I had a quiet Monday this time around. I got myself up at 9am in order to play the Full Tilt $1 million. I blanked just about the entire day until I found myself deep in my favorite tournament, the Full Tilt $109 6 max deep stacked event. The tournament sometimes get an overlay (and it had that night) and at the final two tables I got a player on my left who started adjusting to my aggression very well, resulting in a constant raise/3 bet/4 bet, raise/3 bet, raise/3 bet, raise/3 bet/4 bet war. In the end we managed to get it in for a ton of chips in a flip where I had 99 vs his AQ and I held up (and by held up, I mean he hit first and then I rivered it to win in maximum retarded dramatic fashion.) That pot put me way out in front with five left and I went on to win for $7,200.

My friend Daren messaged me while I was playing asking about going to dinner. We discussed doing a movie as well. Bondgirl leaned over to me
“Want to do dinner with Darren and Mei tonight?”
”Yea I know, I’m talking to him now. Where should we go?”
”Mei wants to go to Nobu.”
“FUCK. NOBU.”
“But they’re leaving soon.”
“God fucking damn it! Fucking Nobu mother fuckers. I hate that place. We can go anywhere in the city but Nobu.”
“But they’re leaving soon Tony!”
”Hrmmmm”
Was I really going to go back to Nobu?

I went back to Nobu. Daren knew of my vivid hate for the restaurant and was a team player and made sure to order some things that weren’t raw for me, and by team player, I mean didn’t want to see me look down at the fourth straight raw dish and launch into a half hour profanity filled tirade. The cooked food was acceptable but not outstanding.

Near the end of the dinner I looked at these two guys sitting in a booth with really long, 70’ish hair. They looked like pretentious artsy types, just the kind of self indulgent bastards you expect to see in Nobu. I leaned over to my friend Julian and said
”Hey Julian, check out those guys over there. Someone ought to tell them the 70’s are over.”
”Haha! Yea I was just thinking the same...”
He trailed off mid sentence and stared at them for a moment.
“Holy shit dude! That’s KISS!”
“Wait, what, seriously?”
”Yea man, that’s KISS. They did a concert at the Grand Prix the other night.”
“Peter Chris! Nobody wants to be Peter Chris Lois, not even Peter Chris!”
I was hoping Julian was a Family Guy fan or my reference was going to be entirely nonsensical. I made sure not to say it too loud though because the guys from KISS are enormous and would certainly have strangled me with their 8 foot tongues had they heard me.

The next day was uneventful online, though I did manage to get 8th in my favorite tournament. My friend Joel (who henceforth will be known as Horseman, since I back him) and I had heard there was a 2/4 PLO game down at Crown and we headed down with StevoL. Joel got in the game first and myself next. About 5 hands in I found myself in a massive pot verse Horseman and some random old foreign guy in seat one.
Flop: Qc 8c 6h
I hold Jc Tc 9h 4h
I’d checked and Joel bet the pot of 105. The old guy flatted. I repotted for my 400. Joel repotted for his 600. The old guy had us both covered and called. Joel held a smaller flush draw and the lower end of the wrap, and the old guy wouldn’t turn his hand over, because old guys never do.
Turn: Kc
I look at the old guy for some sort of reaction in case he has the nut flush draw, but he does nothing.
River: 8s
The old man leaps up “Yes! SHEEP EAT! SHEEP EAT! SHEEP EAT!” He then tabled his QQxx and dragged an enormous pot. It wasn’t all bad though, an hour or so later I found myself with second set up against top set and immediately turned quads. I only lost a little on the evening. While I was playing Bondgirl had called and told us to meet them over at Karaoke. Joel agreed to go but Stevo with his 6am tournament start time backed out.

When I showed up at Karaoke I found Bondgirl had brought me a surprise, she’d smuggled in some weed in her purse as well as a cigar. There is a city wide smoking ban in Melbourne, but this particular Karaoke joint had always been really good about looking the other way with cigarette and cigar smoke. Were they really going to look the other way with weed? I don’t know, but I was damn sure going to find out.

Horseman and I rolled up a large blunt and I even went and got myself a six pack of beer since it was Darren’s last night in town and I promised to have a drink with him. I spent the remainder of the evening drinking, getting high, and smoking, then signing Snoop Doggs ‘Drop it like it’s hot’. When the pimps in the crib ma’ and so forth. By the end of the night I was so tired I tried to go to sleep on the karaoke couch despite people still screaming into the microphone.

