Friday: I wake up at 9:52am and immediately turn on my computer. As always I have to wait a moment for it load up, then click the ‘resolve later’ button when it informs me my copy of ‘Windows’ may not be authentic which it has been doing for about a month now. It’s technically Celina’s computer, so I’m not sure what that’s all about and I’m clearly too lazy to fix it. While the computer finishes loading I go to the bathroom and take my morning piss.

I return a moment later, fire up each poker site that has a tournament starting at 10am, and register for them. I then go to take a shower which results in my sitting out for the first few minutes of the tournaments. I return to the computer in a towel and start playing my tables while registering for every other tournament I can get my hands on that has a buy in of $24 or more and anything close to an interesting prize pool. I’ve been running pretty awful lately (I’ve dropped roughly 7% of my roll which isn’t that big but still annoys me) so to help even out the variance I’m just playing fucking anything. I’m still making a decent amount of final tables, but near all of them wind up being a ninth through seventh instead of third through first.

I eat a protein bar and a glass of water. I would prefer milk but I realize that I don’t have any left in the house. When searching for it I realize I also don’t have anything else particularly edible that can be quickly prepared so I will not be eating during my work day today. I wind up making two final tables, including running deep in one of my last tournaments of the night which keeps me playing fairly late. I get a message from the girl I’m seeing who tells me she wants to go to a ‘Cambodian concert’ tonight with her sister. I don’t know what that it is, but seeing as it’s something totally random and different I’m not going to pass it up.

When I finish playing I run over to ‘Subway’ and eat a foot long roasted chicken sandwich. Then I head off to the gym and work out but have to make it brief as I’m running out of tme. Afterwards I get in my car and make the 40 minute drive down to the South West towards Dandenong. When I get there I have to reintroduce myself to her sister as I’m awful with names and met her some time ago late at night. They are dressed quite nicely and smell heavily of perfume, so I’m not quite sure what to expect. The sister directs me to the event and we park outside. It appears to be some kind of classy restaurant and/or function center.

Inside everyone is dressed rather formally and the place is decked with flowers, lights, and neat table dressings. At 6’1” I am comfortably the tallest person in the room.
“Jesus, it looks like prom in here, except this time I’m wearing more than a speedo” (back story found here: http://www.tworags.com/index.php?ACTION=blogs&todo=view&ID=2385) I remark upon seeing the room.

We take a seat at a table with a group of people we don’t know. Everyone is speaking Cambodian (or as it’s properly known; Khmer, as roughly 95% of Cambodians are Khmer’s.) In a room with a few hundred people there is only three other white guys, and they are about 40 and in a group together with what appears to be their wives. The attendants are all ranges of age, from the elderly to the two five year olds who chase each other around on the dance floor playing tag. In the front of the room there is a band playing Cambodian songs.

Shortly into the evening a couple of performers come out and sing a song that tells a story while the male actor carry’s around a doll posing as a baby. The female half of the couple is dressed traditionally and looks tall and statuesque.
“She’s really pretty don’t you think?” asks my date.
“Yes quite. As soon as she’s done singing I’m gonna go crack on to her, stay here.”
“I hate you!” she exclaims and slaps my leg “But I don’t think she speaks English.”
“Only one way to find out” I taunt her.

I look around the room and curse myself for not having worn a suit as for once I wouldn’t look totally out of place. My date starts explaining the story of the song but I interject with “Stop interrupting, I understand every word. Don’t you know I speak Cambodian?” She hits me again.

Dinner is quite delicious and we get an extra order of quail to enjoy on top of what’s included in the set menu. I haven’t drank more than three beers in the last month, but considering I can’t make much conversation and it’s a party I decide to go to town on Heinekens. One guy across from us is also drinking them heavily and I start chatting to him with the help of a woman in his group who translates for us. Then we clink our beers together several times and shout “Yeeeeeeea!” cause it’s the only thing we’ll both understand.

As soon as dinner finishes the dance floor fills up immediately. After not drinking for so long the five or six beers I’ve had is enough to give me a solid buzz so I leap onto the floor and join them. The first dance involves people sort of slowly walking in a circle to the rhythm while turning their hands in and out. I just fucking go for it and act like I know what I’m doing and people seem cool with the fact that I’m trying. The dances eventually quicken up, including one that has some kind of three step that I have difficulty managing, though everyone assures me I’m dancing quite well (liars!)

