Because I completely lack originality and wit, I’ve titled my birthday blog entry with the most cliché yet applicable of the classic Hollywood one-liners. I turn 24 tomorrow, the 17th, and while that is still very young for the real world, it’s surprisingly old in poker, especially when we’re talking online poker.

People talk about having a mid life crisis, but were you paranoid enough you could justify a mid 20’s crisis, were you so inclined. Turning 24 is just about the time you realize nobody you know is in school behaving appallingly anymore. Everyone around you is starting to act grown up; considering what they’ll do for a career, considering getting into a serious relationship, considering putting down the beer and the joint and picking up a tie. Nobody wants to get trashed and spend all night watching Chappelle’s show on DVD and playing Xbox. They’ve got things to do. Hell, I’ve got things to do.

I remember when I was a kid and my birthday would come around. I remember wishing I had enough money to buy all the video games and game systems they had out there. Now I’ve got enough money to buy whatever system and games I want, and even own a Wii and Xbox360 with quite a few sick titles. The irony though, is I never seem to have the time to play them. I’m lucky if I sneak in a solid 30 minutes of Xbox a day, and there’s an increasingly short list of people who have interest in joining me for that sort of thing. What I don’t remember is when I became such a workaholic that I stopped having the time to enjoy the things I was working so hard to make the money for.

That’s not to say I’m writing a blog entry advising people not to work their asses off. Especially with our current economic meltdown having a healthy work ethic is more important than ever. Just make sure you don’t lose yourself in the work, and remember why you’re doing it. Don’t wake up 40 one day with a healthy bank account and minimal memories of the past 20 years.

All age induced nostalgia aside though, I recently returned from my trip to the APPT in New Zealand. I didn’t bother blogging either of the events I played because little particularly interesting happened in either as far as results go. I busted about five hours into the main after being card dead all day then getting it in with 15 outs twice and blanking out. The high rollers was a deeper stacked tournament with more play but we only got 17 guys at about $5500 USD an entry, and I busted 7th after getting it in with a big draw against a set and not getting there. There were a few interesting hands from the high rollers which I’ll likely write about when I’m in a more strategy inclined mood.

The Pokernews Cup is currently going on in Melbourne, with the 6 max event being today. I lasted four hands. I raised QdTd UTG to 150 with a 5000 start bank. The button (who was about 70 years old) flat called, and Tony Hachem called in the BB. The flop came Qc 5d 3d and Tony checked. I bet 300 and the old guy made it 800. Tony flat called and I decided not to shove because the old guys range is roughly AQ, over pairs, and sets, and only one of those hands might fold if I cram. I call and the turn brings Kd. Tony checks and I make the ‘live gay bet’ and lead 1200 into the old guy. He tank folds and Hachem moves in. I snap call, he shows me Ad4d and I remark to the table that “This was easily worth taking the day off the internet for” as the river peels off and Hachem and I share a laugh at my futility together.

The day before I had a casual birthday get together, which was about a dozen poker players meeting me at the Belgian Beer Café in the afternoon where I got pretty fucked up. After going to dinner we stumbled into the Crown poker room and registered for the $550 bounty event. Despite being wasted and people continually buying me drinks I held up pretty well at the table and actually played fairly nity. As drunk as I clearly was, the table still refused to give me action unless they thought they had the nuts, a testament to the complete incapability of live players to make adjustments (sure I wasn’t playing all that loose and crazy, but If I saw anyone at the table who was as wasted as I was I’d imagine their ranges to be massive.)

After busting getting it in with A9 vs 99 for 13 BB’s I got to enjoy the romantic advances of Mark Vos on the new Pokernews interview girl, Gloria. The drunken Vos stared at her and blurted “Would you like to have sex with me?”
“Oh….no…….no Mark” she replied coolly. Points for honesty though, and there’s still few people on this planet I’d rather get wasted with than Mark Vos.