The next day I woke up feeling drained and unable to concentrate. I still won the UB $30 rebuys though.

With my live poker trip fast approaching and a new season of live poker in front of us I thought it was time again to discuss the upcoming live poker across the world and what you should do while there. Make sure to join me in these activities if you see me around the tournaments, not like you should be concentrating on poker or anything.

Event: 2008 Irish Poker Open

When: March 19-24

Where: Citywest Hotel, Dublin

What to do while visiting: A tournament in Ireland huh, I bet you think I’m gonna make a ‘the Irish are all drunks’ joke. Well you’d be dead wrong, I don’t have to make a joke, I can just tell the truth. Here’s a quote from defending Irish champion Marty Smyth about whether he feels pressure defending his title: “I’m just going to enjoy the weekend, and I’ll probably spend most of the first day drunk. If I get through to the second day, maybe I’ll start to think about doing well. If I don’t, I’ll spend most of the weekend drunk.” You can’t make this shit up.

How to pick up the locals: When the girl you’re interested in wakes from her whiskey induced stupor greet her with “Top of the morning to ya!” and go from there, no matter what time of day it is.


Event: 2008 EPT San Remo

When: April 1-5

Where: Casino San Remo

What to do while visiting: Attend the wedding of a mafia dons daughter. Ask him to kill whoever you like least in the poker world. He’ll start in with this whole “This I cannot do” speech so I plan to bring a canoli to entice him. With Timex dead the make ups off, boo yah.

How to pick up the locals: Open with “Avete un sorriso grazioso quanto il Mona Lisa e un asino dolce quanto Sofia Loren” Italian for “You have a smile as pretty as the Mona Lisa and an ass as sweet as Sofia Loren.” Malto bene!


Event: WPT Championship

When: April 1-26

Where: Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas

What to do while visiting: Recruit ten of your best looking, charming and most smart wise cracking friends to plan an elaborate robbery of the Bellagio vault. This’ll take weeks of planning and millions of dollars in funding, and if the slightest thing goes wrong you’re all fucked. That or you could just mug whoever wins the main event in the parking lot, but that’s kind of lacking in flair don’t you think?

How to pick up the locals: Open with “How much for 4 minutes and 30 seconds?” Well how much improvement did you expect in 6 months?

Event: 2008 EPT Grand Final Monte Carlo

When: April 12-17

Where: Monte Carlo Bay Hotel and Casino Resort

What to do while visiting: The casino has a dress code so since you’re a poker player and your most formal piece of clothing is a stained tuxedo T-shirt I recommend going out and buying a nice suit. You’re in Monte Carlo though, so it’s going to cost three times the tournament buy in.

How to pick up the locals: If the Bond movies have taught me anything this should be exceptionally easy. All the women in Monte Carlo have names like ‘Ivana Humpalot’, ‘Xenia Onatopp’ and ‘Slutlana Slutovich’. Don’t waste your time with Slutlana though; turns out she’s actually a prude.

Event: 2008 WSOP Circuit event Caesars Palace Las Vegas

When: April 20-May 1

Where: Caesars Las Vegas

What to do while visiting: Caesars is known for having one of the best spa facilities in all of Las Vegas. Go up stairs and refresh yourself with a nice facial, a manicure, a pedi….hey now, there’s nothing gay about good hygiene. Not like the Greek men were known for running around banging each other or anything.

How to pick up the locals: Buy a Caesar costume then wander the casino floor asking girls “Would you like to see the emperor’s new clothes?” Women love a man in uniform and children’s literature references turned into creepy innuendo.

Event: 2008 Grand Prix De Paris

When: May 2-18

Where: Aviation Club de France

What to do while visiting: Prove to the French that not all Americans are boorish loudmouths by honoring them with the Jerry Lewisesque over the top comedy they enjoy. Tell nobody your intention, then on day 1 of the event show up to the table wearing a US flag shirt unbuttoned half way down with a small cooler full of ice and Miller Lite under your arm. Whenever you win a pot, even of the slightest insignificance, leap up from the table screaming “FUCK YEA! HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW FROGGY!?!” then chug two of your beers and fist pump you arm 37 times while thrusting your pelvis into the air in front of you.