When I take a break from the dancing I approach my date’s sister and slam my key down on the table.
“This is for you, my driving is not happening.”

Near the end of all the songs there is a slow dance. While swaying slowly back and forth I remark “You know this is actually the closest thing I’ve ever had to a prom?”
“Really?”
“Yep, I was working my junior year and I streaked it my senior year, so this is pretty much it. Gotta say, I never expected it to be so Cambodian.”

When it all finishes we head back to her place and I start drinking water. It becomes abundantly clear that I will not be driving home tonight.

Saturday: I wake up at 1pm with a mild hang over and no clothes on. I get a text from my personal trainer asking if we’re still on for 2pm. I message back that it’s not going to happen. I take a shower and throw on the same clothes from last night.

We decide to get some ‘Dim Sun’ in Springvale and wind up ordering way too much food. At least getting left over’s means I’ll actually have edible food in my house tomorrow. Downstairs from the restaurant is a market where the Vietnamese shop owners are yelling “BANANA! ONE DORRA! BUY DI!” In a confusing moment of cultural reverse she cracks up hysterically at this and I tell her to “Stop being so racist.” I buy a pack of strawberries and walk around the market munching on them at a leisurely pace.

After the market we head over to Chadstone mall where we decide to see the Clive Owen/Julia Roberts espionage thriller ‘Duplicity’. It’s not starting for another 90 minutes so we go upstairs to the book store where I get a coffee then grab books on Kenya, South East Asia, and Dubai and start reading. I discover the following information:
1. 15% of the adult population in Kenya has AIDS/HIV. God damn.
2. 95% of Cambodians are ‘Khmer’.
3. Pol Pot murdered roughly 1.7 million Cambodians in his attempt at a utopian society in which most of the hatred and persecution was directed at the educated city dwellers.
4. After gaining independence in 1963 Kenya has been under the rule of one corrupt head of state after another, though many of made great measures in improving the infrastructure of the country. However, during the early years of the 21st century Kenya underwent considerable economic struggles and moved backwards, becoming closer to a third world country, particularly after terrorist attacks at the airport and American embassy discouraged tourism.
5. Dubai looks balla as hell.

After my little study session we go to watch the movie which is actually quite good. Not only was the banter and chemistry between Owen and Roberts witty and enjoyable, but the film features support from talented actors Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti. It reminds me of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ with Pierce Brosnan and I ask my date if she’s ever seen it. She says she hasn’t and I insist that we watch it later tonight.

Then the best thing ever happens; we go eat Korean BBQ on Victoria Street. God the pork ribs there are fucking awesome, so awesome in fact that I’m certain without a sliver of doubt that my having eaten them means I had a better day than anyone on the planet who did not (yes I’m aware that someone somewhere probably won a lottery or had sex with Scarlet Johansson but trust me, not better.)

When we get back to my place I turn on my old, half broken laptop that has the movie on it. When I fire up ‘Realplayer’ I suddenly realize that the last thing I was watching on it was porn so I slyly turn the computer away for a moment and do my best to close it out without the shoddy laptop falling apart in my hands. I’m 99% sure she doesn’t notice. Then I spend two hours wishing I was as suave as Pierce Brosnan.

Sunday: I wake up at 10:22am and decide it’s not time to get up yet and reset the alarm to 10:52am.

Thirty minutes later I wake up and decide to actually get up this time. I go through the same routine of turning on the computer, clicking ‘resolve later’, taking a piss, and registering for tournaments before showering and showing up late. Again I register for everything I can get my hands on but get distracted doing an enormous amount of writing for most of my day. Yet again I make numerous deep runs which end disappointingly and I lose money on the day.

When I finish I go out for a run because I’ve been lazy the last couple days about working out. I prefer to go running in the park but for the last couple weeks they’ve had the track for the giant race erected and it’s pretty much impossible to do it there so I haven’t bothered as much.

When I get home we have salmon for dinner and decide to get wasted. We open up a bottle of red wine and start drinking it quickly, with her occasionally sculling it. When we’re finished I roll up a clearly too large joint of super weed and smoke the whole thing. A few minutes later I’m totally wrecked and munching on strawberries while I destroy her at Wii bowling and talking trash the whole way to victory. Eventually my inebriation deteriorates my skills and I lose game, resulting in vast harassment and taunting from the other side.

