of the 5 sites that have a very large Sunday major only one is realistically feasible in my schedule, Full Tilt. I can make the mulligan and UB $500 as well, but overall I doubt I’ll get a chance to put up a very large score for quite some time unless I hit one of the nightly weekly $1000 buy ins.

With everything so in place, all that’s really left to question is what to write about. I guess the daily happenings of online, interesting hands, final tables, scores, gossip, whatever else comes up. So I’ll try that for now, while I settle into the queer normalcy that is being a 9 to 5er.

Vic Champs Trip Report (part 8 maybe?), To Little to Late, Vic Champs Main Event
“Procrastination is a lot like masturbation, it’s fun for a while but in the end you’re just fucking yourself.”

So they saying goes and so I have done to myself. Normally, I crank out a trip report within 48 hours of the hands played involved. I can easily remember the hands and stack sizes, not to mention the feel of how things gone down, what people said, the order of things, etc.

It’s been around a month since the Vic Champs main event, and every single day I tell myself “today is the day I write that god damn trip report already.” And yet, it doesn’t get done. Day after day things come up; life comes up, and it never happens. How did I finally find the motivation to sit down and grind it out? I told a friend if I didn’t get this (and a few other things I’ve been lazy about) done today I’d give him $100. So I’m paying myself to write it. This one’s hard to get down on paper, because there’s so much content I had to ask the casino staff to give me paper and pen so I could jot down the enormous quantity of hands I played. Unfortunately, I didn’t anticipate my own laziness and didn’t bother to include stack sizes in the details, since I figured I could remember that much. For a week, maybe two, I probably could have. At this point, we’re just gambling…

While I vastly prefer having somewhere to live besides a hotel during a tournament series, the one annoying aspect of living in my apartment is having to wake up so fucking early in order to make the tournament at time. Today’s $2600 Aussie dollar main event goes off at noon, meaning I need to be awake around 10:45am. The result of having to be up at this ungodly hour is that I’m of course sick to my stomach again. Today feels bad to start off, but not quite crippling. At least I feel pretty awake.

My girlfriend drives me down to Crown and I dash out of the car in an intersection, desperately trying to keep from being late. When I arrive in the poker room I find myself a couple minutes early, and find my table. A bunch of old guys, one young guy on my direct right, and an empty seat. Works for me.

The tournament has an awesome structure with 20,000 starting chips at 50/100 blinds. Playing deep stacked against mostly recreational players is a ball, kind of reminds me of my WSOP ME days, and as I recall that went very well and had a happy ending for everyone involved.

At the start the play is a mix of very loose with limping and seeing the flop, and very tight when it comes to committing serious chips. The young guy on my right looks over at me quizzically, he looks pretty familiar.

“Hey mate! I read your Shannon Elizabeth trip report. That was hilarious!”
“Oh right, yea, heh. Thanks, it was a crazy series. I try to stay out of it a little more these days. I don’t think I handled it to well.”
”Yea, you could tell it was just this vicious stream of insults. It was excellent.”
“Thanks man.”

Soon after the young player is moved to a different table and the empty stack shows up, Arul Thillai. Arul has perhaps the best tournament record of any player in Australia in the last few years, and he plays an ultra aggressive game. Lucky for me, he’s on my very direct right, meaning I’ll get to try and abuse that fact.

How tight were things in the early goings? Try this hand out:

Stacks: ~20,000, blinds 50/100
I hold A8o in the SB.
Preflop: Folds to MP1, MP1 calls, folds to CO, CO calls, button folds, I complete, BB checks.

Flop: A 7 3
I check, BB checks, MP1 bets 200, CO folds, I call, BB folds.
Turn: 3
I check, MP1 checks.
River: T
I bet 400, MP1 calls. I flip up my A8 proudly displaying what is probably the winner or definitely chopping, and get shown A7. A8 no good sir.

There’s a weird trend going on at the table, where when they try to 3 bet my highly aggressive play, they reraise a tiny amount, or just the minimum.