How to pick up the locals: Do what Ethan Hawke did; find the blandest looking woman around and spend all night having the most boring and pretentious conversation with her possible until you reach the point you just wish you could stab Richard Linklater already.

Event: APPT Macau.

When: Probably May 6. Probably.

Where: I don’t know. STARS WON’T FUCKING TELL ME.

What to do while visiting: Simulate the World War 1 chemical warfare experience by walking around outside for about 15 minutes.

How to pick up the locals: Heh, if you can have a conversation in Macau with a man and go longer than 5 minutes without him recommending a whore house to you I’ll give you a gold sticker.

Event: LAPT Costa Rica

When: May 22-24

Where: Ramada Plaza Herradura

What to do while visiting: Do what everyone else does in Central America, cut down some rainforest. When in Rome baby. Bonus points if you extinct a species.

How to pick up the locals: Latin women are known for their fiery tempers, so make sure to cool them down by throwing your drink on them before you open your mouth.

Event: 2008 World Series of Poker

When: May 30-July 17

Where: The Rio Hotel Las Vegas

What to do while visiting: Blow 60,000 dollars of your underage backers money. Spend the next year laughing about it.

How to pick up the locals: The guy to girl ratio at the WSOP has gotta be something like 500 to 1. Are you Patrick Antonius? No? I don’t like your chances.

With a season full of major live tournaments including the World Series fast approaching there are quite a few satellites running on the various poker sites at the moment. The fields are often small with a winner take all format, or occasionally the next few places get a small profit. I’ve come close a number of times recently but bombed out just short.

Today there was a $500 UB satellite to the WSOP, a $500 UB satellite with 25 Aruba packages guaranteed, and a $200 Full Tilt winner’s choice satellite worth $12,000. I got a nice start on both the UB tables but lost quite a few chips early. A couple hours later I’d bombed out of both UB tables and was left with a very short stack on Tilt. I got up to run to the bathroom and asked Bondgirl to cover for just a moment. When I got back a few minutes later she’d somehow doubled me. An hour later I was sitting with the chip lead on the final table. Thirty minutes after that I’d won the whole thing. Additionally I managed to make a deep run in the UB $30 rebuys, where I finished second for a little over $3000, the same $30 rebuys which I happened to have won last night for a bit over $5000. I can’t seem to do anything wrong late in tournaments anymore, but the real cause for a streak like this is winning my big flips deep and just about never getting three or two outed in major pots.

People have been asking what tournament I intend to use the package towards. I fired up my Tilt cashier after the win to find that the $12,000 had been credited directly in my account in the form of $T dollars, which when you play as many tournaments as
I do is just as good as real money. It doesn’t really matter what tournament I would have used it towards anyway, Timex would have bought the action and I’d be pocketing the cash.

I went over to pokernetwork today and bumped my post asking about when APPT Macau will be. According to newly sponsored pro Grant Levy he believes it’ll kick off on May 6th. If that means the main event starts on May 6th then my intention of going to the Party Poker Million is completely screwed and I’ll be looking for a new route for my trip. If that’s the case I’ve got two options:

A. Go from Melbourne to Macau in early May. Then go from Macau to Hawaii and kill a few days before the LAPT event in Costa Rica since it cuts down my flight and who doesn’t want to go to Hawaii? Depart Hawaii late May for LAPT Costa Rica. Go from LAPT Costa Rica straight north to Las Vegas for the WSOP.

B. Go from Melbourne to Macau in early May. Then, depending on when Macau gets done, go to the Grand Prix de Paris which runs through the 18th of May (this may be impossible.) From there fly home to Wisconsin for a few days and attempt to do my best at not waving my newly found money around my friends and family. Give up on being modest, go to a store I know in downtown Milwaukee, buy the dollar $ suit they have sitting in the front window, as well as a very pimp top hat and cane. Walk up and down the streets slapping people with a wad of $100’s and tell them “Just try and stop me bitch. Hahahahaha!” Then go down to LAPT in Costa Rica where I stay before flying up to the WSOP.

At this point the first option looks considerably more probable considering the Macau event will likely run around eight days like it did last year, making it impossible to get to Paris in time. I’m also not sure I want to bother flying all the way to Europe for a single event. However, not doing this turns my trip into a ‘Around half the world in 90 days’ situation, which turns everything I was intending to do into false advertising. Thoughts on this situation people?