I decide I need to lay down so I turn on a ‘Trainspotting’, crawl into bed, and start drinking water. God, Begby in that movie is such a fucking psycho.

Monday: I wake up at 9:52am and turn on my computer. Here we go again…

Authors note: I’m not proof reading this one tonight because I’m really tired, so if there’s grammar errors deal with it for now. I’ll probably fix it later.

I figured the ‘(seriously)’ was necessary for the title so people didn’t get blue balls clicking the blog thinking “I can’t wait to see Bond go on some arrogant condescending rant this time!” and getting a serious strategy post, so there you are. Pokersavvyplus member ‘DHM0219’ posted a link in my forum to an article by Phil Hellmuth that also contained video of a hand against JC Tran. Here’s the link:
http://www.philhellmuth.com/phil-hellmuth-poker-blog.html?id=2971

Now if you read the article you’ll be disgusted because Phil discusses the possibility of doing something other than shoving 6400 chips with KQs in early position at 300/600 with 75 antes, including suggesting limping it and folding top pair post flop. With $1575 in the pot let me make it very clear that shoving is the only appropriate play here, as you’ll increase your stack nearly 25% simply by taking it down preflop. However, let’s get on with discussing the strategic merits to the hand in the video.

Tran holds 5c 2h.
Hellmuth 5d 8d.
The blinds are likely 10k/20k as there is 30k in the limped pot to the flop.

Preflop: Hellmuth completes in the SB, Tran checks.
Flop: 8c Ad 4c (Pot 30,000)
Tran checks, Hellmuth bets 15k, Tran checkraises to 30k, Hellmuth quickly calls.
Turn: Ks (Pot 90,000)
Tran bets 35,000, Hellmuth instantly calls.
River: 2c (Pot 160,000)
Tran shoves for 132,000, Hellmuth tank calls.

So why do I like it despite what appears to be a scare card getting there on the river? I’ll try to elaborate best I can. My guess is that Hellmuth would likely explain his call here based on his ‘read’ and not get much more specific than that, though I honestly can’t say. I’d like to break down the hand by eliminating hands from JC Tran’s range street by street.

Preflop: When Hellmuth limps and Tran checks it makes it very unlikely that Tran holds a lot of the range that would check min raise the flop for value, which is mostly sets and two pairs. It’s probably Tran would raise 44/88/AA pre flop, though sometimes he could check the 44 and AA. A8 would sometimes raise as well (I’m not sure what Tran’s heads up game is like, but many players would.)

Flop: Tran has check min raised. I will say that I have never played Tran and know very little of his game, but Hellmuth likely knows that Tran very probably has a polarized range here. The majority of Tran’s range to check min raise is going to be:
A. Big hands, many of which are discounted from preflop but still contains two pair possibilities and just maybe a set.
B. Draws, although it’s a sort of strange way to play one some players elect to take lines like these and check min raise draws, mostly flush draws in this situation. Whether JC plays draws like this often is information Hellmuth would be more privy to than I am.
C. Air, because players like checkraising small on Axx and Kxx boards; normally if a person doesn’t have the top pair or a good draw it’s all that’s needed to get them off the hand.

Turn: Tran bets small on the turn, barely over one third pot. The Ks changes basically zero, and Tran would sometimes bet this size with his draws as a blocker and possibly his air, but it’s likely his big hands bet a little stronger because Tran must think a lot of Hellmuth’s range is draws since he doesn’t expect Hellmuth to complete many aces on the small and if he did he knows Hellmuth will likely call any reasonable sized turn bet with an ace so he might as well bet a little bigger to protect against the draws in his range as well.

River: The 2c scare card hits and Trans jams about 80% pot. Now, if Tran had two pair or even a good top pair that he strangely elected to play this he would at times consider checking the river or betting smaller because it’s a considerable scare card. Tran knows that Hellmuth expects some draws to be part of his range and so by shoving on that card with a two pair type hand he is likely over repping his hand and not going to get called by worse often (not true if that happened this time!) Hellmuth also likely figures that if Tran truly made the flush he might not shove for value because Hellmuth knows that Tran knows it’s a scare card and hard to get paid on unless Hellmuth has a big hand. As such, Hellmuth has either eliminated or discounted most set and two pair combinations from Tran’s range, still believes he’s capable of showing up with air, and discounts flushes a little bit based on the river bet sizing (and it’s possible he thinks Tran wouldn’t check min raise the flop with his flush draws.) Hellmuth is left believing most of Tran’s range is either a very strongly played flush draw and now flush, or air so he makes the call and JC Tran does his best not to burst into tears on camera.