Stacks: ~20,000
Blinds 100/200, I hold As 4s on the button.

Preflop: Folds to me on the button, I raise to 550, SB raises to 1200, BB folds, I call.

Flop: Ks 6s 2c
SB looks at this flop suspiciously and checks. I check behind.
Turn: Td
SB checks, I bet 1500, SB calls.
River: 7c
SB checks, I bet 4500. SB goes into the tank for quite some time and starts staring at me. He begins reaching for his chips in a way that really looks like he’s gonna call, shit, uhhh uhhhh, ummm, go for table talk?
”Pocket queens no good man.”
The small blind freezes. He looks at me and mutters “Well I don’t have pocket queens.”
I slightly nod my head. SB looks me over a bit, then folds.
“You were close, I had pocket jacks.”
”Well if queens are no good I certainly don’t like jacks chances.”

After this hand the table settles into a routine. Arul is raising around 70-80% of hands when it folds to him. I’m often 3 betting, or calling in position and making it hard on him post flop. We trade jabs back and forth for quite a while. I three bet him in all kinds of positions, he raises SB, I 3 bet BB. He raises UTG, I 3 bet UTG+1, he raises MP1, I raise MP2. I haven’t had a real hand yet though.

At one point Arul raises in MP at 150/300 and I 3 bet AJdd behind him. I realize after so many 3 bets with fairly shit hands, that this is an extremely stupid play because if he 4 bets me (which he’s capable of) I’ve got to throw away the best hand I’ve had so far. It folds back to Arul who quickly 4 bets and I start swearing at myself. I fold. Fuck that was stupid. On top of being very aggressive pre flop though, Arul is also quite skilled post flop.

Blinds 150/300
My stack: ~22,000
Arul: ~28,000
I hold QcTc on the button.


Preflop: Folds to Arul on CO, CO raises to 900, I call, blinds fold.
Flop: Ac Kc 7s
CO checks, I bet 1200, CO calls.
Turn: Qd
CO checks, I check.
River: 4c
Arul checks, I check. Arul flips up Kd5d for the pot.

Stacks:
Arul: ~31,000
Me: ~21,000
I hold KTo on the HJ. Blinds 200/400

Preflop: Folds to Arul in MP2, MP2 raises to 1100, I call, 4 folds.
Flop: A T 3 rainbow
MP2 checks, I check.
Turn: 7
Arul bets 1600, I call.
River: J
Arul checks, I check. Arul flips up J8cc for the pot.

At this point, Arul is raising an enormous percentage of hands pre flop, maybe in the area of 85%. The table is really only a person game, with the rest mostly folding or getting post flop and outplayed. The only real mistake I’ve heard Arul of making on any consistent basis is pushing a bluff to hard and to far.

Stacks
Arul: 32,000
Me: 19,000
Blinds 200/400
I hold Jc8c on the button.

Preflop: Folds to Arul on CO, CO raises to 1200, I call, SB calls, BB folds.
Flop: Jd 7c 5d
SB looks disinterested and checks. Arul bets 3000, I call, SB folds.
Turn: 9
Arul bets 9000, I shove for about 14-15k total, Arul folds.

Arul starts laughing about bluffing off his stack. In the following hands he begins rebuilding it massacring the rest of the table. While my stack hovers in the mid 30’s, he rebuilds his back to the same area when the following hand comes up.

Stacks:
Arul: ~29,000
Me: ~35,000
Blinds 200/400
I hold JJ on the CO.

Preflop: Folds to Arul on HJ, HJ raises to 1200, I reraise to 3600, 3 folds, HJ calls.
Flop: K 7 5 rainbow
Arul checks, I check.
Turn: A
Arul bets 5000, I fold.