After the Cup is over I’ll be returning to a heavy dose of online poker while I watch the world crumble around me. At one point last week the AUD fell to about 65 cents on the dollar, and considering I had almost my entire bankroll online I suddenly found myself making a six figure gain in net worth not doing a fucking thing. People around the world pull their hair out as they slip further and further into debt while my peers and I get richer by the moment. It’s a very strange feeling, but it makes me appreciate what I have.

While gambling has historically been close to recession proof, I think that poker isn’t quite the same as classical gambling makes it a bit more vulnerable. I’m not a gloom and doom kind of guy and I doubt the online poker economy will see a major change in traffic or easy money. That said you can never be so sure, so I imagine I’ll spend the next couple of months grinding 10 hour days trying to pack as much equity into my day as possible, wondering when I’ll ever play Xbox again.

Today seems like an odd choice for which to write a positive minded blog entry. I had a truly awful day.

I woke up at 6am to catch an 8:15am flight. I normally wake up at 9am. There was bad traffic on the way to the airport and I was afraid we’d be late and miss the flight, though I was pretty sure we’d be okay. When we arrived they informed us that the flight was two hours delayed.

As always when I’ve under slept I felt horribly sick to my stomach and couldn’t eat very well in the morning. Our flight didn’t actually leave until 11:15am and as a result of Celina and me checking in separately online they had seated us apart. I asked the guy next to me if he wouldn’t mind swapping his aisle seat for Celina’s window and he declined on account of wanting to stay in the aisle seat. I went over and asked the lady next to Celina to move and after some consideration she agreed. I thanked her excessively.


The flight on United Arab Emirates was pleasant enough for the first 80% or so. Then they took away my head phones mid movie as we began our descent, forcing me to watch the rest of ‘Recount’ in silence, unable to understand why everyone in the movie hated Katherine Harris so much.

Then the plane experienced considerable turbulence, which caused me a rare bout of air sickness. I turned ghastly pale and my body felt like I was on fire. I unbuttoned my shirt down to a level that’d make Antonio Banderas think I was overdoing it then started sweating profusely as I dry heaved into the air sickness bag. I never actually vomited, though I doubt anyone else on the plane knew that from the sounds I was making.

Our descent turned out to be a rouse, as about 50 meters from the ground we suddenly pulled up and rapidly gained altitude. The captain came on the loud speaker and informed us that given the extremely wet and windy weather conditions it was too dangerous to land the plane. We’d have to hover over the airport and try again in about 10 minutes, and if we couldn’t land in the next 30-40 we’d have to reroute to Christchurch. On the second attempt the pilot managed to give us a surprisingly smooth landing.

I exited the plane as quickly as possible and after we went through customs made our way to the taxi line. We got a taxi immediately but the drive into town ended up taking 90 minutes as a result of a crash on the freeway. The ride is supposed to take 25.

When we arrived at the hotel Celina realized she’d forgot her make up at home. That meant we needed to go walk about in the rain for about 45 minutes searching for a place that had the appropriate accessories, which we never found.

I finally arrived in the poker room around 8pm, half an hour late to get into the media/celebrity event which Lee Nelson hosted. So yes, it has been a rough day. But now that it’s all done and over, I’m in the mood to spread some love around the poker world. Especially since my last entry has people thinking I’m a massive hater.

It’s worth noting though, that my frequent shots at Hellmuth are more than a simple professional envy. Sure, there’s that. Sure I’m jealous that a guy who behaves like an idiot and plays with hilariously awful leaks has made more money from this game than I ever will. Sure it’s appalling to watch him receive special treatment and have penalties taken away just because ESPN is worried about ratings. Sure he makes himself a massive target for criticism with his constant declarations about being the best in the world and in the history of the game when he’s too retarded to figure out how to play QQ to an open raise. But what really makes Hellmuth the epicentre of my scorn is his attitude and treatment of people.