I’d be interested to hear if any of my other Savvy instructors have similar thoughts on the thought process involved in the hand.

With Celina back in Australia I was alone in Milwaukee with nothing but time on my hands and minimal interest in going out partying with my friends since I wouldn’t try to pick up. As a result I spent the vast majority of my time playing tournaments online and posting heavily in MTT strategy on 2+2. Thanks to the entire campus having wireless internet even when I was in class I often found a seat in the back row and fired up a few tables or zoned out posting online.

When December rolled around Celina and I discussed how we would find a place to live together. I was banned from Australia and she couldn’t come back to the US as the immigration department had removed her visa waiver program instead of trying to help us find a legal way to get her into the country (thanks cocksuckers!) As a result, we decided that we’d go live in an apartment Celina’s mother owned in Shanghai China while we worked through an Australian lawyer to get me back into the country. I left Milwaukee at the end of December 2006 and that was the last I saw of many of my long term friends and much of my family. I’ve had the chance to stop over for a couple very brief visits since, but unfortunately there was never enough time for everyone.

When I arrived Celina and her uncle and aunt picked me up from the airport and took us on a 90 minute drive out to the apartment. As it turns out the apartment was way out of the city, to the point that down the road was a farm. It was actually a pretty nice apartment, despite the building itself looking fairly shoddy. We were so far out that when I went outside people would freeze and just gawk at me as they hadn’t seen a white person that far out in years. People would often walk up curiously and say “Hello!” then sort of run off amused.

I didn’t speak a word of Chinese and knew nobody in the country except Celina and was unable to get around myself since I knew where nothing was. As a result most of my life was contained to the apartment grinding tournaments online and doing everything I could to learn tournament poker. About once a week we’d go into the center of the city and go to dinner or a movie or meet up with her family. The closest thing I ever had to a friend for those six months was Celina’s cousin who spoke rather broken English and I had nothing in common with. Living in China was a strange but educational and eye opening experience. Things were extremely cheap when you did the conversion to USD and when I went out I was able to live like a king. I remember I once took Celina to one of the best French restaurants in town on this park lake in one of the fanciest parts of town. We had numerous courses, beer, wine, dessert and the whole thing for two of us came to $50 USD and the food quality was as good as anywhere in the US. I remember one strange experience where at the Korean BBQ place we often went to I was given a choice between two sizes of bottle of beer; a regular or large. Celina asked what the price difference was and the response was “none.” I don’t get it to this day. People would stare at me everywhere and constantly, no matter how obvious it was. The people in Shanghai are pretty rude and competitive until they’re introduced to you, at which point they become excessively polite and nice. I remember when we went to renew my visa we had to take a government official with us in the car on the insistence of the Chinese who were trying to curb bribery in such situations.

Around January or February 2007 I became quite good friends with Adam Junglen online and because I had (and have) considerable respect for his game I asked him to coach me. He gave me a very reasonable hourly rate and we went to work on fixing my leaks and spent considerable time discussing strategy on Skype. Adam was really the one who imparted the fundamentals and advanced strategy of tournament poker to me, teaching me about things like stack sizes, position, and ranges on a depth that I’d never come close to previously perceiving. Around that time I final tabled my first Sunday major, the Full Tilt 300k (which has become the 750k.) I finished fourth for about $24,000, by far the largest online score of my life. Over the following months Adam and I spent a lot of time improving on my game and in May of 2007 I spoke to Timex online and told him that I was going to the WSOP and if he was interested in backing me my action was available. Because I knew little of backing at the time I was expecting that if he said yes it’d be for just a few events, but when he and Steve Paul-Ambrose agreed they told me they wanted me in as many events as possible. It’s obvious to me now why they insisted on that, but at the time I was pretty floored.