Aruls aggressive play keeps up, as does my 3 betting, but he loses a large pot to a tight player in seat 1. Having lost half his stack the hand before, the following hand comes up:

Stacks:
Arul: 22k
Me: 29k
Blinds 300/600, I hold JJ in MP2

Preflop: Folds to Arul in MP1, MP1 raises to 1600, I reraise to 5500. A player in seat 7 goes “Wow, that’s like the billionth time he’s 3 bet you.”
”We’ll see about this one.” Arul politely replies.
It folds back to Arul who shoves for 22k.
“Well, I can’t fold, so I guess I call.”
Arul shrugs and flips up QJo. I dodge the 3 outs and bring my stack up around 50,000.

With Arul gone I continue to slaughter my defenseless table. Unfortunately, we are soon broken and I’m moved to the feature table on the rail. Sitting on the table under the red lights with a crowd of spectators sits Joe Hachem and on his left Sam Khouiss. Hachem is sitting with a decent stack, Khouiss a little more short though still alive. I know both fairly well and have played a little with both, and both are aware I don’t totally suck or anything. On the second hand at the table the following hand develops:

Stacks:
Me: ~60,000
Khouiss: ~16,000
I hold 7s6s on the HJ. Blinds 400/800 with 100 ante.

Preflop: UTG limps, 2 folds, MP1 limps, I limp MP2, folds to Khouiss on button, he limps, SB folds, BB checks.
Flop: 7h 5s 3s
Checked to me, I bet 2000(that needs to be more next time), Khouiss calls, 3 folds.
Turn: Qh
I check Sammy bets 4500, I call.
River: 9d
I check, Sam checks. I flip up my 76 which takes the pot.

A few minutes after this hand we’re allowed to go on dinner break. They announce we’ll be given 40 minutes for dinner. What. The. Fuck. 40 minutes? 40 fucking minutes? On top of being given a totally shit dinner break, my stomach is catching up with me and I feel awful. I had called every restaurant in Crown earlier that afternoon trying to get a reservation and every single fucking restaurant was completed booked. I run upstairs trying to get into one of the walk in restaurants, but they to are completely packed. I settle on the Crown food court, and attempt to eat some Singaporean but feel so sick I can barely get more than a few bites down. I make my way for the bathroom and spend what feels like an eternity In the stall wishing I were dead. God I need to get this shit checked out.

When I finally get back to the table I’ve missed 5 minutes of play. God damn it.

I begin playing moderately aggressive though nowhere near as much as the previous table. Hachem is more than willing to 3 bet me on my left , and pops one of my late position raises to take it down pre. Another well known Australian local player shows up on my right, though he is far more of the recreational variety. A few minutes after he sits down the following hand develops:
Stacks:
Me: ~60,000
Hachem: ~35,000
CO: ~30,000
Blinds 500/1000 with 100 ante.
I hold Jd 9d on the button.

Preflop: Folds to CO, CO limps, I limp the button, SB folds, Hachem in the BB checks.
Flop: Td 7c 6h
BB bets 2500, CO folds, I call.
Turn: Kd
BB checks, I bet 5500, BB calls.
River: 4h
BB checks, I bet 12,500. Joe goes into the tank for I think perhaps the longest anyone has tanked on me ever. There is an enormous amount of rail birds watching, and as he sits there contemplating I’m trying to decide if I’ll flip my hand just to be a show off. I decide I’d rather keep a good image. Man these red lights are hot, is it hot in here? Fuck, it’s hot. Hachem sits there shuffling his chips, thinking, thinking…..finally he folds. Pheeeew. I toss my hand in the muck. Sammy of course adds his 2 cents.
”Ha! You were bluffing Ton, stone cold bluff! You didn’t have a thing!”
”I didn’t?”
”Not that time!”
”If you say so Sammy.”

The Australian local on my right keeps complaining about how many rounds its been since he’s won a hand. I don’t intend on letting him change that trend. The following hand comes up between he and I:
Stacks:
My stack: ~68,000
Button: ~38,000
Blinds 500/1000 with 100 ante. I hold Jd Td in the SB.