There’s a popular Hellmuth story that everyone knows at Crown Casino in Melbourne. Back in the earlier days of the Aussie Millions (I believe it was 2004, though I could be wrong about the year and it’s not terribly relevant) Phil came down to play in the tournament. They had a players party one night and a popular poker room floor man by the name of Franky, who’s just about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, was given the task of escorting Phil up to the party since he didn’t know his way. On the way up the escalator Franky turned to Phil and said
“Man it must be so exciting to travel around the world and play so much poker in Vegas.”
Phil glanced down at Frank and retorted sternly
“Franky, don’t talk to me, just take me to the party” then never said another word. And just in case you think I got an exaggerated version, it was Franky who told it to me.

But enough of the negative vibes, let’s get some love flowing. I’ve already written one entry a while ago about those I know in the poker world and why they are awesome, which you can find here: http://tworags.com/blog/bond18/post/2279/the_people_i_know_

Now let’s talk about some people I’ve gotten to know better recently and why they are so fucking cool.

Lee Nelson: I could write pages about why Lee Nelson kicks ass, so I’ll try and sum things up neatly here. First of all, he’s a flat out excellent tournament player, with the results to prove it (not that results prove anything!) He’s a guy in his mid 60’s who while retired and looking for a hobby picked up poker and made up his mind to get as good at it as possible. He’s written three books on poker, one of which I consider to be one of the best pieces of poker literature in the game, ‘Kill Everyone’. He has all the people reading and ‘feel’ skills of a great live player, but thinks about the game much closer to an online player. He’s the only predominately live playing poker player I’ve ever seen who seems more at home discussing strategy with online kids than with other live players, yet has a sense of humour and enthusiasm few of them can match. His game is grounded in math, but knows when to break it. It’s no secret that Lee has done a lot for me, including getting me involved in these seminars, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to write him a suck up paragraph just to return the favour.

Grant Levy: For those who don’t know Grant, he’s the guy who won the APPT Grand Final in Sydney last year, making him the first Australian to win a million dollars (AUD) on Australian soil. It immediately launched him into poker stardom in the region and landed him an instant major sponsorship deal with Stars. On top of this, Grant has had some massive results online, both previous to and after his win. All that said, Grant is one of those guys whose ego hasn’t changed in the slightest since his string of success, and although he aspires to be a great poker player, he talks and acts like a guy who knows he’s not the perfect player. He knows where he needs to improve and shows the drive to keep increasing his knowledge, and my guess is that time will prove Grant to be no one hit wonder.

Shane ‘Shaniac’ Schleger: Shane is poker’s Elliot Ness (go ahead, google him), a guy with the utmost respect for the game and a genuine passion for protecting its ethics. He’s an outspoken guy on the forums who I learn something from just about every time he stops in to make a post. He’s perhaps poker’s best blogger (it’s a coin toss between him and Dr. Pauly in my opinion) when he’s motivated enough to update the damn thing, and he also crushes both live and online poker. Sure, he told JJprodigy to go kill himself, but who hasn’t thrown around a “Hey, why don’t you go kill yourself” in their day? At least on the internet anyway. I keep those comments for people in positions of authority myself, but were I to tell one and only one notorious online cheat that he ought to end his own life it’d be JJ too, so who am I to judge? Oh shit, there’s still Teltscher. I guess that’s two coin tosses this paragraph.

Dani ‘Ansky’ Stern: I mean, he’s just the sickest of the sick. I’ve learned as much from Ansky’s strategy posts as I have from just about anyone’s. He plays the biggest cash games and crushes. He’s the guy every single 2+2’er would swap with in the 10k live tournament. He makes awesome Pokersavvy videos. He plays 500/1000 heads up against Durrrr (baaaaaaaaaaaaaaalla!) What’s not to like?