Also in May our lawyers informed us that the Australian government had approved Celina as my relationship sponsor to get me back into Australia and that after the WSOP I would have no problems reentering the country. We left Shanghai in late May to hang out with friends in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia for a little while, which I can tell you is a very cool city worth visiting. In early June I headed off to Vegas for the WSOP again, this time having to leave Celina behind because she wasn’t able to enter the country. When I got to Vegas Steve and Sirwatts got a hold of me and asked if they could crash in my hotel room for a night or two. It was my first time meeting anyone off of 2+2 (except for a very brief hello to Nath in 2006.)

The 2007 WSOP marked the first time I thought to write trip reports for each event after having seen numerous other posters put interesting ones up. They were never proof read or edited, but because I tried to mix in humor and goings on outside of the poker the trip reports wound up proving rather popular and essentially provided me the motivation to continue writing permanently. I really ought to go back and make sure I get all of them saved onto my tworags blog, as they still persist in the archives of 2+2. From a financial stand point though, the 2007 WSOP was a disaster. I lost Timex/Steve over $60,000 and only cashed four of the 30 events I played. I made one final table at the Bellagio during their Bellagio Cup preliminaries but near instantly lost a flip for most of my stack and busted in eighth not long after. Overall I ran pretty horrendous throughout the summer (as was chronicled in the trip reports) though it’s clear now that I also had massive leaks at the time.

Following the WSOP I went back to Australia without any visa problem. Celina had gotten us an apartment in St. Kilda, about 10 minutes outside the central business district, where I still live today. I started grinding heavily online with a roll that was hanging around ~$60,000. I began working six or seven days a week, roughly seven to 10 hours every day. I got post flop coaching from NoahSD and spent an enormous amount of time on Skype with Luckychewy and with their combined knowledge of cash play my game steadily improved. I started blogging consistently and as well as writing articles be they on strategy or satire on the poker world. Most of all though I just kept grinding my ass off.

In late 2008 Celina and I traveled to Macau after both winning our way into the tournament on Stars. Celina wound up running deep in the main event and finishing 24th and making enough of an impression that it jet started her sponsorship career with PokerStars. They first sponsored her into the APPT final in Sydney which we both attended and busted fairly early in.

The 2008 Aussie Millions came and went without any major result. I managed to go from first in chips with ten left in the $1000 rebuy to finishing tenth, and although most recall that as some sort of epic blow up it was the result of two hands; the first where I shoved over a SB raise in the BB with Q3s 20 BB’s effective and the BB spent a minute swearing and debating before calling with JJ, and then two orbits later shoving my last 20 BB’s over the same SB’s raise while in the BB holding TT and getting snapped by KK. By the end of the Aussie Millions I was comfortably over $100,000 USD in make up and had a reputation as a blow up artist in live tournaments.

I spent all of the first few months of 2008 grinding very heavily online and making a considerable amount of money as a result. In February of 2008 I cemented my idea for ‘Around the World in 90 Days’ after having kicked it around in my head for a while. I approached numerous poker sites and poker reporting sites with the idea, my first real interaction with the business side of the poker world. Full Tilt eventually responded that they were quite interested in the blog idea and after a phone meeting where I stated on the subject of payment “I let my agent Kyle do all the asshole negotiating for me” it was agreed upon that I would sell my blog to them for 90 days but with the conditions that I couldn’t write about drug use, other poker sites, or overt sexual content and that they had last say in editing.

Up until leaving on the trip on May 1st 2008 I spent my entire life grinding and studying, except a week or so leading up to the trip which I took off to “Get high and play video games” as I stated in an interview on the upcoming trip. At this point I had grinded my roll online up to around $200,000. Celina and I left Melbourne for Venice on the 1st of May and spent a month in Europe playing tournaments across the continent. I came within 10 places of the money in all four major tournaments I played, finishing on the exact bubble in the last one, WPT Barcelona, which plunged me into around $140,000 in make up.

After Europe I made my way to Vegas for the WSOP and Bellagio Cup in very late May. I blanked out my first 10 events but then started making progress. I final tabled a $2,000 deep stacked event at the Bellagio and made a deal that gave me far above equity for a score of $24,000. Not long after I final tabled the $3,000 WSOP event and finished eighth for $54,000. Then as the WSOP was drawing to a close I wound up finally running good live and winning a $3,000 Bellagio Cup preliminary event for $193,000 though $25,000 was taken out to force me to play in the 2009 WPT Championship. The score came with a gold Bellagio bracelet which I gave to Celina and enough money to totally eradicate my make up.