Preflop: Folds to button, button raises to 3000, I call, BB folds.
Flop: Qh Ts 5d
I check, button checks.
Turn: 6d
I check, button bets 2000, I call.
River: Ah
I check, button checks. Button flips over K6o and I take the pot. He continues to complain.

Next hand I’m dealt ATo on the button. At 500/1000 blinds it folds to me and I raise to 2800. The SB folds and Hachem 3 bets to 8000 in the BB with a ~40k stack. I quickly grab two stacks of around 40,000 total and slide it into the middle. Hachem lets out an audible sigh and folds.

A round later, another Crown regular, Vic, comes to the table. I’ve played with him a lot in limit games, but never in tournaments. The second hand he’s at the table, the following hand develops:
Blinds 500/1000 with 100 ante.
Stacks:
Me: ~70,000
Vic: ~15,000
UTG limper: ~65,000
I hold As Ks in the BB.

Preflop: UTG limps. UTG had only once limped before and had shown up with aces. I eye him suspiciously. Hachem folds, Khouiss limps behind. 2 more folds and Vic raises to 7000. It folds to me and I make it 14,000 to commit him but leave myself room if the UTG player insta jams his stack. UTG and Khouiss folds and Vic throws in the other half of his stack, then flips over AJo. I’m writing hands down that I’d played during the day and watch the action with disinterest.
Flop: 5 4 3
Turn: J
River: T
The crowd reacts but I don’t blink, and continue my writing after throwing Vic the chips I owe him.

I continue my aggressive and stealing play. Khouiss has built a stack that was at 2000 a little before the dinner break to now in the area of 45,000. continue my aggressive and stealing play. Khouiss has built a stack that was at 2000 a little before the dinner break to now in the area of 50,000. He is of course, constantly talking.

Stacks:
Me: ~70,000
Khouiss: ~45,000
Blinds 600/1200 with 200 ante.
I hold 6d 6h UTG.

Preflop: I limp in. The entire table basically goes “WTF? You? Limping?” and seems suspicious. It folds to Khouiss in MP who goes “well I don’t care how dodgy that looks, I’m raising” and makes it 4200. It folds back to me and I call.

Flop: Kd Jh 9d
I check, Sam checks behind. Sam is now being very quiet. The one thing I’ve noticed about Sam is as talkative as he is, he REALLY talks a lot when he’s feeling confident and strong. That he goes silent here makes me suspect this flop isn’t what he was looking for.
Turn: 7d
I check, Sam bets 3000. I've seen him use these tiny little proding bets with hands he's unsure of, A high, mid pairs, or weak top pairs. I'm pretty sure if i raise here i don't need to raise much and he's already pretty weirded out about my hand. Also, if i'm wrong i might have up to 11 outs. He's also been really quiet thus far.
I raise to 8500, Sam calls pretty quick. Guess I was way off.
River: Td
I check and Sam quickly bets 15,000. I fold and Sam flips up AhKd. “Hahaha! I didn’t even need that Ad did I Ton? I had you all along! Trying to bluff me eh? Not this time!”

The next hand develops 20-30 minutes later. Khouiss seems to think i'm bluffing a lot (i kind of was, wasn't really 'caught' per say outside the previous hand.) The BB in question is a really awful player who is way to loose and way to tight at all the wrong times. He basically does whatever the hell he feels like but is moreso pretty weak and if he has a hand he likes he starts jamming, no matter how much an overbet.

Khouiss has occasionally been open limping, so this isn't like some freakish event.

Blinds 600/1200. Antes 200.
My stack: 65,000
Khouiss: 40,000
BB: 35,000
I am SB with Ks9s.

Preflop: Folds to Khouiss in MP1, Khouiss calls, folds
to me in the SB, i call, BB checks.
Flop: 3h 4s 6h
Checks around.
Turn: 9h
I bet 2500, BB thinks it over and calls. Khouiss thinks about it and raises to 8500.