Tomorrow is Monday here, meaning the big Sunday in the states. I’ve planned this one out perfectly though. It’s currently 10:18pm and the first tournament I want to play, the Full Tilt $500 1 million guarantee, starts at 9am. I’m going to finish this writing and a little more I need to do, then smoke a small joint so I have no troubles going straight to sleep, but before I do kill a bit of time playing Call of Duty 4 before I settle myself into bed around midnight. Who knows, I may even get up in time tomorrow to have a run before a big Monday, which would be a first.

The Grand Prix has ended here in Melbourne and the World War 3 like noises exploding outside my window have ceased. Things would appear to be very quiet up until my intended trip which is approximately seven weeks away. Considering I have little to do, am a highly motivated and greedy person, and have a shot of winning the monthly PLB leader board on pocketfives this month I think I may just go all out and see how much I can win before the trip comes up. My friends are getting increasingly occupied, one moving to Malaysia for a time tomorrow, another in school, so I have little to do with myself outside grind and work out. I think if I can collect a couple truly big scores and keep up the volume this just might be possible. We’ll see.

Until yesterday the make-up o’ meter was sitting somewhere around $125,000. The tournaments I play for Timex every week include the $1,000 freeze outs on each site and things like the FTOPS, WCOOP, and a few other events that roll around I jump under his financial security again. The largest amount I had won under him previous to yesterday was around $13,000 when I went deep in a WCOOP event.

Yesterday I won the Absolute Poker $1,000 freeze out for a bit over $33,000. After the scandal I boycotted Absolute for a few months but eventually with the soft $1,000 tournament having its great structure I returned. I’m still not sure how to feel about the issue, but at this point I feel less than criminal playing there. Of course, that’s easy to say after you get your second largest online score ever on it. That brings my make up way out of the six figure area and puts it right back in the upper $80,000 region. If I can get a couple more solid scores under Timex before the summer I’d have a chance of seeing a considerable amount of any score I had playing under him in the live poker tour.

Full Tilt called me the other day to talk about the writing content. The conversation was more informal than I expected which I really liked. When the topic of compensation came up I blurted “Uh, well when it comes to compensation I let my agent Kyle do all the asshole negotiating for me.” They awkwardly laughed and I told them I’d get them his information. Kyle sent them an email explaining who he was and what I’d been doing for Tworags. The only drawback to having Kyle as my agent is that it puts him at a pretty considerable conflict of interest if the deal with Full Tilt involves giving them exclusive rights to the content. The content I’ve put up for Tworags has generated a decent amount of traffic to the site, the site which Kyle owns. That doesn’t necessarily mean that if I signed up with Tilt I’d have to totally leave Tworags, but the amount of content I’d end up generating for them would obviously be greatly reduced.

I also called an acquaintance I know who’s the marketing director in Asia (and was in Australia until recently) for Pokerstars. I mentioned my email and asked whether he got it and he said he had and seemed to remember replying to it. I told him I hadn’t got one and was wondering if he was interested at all. He said he’s not looking at sponsoring any players at the moment. I told him I wasn’t actually looking for sponsorship (he gets asked all the time, hence that kind of answer) but just wondering if he wanted the writing content that was going to come from this trip. His interest perked up a bit and he asked me to resend the email so he could have another look.

Otherwise things have been quiet on the writing front. My editor John over at Pokernews recommended a hand for Bondgirl and I to do for our next article, a hand on High Stakes Poker between Sam Farha and Jamie Gold where Gold runs his KK into Farha’s AA. There’s almost no strategy to really consider in the hand but there’s an absolute ton of table talk, so I basically threw away the blueprint for what I normally write for them and did something way more up my own alley. I sent it off to John considering it about 50/50 whether they’d actually be able to use it. Worst case scenario it ends up on here instead.

The Grand Prix is on in Melbourne, which is Australia’s equivalent to the Indianapolis 500. Unfortunately the race track for it is about a mile away from my flat, meaning several hours of the day (including fairly early in the morning) there’s a constant screaming of engines outside the window at a decibel that’d make you think someone threw a nest of steroid juicing hornets into your apartment. My friends asked if I wanted to get tickets for the race and go on Saturday
“Really? Sweet! This is our chance to see cars drive!”
Nobody caught my Simpsons reference. I guess I can see the appeal if you like hanging out in a huge crowd getting drunk all day (and believe me, there are times when that is the best idea ever) but since I’m off alcohol for the moment that idea doesn’t hold much allure seeing as I don’t really get the sport.