The WSOP main event came and went without serious incident, and leading up to the Bellagio Cup main Sirwatts and I agreed to swap five percent, which was outside my staking arrangement with Timex as I was swapping five of the 40% that belongs to me in each tournament (though it is accurate that were I in make up and made a score for less than all my make up when I had swapped I would owe money out.) As most know, Mike ‘Sirwatts’ Watson went on to win the Bellagio Cup IV main event for $1.67 million USD, and I received over $83,000 as a result. Unfortunately there’s no epic stories from that night, we simply got a limo and went to get Korean BBQ at 3am then went to sleep because we had to wake up at 11am the next day to check out of our Vegas house.

After Vegas Celina and I went off to Macau for the Macau Poker Cup for what was the last stop on around the world trip before heading home to Melbourne. Celina got second there for her first five figure US score. By the end of the trip I had fallen considerably behind in the writing, as I realized juggling the responsibilities of playing, having a social life, managing a relationship, and trying to find the time to write several pages each night became too much to manage. When we arrived back in Melbourne I began playing online leading up to the Victorian Poker Championships and had written up through day 99 in the series. Throughout the trip I had heard whispers that Full Tilt was considering sponsoring me if I won anything during the writing of the blog. Before that could materialize I managed to shoot myself in the foot and ruin any chance of a deal.

During the FTOPS that came on previous to the Vic Champs I entered the first event, a $200 no limit hold’em event. The event caused my computer to freeze and crash and made Full Tilt unplayable for most of the day, costing me around $1000 in lost entries. I posted on 2+2 to find out if anyone else was having problems with the FTOPS and several replied that they were having the same problem, resulting in my raging in the thread at the incompetence of Full Tilt promoting a massive tournament series that their site couldn’t even support for all the players and that we should demand our money back in the tournaments that we got blinded out of. My superiors at Tilt saw the thread and asked me to please stop bashing them in it, which I did, but the damage to my business prospects with them was clearly done. At least a bunch of my 2+2’er friends got some money back after considerable back and forth with Full Tilt support.

After the Vic champs finished and leading up to the APPT event in Korea Kyle approached Full Tilt about the possibility of bringing me on as a red pro. They responded that they would be happy to have me continue writing for them but were not interested in my being a pro for them. At the same time Stars offered me a free seat to APPT Korea so Kyle sent Tilt off one last email saying that Stars had expressed interest in sponsoring me for the Korean event and that I’d be working with them if Tilt didn’t want to go the sponsorship route. Tilt’s response was close to a 180 of their previous one and they said they could see how I would fit in and they’d talk to higher ups and get back to me within a week. I discussed the situation with my contact over at Stars who advised me that it likely wouldn’t be smart to show up in Korea wearing a Stars patch while Tilt was considering sponsoring me. I was happy to sit that live tournament out considering how tired I was from all the travel, so Celina went off while I stayed home to grind and awaited Tilt’s response.

The grinding went well but the response never came. Even a month later Tilt had never sent any response, not even so much as a “Thanks but no thanks.” I took it as there way of saying ‘get fucked’ for having shot my mouth off. Around this time things started really falling apart with Celina, and when we went to New Zealand together in October we ran into numerous problems. New Zealand also marked the first poker seminar I took part in with Lee Nelson, Joe Hachem, Dennis Waterman, and Tyson Streib. Lee organized them and had asked me to partake in teaching after reading my strategy articles and the review I had done for his ‘Kill Everyone’ tournament strategy book.

When we returned from our trip things with Celina continued dissolving and my response was to spend even more time grinding, compounding the problem. When she left for APPT Philippines we discussed the idea of it being ‘a break’ and she left on uncertain terms. At home I began making plans for a massive prop bet against Stevo and whoever would take us on as a team of two to see who could do better by grinding enormous volume in November. On the second of November I spoke to Celina and she informed me she didn’t want to be a couple anymore. I asked the guys in the bet if they wouldn’t mind letting me out and since there was only three guys to check it with who were all friends, they agreed to let me out and do it some other time. I wasn’t devastated by the break up in the traditional spend all day crying and hiding inside my house sense, but I had completely lost my desire to grind.