This part is tough. What could Khouiss check the flop with that is reasonably beating me? I THINK he's smart enough to bet a set/two pair/combo draw on a board of this texture, so I'm having trouble putting him on a hand that beats me. Conversely, I'm having trouble putting him on a hand that i beat. Is he raising Ah with some other card? Straight draw/flush draw combo? a limped suited connector like Tc9c or along those lines? 6d5d that decided to check back a weak top pair?
I call, BB folds.
River 5d
I check, Khouiss bets 12,000. Flush draw missed, not sure a 9 value bets here though? If he had a straight draw I’d think it was with the 5, though its not outside possibility he has a 7. I think about it for a long well. “Well Sam, this is either gonna be the worst call ever or the best call ever, I call.”
Sam proudly flips up 7h 8h, having check a flush draw/straight draw/over card draw on the flop. Sure as hell didn’t see that coming. Fuck, both those hands felt really gross and I feel like I completely botched them.

With the blinds escalating to 800/1600 and my stack dwindling I’m in bad shape. A lot of my open raises start getting jammed on and my stack gets in the area where I have to be more careful. I’m also never able to play a hand strong pre flop BECAUSE I NEVER HAVE A HAND. It’s 12:30, and after 12 and a half hours of play my hand quality is:
pairs QQ and above: Zero
JJ: Three
TT/99: Zero
AQ: 1, and it chopped with AQ.
AK, one of which took it pre, the other was cracked by AJ.
Sets: Zero

At 1am the blinds go up to 1k/2k and I’m floating around the 20-30k area. I jam KQ pre after a few limps and take it. Luckily Vic is a few seats on my right, and has a very obvious betting tell where he makes it 5-6x preflop with hands he’s very confident with, and 3X pre with hands he’s not sure of. I resteal on him twice, but times with J2o, when he makes it 3X, and he folds. A while later the SB raises and I jam 95o in the BB and he folds. I have yet to get caught showing a weak hand pre flop and for a while I stay quiet.

1:30am rolls around and we only have a half hour left. The quality of my hands still hasn’t improved, and the numbers I wrote down at 12:30 are still the same. I’ve been quiet for a few rounds when the following hand comes up:

The button is a middle aged guy who someone told me is a “good player.” I don’t remember who told me that. His stack looks to be about ~36,000. Mine is about ~29,000. I hold 6d9d in the BB.
Blinds 1000/2000 with 300 ante.

Preflop: Folds to the button who makes it 6000, SB folds and I confidently slide my stack into the middle. The button INSTA SNAP CALLS and flips up A6o. I flop a flush draw but in the end blank out. Good call sir? Whatever.

I end the Vic champs having cashed only 1 event, the PLO event which I never meant to play and didn’t know how too. I feel like I played well in most of the events (perhaps worst in the main event) and am now exhausted of live. I can’t wait to get back online.

Since that tournament a month ago as many know I’ve been back into the online scene. I realized playing live over the last few months that although I was often much better than the rest of the players around me, there are still so many spots that I’m just not very good in. Having realized such, I have restored my pursuit of being pokers greatest knowledge mooch. I’m still doing coaching with Ajunglen when we both find time, who I use for doing Sunday majors. I’ve asked NoahSD to coach me in 6 max events where his experience with cash will help me iron out my poor deep stacked play, and hired Sirwatts to coach me with my 100r hand histories, as few have been more successful against the thinking villains in that tournament than he has. I’ve also asked Luckychewy to teach me cash, again to help my deep stacked play. Even in the last few weeks I feel I’ve improved tremendously, and the results are showing. I’ve made more final tables this week than I think, perhaps ever, and already won 4 tournaments with a few days left in the week. After finally getting this done, I intend on updating my blog on a near daily basis, even if its not a full on trip report and just a sort of log of online events.

Events coming up in the future that I’m considering that could lead to live trip reports are Singapore, Seoul, Adelaide, Melbourne Cup, Syndney, Macau, and of course the Aussie Millions. All of these will be occurring before January, and depending how much I win online and how much staking Timex wants to do, I might play none and I might play all of them. But we’ll discuss that all next time…