Jeffrey Haas: I kind of hope Jeffrey never reads this because he’s a guy whose in a position which makes it inevitable that people will constantly suck up to him and I don’t want him to think I’m doing that. Jeffrey is cool, both for what he does and just as a person. And what exactly is it this guy 95% of you have never heard of did that’s so cool? HE BROUGHT POKER TO FUCKING ASIA. He’s the president of the APPT and although there’s a lot of credit to be given for its success to a number of people I’ve gotten to know recently, Jeffrey is at the top of the pyramid and the guy with final say. If there comes a time five years from now when players from all over Asia are making the online games as soft as ever this is the guy you thank. And five years after that when all the Asian players have taken over poker this is the guy you burn at the stake. The over/under on the total amount of hours of sleep Jeffrey gets in a week is 15.

Gazillion: For those of you who don’t know him, Gazillion was the 2+2 poster who brought my ‘TJ Cookier and the UB Scandal’ comic strip to life with his incredible photoshopping skills. His real name is Mike, though I haven’t a clue about his last name. We’ve never met but spoken on AIM a ton of times. Gazillion manages to be on of the extremely few regular posters in ‘News, Views, and Gossip’ who doesn’t just spew retardation onto the forums. A quick glance at his body of work, found here: http://www.pokerroad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8 and you’ll know why he was the best man for my job. He also handles my constant insults about his being English with all class. Now if only that pommie, tea sucking, red coat wearing, probably bad teeth having, inexplicably soccer enjoying, drunken British bastard would finish my fucking comic.

Celina Lin: Yea, she’s my girlfriend, so it’s obvious I love her for reasons outside of poker. But this is a poker blog, so let’s keep it on topic. A bit under a year ago Celina cashed in the APPT Macau tournament and when the Pokerstars people found out she was trilingual and born in China they decided to live up to their name sake and make themselves a poker star. Since then Celina has been on the cover of poker magazines, featured in non poker literature, done press conferences, and dealt with people who consider themselves ‘fans’ of hers. What impresses me is that throughout it all Celina has never lost sight of reality. She doesn’t consider herself a big deal even though others treat her as such, and her behaviour hasn’t changed in the slightest. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried at the start that all the attention and praise might change my girlfriend, but a year into it I now know that’s just not how she is. She’s not just sitting back and acting like she’s hot shit either, she knows she still has a ton to learn and every time she busts from a tournament on a questionable hand comes to me and says “Tony, will you help me get better at poker?” If only I knew how to stop two outers.

Okay, that’s enough pleasantries for one evening. It’s quite late and I’ve had a long day. For those wondering about the seminar, it’s $750 New Zealand (ball park $500 USD) for one day. We include a workbook that’s nearly 200 pages long for you to take home that has content from every instructor. At the end we run a tournament where we interact with the players and give them feedback about how they play. The winner of the tournament gets a seat into the APPT New Zealand main event. It lasts around eight hours long I believe. Sorry I don’t have more thorough information, but this is my first go at this.

Every now and then I write something where I criticize the play of Phil Hellmuth. I maintain to this day that while Phil certainly isn’t ‘bad’ in the sense that he’s unprofitable in live tournaments, he is ‘bad’ in the sense that he’s fucking clueless with pot odds, stack sizes, position, math, playing thinking players, and especially ranges.

Every time I state stuff like this (also known as stating the obvious) a couple dozen Phil Hellmuth supporting mouth breathers come out of the woodwork and snap at me with comments like “OH MY GOD, WHAT DO YOU KNOW BOND!? DO YOU HAVE 11 WSOP BRACELETS? NO? THEN WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION PHIL!?!?!?” then they return to drooling on themselves while losing money at .05/.10 and masturbating to bestiality porn. And thank God for those mouth breathers to, otherwise I might forget the true measure of a poker player’s skill is how many bracelets they’ve won by beating up on the softest live poker fields in world (WSOP NLH events) and not their ability to make optimal decision after optimal decision. Again, I thank you mouth breathers for clarifying this for me.