I decided to take a vacation to Hawaii leading up to APPT Sydney and in mid November went up there to visit Lee Nelson’s son Cade who I’d met and really clicked with in New Zealand. We spent two weeks chasing girls on the beach and watching me get horrendously drunk at night and writhe around on his floor between stints of intense vomiting and demanding we go for Korean BBQ at 3am. By the end of all that I felt much better. At some point during my trip I messaged the guy who’d been my contact point at Tilt and told him good luck in everything he does in the future since it appears we won’t be working together anymore. He was confused as he’d thought I was going to continue writing for them, and when I explained the situation he told me he’d look into it though I’d assumed our dealings were over a long time ago. A few days later he got back to me that they were in fact not interested in any business regarding sponsorship as I’d expected, though it was certainly charming of them to inform me with such priority.

I left Hawaii for Sydney in early December where I did another seminar and played a couple of events between going out and hitting on anything that moved and pouring alcohol all over myself after bribing my way on stage.

Upon returning to Melbourne I took an easier approach to grinding and wound up taking many days off to enjoy the summer and immediately get back into the dating game. I spent most of my summer grilling and smoking pot with people on my porch and playing sport during the day. I met a girl I started seeing regularly and after the Aussie Millions was over heavily reduced the amount of time I went out partying. I made one final table in the Aussie Millions, the $1000 rebuys which I’d finished 10th in the previous year, and improved upon it by one in getting ninth this year after running KK into AA on the final table then losing 99 to 55 on a 876 flop the very next hand all after having shown up 30 minutes late thanks to some kind of freak accident.

Shortly after the Aussie Millions a group of us headed off to the very first ANZPT event in Adelaide where after a drama filled weekend I wound up finishing second when a disastrous club hit to fill the flush draw of my opponent for 95% of the chips in play. Again I had erased the make up I had worked up (this time more like $50,000) and upon returning to Melbourne returned to the online game.

Now I sit at my computer on the 1st of March after completing a day of grinding. My life mostly consists of working out and grinding for the moment, though that will all change when I go traveling again on April 11th on the trip that will be known as ‘Around the World in 150 Days’.

For some reason I’m off the charts motivated lately. I’ve gotten considerable organizational work done on the book and written a chapter and a half myself, I’m putting in nice volume grinding/making videos and I’m working out constantly. I thought I’d write up what my current living schedule looks like:

5:45am: Wake up, immediately urinate, register for all my tournaments; I will sit out the first half hour of two of them. Do not eat but drink a glass of water. Put on clothes and go either running in Albert Park or to the gym on my block. In the event I go to Albert Park I’ll spend five minutes stretching and roughly 30 minutes running. If I go to the gym I’ll spend five minutes on a warm up run, five minutes stretching then ~20 minutes working a boxing bag followed by ~25 minutes on a bike cranked up to eighth level of 10.

6:50am: Return home. Shower quickly and begin playing poker while in my towel, debate closing my blinds but decide they get what they pay for, spend the next hour grinding in the towel.

7:30am: Locate a protein bar, some fruits, cashews, and skim milk and devour them for breakfast.

8:00am: Attempt to locate clean underwear; sometimes succeed. Either way I’ve got pants on by 8:10 and I’m not free balling.

8:10am: Fire up ‘The Daily Show’ on comedycentral.com before I have too many tables up, feel nostalgic for college watching it.

9:15am: My last registered tournament goes off here most days, though in the case of Sunday and Monday (Australia that is) registration will go for considerably longer.

~12:00pm: Attempt to locate food. Often grill something or simply use fruits and nuts to hold myself over if I’m expecting an earlier finish to my day.

~1pm to 5pm: Finish grinding for the day. For most of the week I expect to finish around 2:30pm. Spend roughly 10 minutes getting out of conversations online then immediately go to the gym. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday I start with five minutes of a warm up run, five minutes of stretching, then roughly 45 minutes of fairly intense weight lifting followed by a 20 minute ride on the bike at level eight. On Thursday and Saturday it is either the run in the park work out or the boxing work out, depending on which I did not do that morning.