I’ve been off alcohol, soda, and the majority of things that are enjoyable in life for about a month now. I’m running every morning and then stopping by a café to get a coffee to start my morning. I feel so refreshed and ready to go after this that I feel like it’s a decent part of the equation of why I’ve been winning lately. It’s hard laying off the booze when I go out with friends at night, and every time is the same process of being offered a drink, declining, then getting made fun of for several hours. God I hate my friends.

Seriously, fuck day light savings. Fuck it and the sadist communist bastards who invented it in order to annoy people in Australia who have to work on an American schedule. Oh, you think that’s not why they invented it? According to that Wikipedia entry you just read it’s good for the retail economy and leisure activities you say? We’ll fuck Wikipedia and fuck you too.

Naturally it fell on a Monday, which as I’ve said before is Sunday for those of you across the ocean. I decided not to even bother try waking up for anything too early and stumbled out of bed in time for the Full Tilt $750,000 guarantee. I only signed up for around eight tournaments because I could feel I was nowhere near 100%. By the time Celina woke up several hours later it was wearing on me and I had her cover briefly while I took a nap on the couch. When I woke up I started making a run in the Full Tilt mulligan tournament, but ended up busting out deep losing 99 to AQ all in pre flop.

Despite a pretty dull and pointless Monday, I did have an awesome previous day. I went deep in the Stars 50/50 yet again, finishing 3rd for around $5,800, and also got 3rd in the Full Tilt $50 single rebuy add on for a bit under $2,500 continuing what is becoming a very long hot streak. I haven’t done much since, and I’m actually considering taking tomorrow off, though when I think about it that seems unlikely.

I was glancing over the Pokerstars website today and saw they have announced a Latin American Poker Tour. It just so happens that one of these events would fit perfectly into the schedule for the ‘Around the world in 90 days’ trip in late May, the $2,500 tournament in Costa Rica. Speaking of the trip, a friend of mine received an email from Danny McD today that said APPT Macau will be either the first or second week of May. That’s not exactly the news I was hoping for, but I realized if it does happen to fall on the second week of May I could perhaps rearrange my trip so I go to the Party Poker Million trip first, then Macau, then LA, then Costa Rica, and then Las Vegas. If it turns out that way I may even consider going to the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo in mid April and killing the 12 days between its finish and the cruise’s start. Not really sure what I’d do with that time though. Hopefully we get news very soon as to which week it ends up being.

Meanwhile Kyle (Edmond Dantes) has come up with an idea to create my own specific blog page known as GonzoPoker (or was it PokerGonzo, I think it was the first one) and start trying to create a more specific image and get relationships going with poker sites. Getting a site name like that means I’d have to go out and buy all of Hunter S. Thompson’s books so I can steal everything I possibly can as fast as I can. I’ve also decided I should email the man himself, Dr. Pauly, and ask his advice about all this kind of stuff I have going on right now. As much as I’d like to work with a poker site in regards to my content, are they really willing to let a blog entry be titled ‘The Mathematics of Whoring’? I have my doubts. That’s why I kind of like Kyle’s idea. Creating my own site that can both generate income and instead of restricting my style encourage it would be preferable, even if the money isn’t as good as working directly for someone. As a result I’ve asked Kyle to be my quasi agent. Basically, in the event I have to have some form of negotiation with a site I don’t want to come off as a demanding, money grubbing, gouging bastard. God forbid I show them my true colors at that stage. Having someone represent me allows for the ruthless nature that may be required without actually appearing ruthless. Kings to you Edmond.

I finished up writing ‘Things it took me a while to learn part 16’ tonight which will appear on the front page of P5’s before it appears on the blog. I’m going to write part 17, about table image and how to use it, tomorrow night. I had some help from Shaun fucking Deeb for this entry, and I’m going to continue scouting out new guys to bring on board for future entries. I think for the image portion I might go nag someone more LAG than I am like DJK or Charder30 and get their thoughts, since the image portion of strategy is so different based on playing style. Hopefully it results in something insightful.