Luckily Phil does a lot of work to make my argument about his play for me. I thought he’d never top his K6o raise/fold, but it turns out I was very wrong. I refer you to this link:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=33usfhh&s=4

Note how Matusow nearly has a seizure when he sees Phil’s cards.

Anyway, this will be my last serious day online for about a week. Tomorrow morning I head off to New Zealand for APPT Auckland. Before the tournament I’m doing a day long seminar there with Joe Hachem and Lee Nelson among other excellent players and poker thinkers. If anyone is attending Auckland let me know so I can say hello.

The main event is a $2500 USD buy in and the high rollers event is about $6500 USD. Unfortunately the high rollers is on the second day of the main event, so if you last through the first day no high rollers for you. I’m not sure why they put it their, but Danny McDonough (the APPT tournament director) is a smart guy so I’m guessing it was the only time realistically available. I may or may not blog the trip, after having done the ‘Around the world in 90 days blog’ I’m a little worn out on trip report style blogging, but I’ll be taking notes at the table in case things get interesting.

I’ve been talking to a number of my friends who are highly successful tournament grinders lately such as Seabeast, Psyduck, and StevoL about the ‘bigger picture’. What we’re trying to accomplish through poker, what we want to do outside of that, how much money we think we need to accomplish these goals, life style choices, etc. We’ve especially been talking a lot about money management.

The thing that never stops startling me about the poker community, and especially the multi table tournament community, is just how many guys are reckless with their bankroll and general money management. I’m not necessarily a master of either, but I know crazy when I see it. A surprising amount of guys I talk to who are winning regulars have much smaller bankrolls than I’d imagine, especially some of the guys who directly buy themselves into major live events, sometimes with less than 10 buy ins for that event.

The more I think about not only this game but life in general it becomes so clear how the removal of ego is integral to success. There’s so many MTT guys who make awful bankroll decisions, and my best guess as to why is that it’s ego driven. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be confident, I’ve stated before that when you’re playing at the table you should have, as Tucker Max put it, ‘confidence bordering on delusional hubris’.

What is important at this game of ours is a willingness to put in volume with the removal of ego. A lot of guys I know will only play the biggest buy in tournaments. For a few of the sickest guys like Menlo, Andy Mcleod, Randallin who do this, that’s all fine and good. However, there’s a ton of guys who don’t have these players skills or their bankrolls that only bother with the largest buy ins. The problem with this is that leads to massive variance and probably a smaller overall earn than guys who are willing to put in the volume. I understand for some guys that 12 tabling simply doesn’t mesh with their playing style, but for guys who want to make the ascent through the ranks its pretty God damn important that you’re willing to grind your ass off.

Let’s look at some of the math here. Say you’re a good but not great MTT player with an average buy in of $100. That means you’re playing most large tournaments, but now and then you pass up the toughest fields like the weekly 1k’s and the 100 rebuys. Now let’s say you have an ROI of 50%, which is entirely reasonable at that average buy in playing pretty high volume and very attainable with enough work if you’re a guy who’s learning. It’s easy to confirm this because you can look up just about any player on www.officialpokerrankings.com and check their ROI over their entire sample size. In fact, were you curious enough you could basically figure out how much every serious MTT grinder makes, though you couldn’t be exact cause many of them play on European sites that aren’t tracked and OPR isn’t perfect, but let’s get back to our example.

So you play an average buy in of $100, at 50% ROI and play 20 tournaments a day, which can be accomplished in a 7-9 hour work day. Now let’s say you play six days a week because it’s pretty easy and there’s no commute and no homework (although you should study you don’t have to if you don’t want to.) Your average week is worth $6,000. In a fucking week dude. Now let’s say you put in 45 weeks a year, how much do you make assuming all these variables hold roughly true? $270,000. Obviously bad runs happen, good runs happen, etc, but this is in fact your expectation.

Now let’s say you need to spend some, and have to pay taxes of course (if you’re an Australian reading this, go fuck yourself you lucky tax free bastards.) By the end of the year you should still be able to pocket well over $150,000. If you’re careful with your money and put in two years of work like this you can have a large enough savings to never have to worry too much about money for the rest of your life. Sure you’re not rich, but you won’t be eating Ramen noodles three meals a day any time soon.

So when I look at math like this it completely blows my mind that so many MTT regulars don’t have a bankroll worth one years worth of pretty low stress work. Most of these guys probably have a slightly higher ROI at an even higher average buy in. I guess it’s because you have to drop the ego and the chase of the ‘big score’ in order to think along these lines. There’s a bunch of MTT guys I know who have the skills to do this and bank a ton, but instead take a staking deal which includes both online and live play and end up suffering the horrendous variance of live poker while all their online efforts go back to the backer, turning their backing arrangement more into a long term money loan to play live poker at a FUCKING GIGANTIC vig.

See I’ve thought about and discussed all this shit more times than I can count. That’s why you’ll see me in every tournament I can cram in and play comfortable. That’s why you’ll see me in $11 buy ins with a single rebuy add on. You’ll see me in $25 freeze outs. That’s why I work seven days a week and greet anything that derails this with the utmost disgust and annoyance.
“Please Tony, take me to the hospital, I’m bleeding to death. HELP ME.”
“GOD DAMN IT!! Do you have any idea what this is going to cost me in expectation!? FUCK.”

And that’s why I should see all your asses grinding with me. Think long term people. Drop the ego. It’s not about just the money, it’s about the security. You won’t be 23 forever. I should know, my ass get’s older in two weeks, and I’m thinking about it.

So it’s about time that I got back into the habit of regularly updating my blog. After having done so much writing for the Around the World in 90 Days blog plus an enormous sum of live poker I was pretty worn out and didn’t feel up to writing anything for a while. Over the last few days I’ve felt my desire to write to grow again, so here we are.

Not only has my drive to write increased, so has my drive to do a lot of things. To put it bluntly, I’m pretty fucking bored with myself. Yesterday I had a golf lesson. The day before I had a boxing lesson. I’m playing a ton of tennis. I’m thinking about writing some material and going to perform it at an open mic night at a comedy club. I’ve been working out and dieting religiously.

Celina is currently away in Korea at the APPT Seoul. I didn’t go for a couple of reasons which I’ll talk about in a future entry, nothing major, just a business detail that meant I probably shouldn’t go to Korea. That and I’m really exhausted from all my recent travel, so another 14 hours in planes not to mention God knows how much time in airports seemed a bit too much for me. That and I’ve been killing online.

As most people reading this blog would know, last week was PokerStars WCOOP. The tournaments started at what’s 4:30am Melbourne time so I was up at 4:25am every morning and playing as many tables as possible for the next 12 hours. I didn’t have any major results in the WCOOP itself, but over the last 10 or so days (the last few I’ve gone back to my 8 hour schedule starting at 9am) my results have been:
1st on Titan for $15,000.
3rd on Stars for $12,000.
1st on Stars for $6000 New Zealand APPT package.
1st on Full Tilt for $9,900.
2nd on Stars for $16,500.
1st on UB for $7,500 Aruba package (I think that’s the value?)
1st on Stars for $5,800.
Not to mention a bunch of other random final table appearances for like $500-$2000 or something. It feels really good to be back grinding online and making money at a consistent rate. I’ve also continued my Midas touch of swapping, swapping with a friend at the final two tables of the 100r which he won and had to send me $1500, and swapping with Luckychewy with 10 left in the Tilt winners choice, which he won and had to send me $1200 for.

Today is Grand Final day in Melbourne so I’m going to take the day off and get outside. First going out to breakfast, then playing some tennis, then throwing some money on the game and watching the mayhem. If we go to the right spot for the game and get a couple beers in me (yea, I’m going to take a one day break from my strict diet) perhaps there’s potential for an epic day. We’ll see.