~4:00pm: Around this time most days I walk to Subway and purchase anywhere between six and 18 inches of Sub that contains bread, roasted chicken, lettuce, cucumber, capsicum and carrot. It has no sauce or salt and pepper, that’s for damn sure. I eat six inches of it on the street and people watch the insanity that is Carlisle street pass me by (last week I saw a guy slap a woman, slap a guy, then storm off; I believe it was some form of family incident, I was given the transvestites number there, I saw a bare-chested old man cross the street with a massive bottle of open booze he was swilling and it's home of the female barista who gives me the strangest attitude no matter how mundane what I say is and the old woman in the kitchen who demands 50% of my next poker score.)

~5:00pm: Attempt to find something social to do or work on the book. I either have friends over to hang out, get high, and play Madden or invite the girl I’m seeing over. The other day we went to Stevo_L’s new house to establish the new hang out place. It was Stevo’s 23rd birthday and the beds were moved into the $5,000,000 home he’s renting which contains the newly bought $4000 super grill, the mammoth $10,000 new TV, the brand new $7000 computer that Stevo selected by “Just maxing out everything I could get on it and said that’s what I’m buying.” It was not so much a birthday party as an announcement to the world of balladom. Congratulations on all your success Stevo, you coke addicted bastard (and not the powder kind.)

~7:00pm: Return home if I have been out; walking through the front entrance and waving hello to the Persian girl who works at the front then smugly assume she wants me. Smoke a small joint to help me sleep. Sometimes attempt to write a blog entry despite inebriation that will come off either highly self indulging/self deprecating depending on the sense of humor of the reader. Eat the dinner I’ve either left for myself in the fridge or fire up the grill outside and cook meat and mushrooms. Watch Arrested Development or a movie throughout dinner. At some point I will pause it, go to the bathroom, brush, floss, and mouthwash thoroughly then take a piss so I don’t wake up having to do it thanks to my useless fucking bladder. Turn the TV towards the bed and continue watching something until roughly 9:00pm.

9:00pm: Attempt to sleep.

9:00-10:30pm: Sometimes succeed.

I apologize for having gotten so lazy about finishing up this post. I wish I had a more appropriate excuse but no, I’ve just been a lazy fuck lately when it comes to writing. So without further delay, let’s get into it:

1. Aussie Millions $2200 AUD 6 max “preliminary” event. Start bank 10,000.
Villain is roughly 35 and Aussie. He's been on table about 15 minutes, not really aggro or really nity, but seems like a sort of random standard live player. Haven't seen him play post flop much, we haven't been involved yet. He's min raised numerous times pre flop before.

I've been fairly card dead since his arrival and haven't been very involved. I lost most of my stack in small medium pots leading up to that.

My stack: ~5500
CO: ~6000
Button: ~20,000
Blinds 75/150. I hold A T in the BB.

Preflop: Folds to the CO, CO raises to 300, button calls, SB folds, I call.

Flop: 5 A 5 (Pot 975)
I check, CO thinks breifly and checks, button bets 1000, I call, CO thinks a bit again and calls.

Turn: T (Pot 3975)
I check, CO shoves for 4800, button folds, I?

Results: I thought it over for quite a while and figured a lot of his range would be an ace with a good club and that it would be dumb to open jam a good flush and since he raised preflop I don’t think there were too many low clubs in his range. I made the call and he showed me KcQc and I felt like the dumb one. That’s how live players roll though. I posted the hand on 2+2 and although numerous players agreed with my read many others said we should fold, most of their logic being “It’s live.” That’s not bad logic in these spots.

2. Auckland high rollers event. It got 2 tables and was a buy in of roughly $6000 USD. Most players are good.

Villain in this hand is mid-high stakes online cash player Josh Egan. Not sure what his online name is. We haven't played before but we've chatted and we're both aware that the other is a good thinking player. We haven't been too involved yet as it's pretty early.

My stack: ~20,000
Josh: ~20,000
Blinds 100/200. I hold Q Q on an 8 handed table on the HJ.

Preflop: UTG calls, MP1 folds, MP2 calls, I raise to 1025, CO folds, button folds, SB folds, BB calls, UTG calls, MP2 calls.

Flop: 2 8 9 (Pot 4200)
Three checks to me, I bet 2600, folds back to Josh in the BB, Josh calls.

Turn: 6 (Pot 9400)
Josh leads 4500, hero?
If you continue what's your plan depending on the river?

Results: I really felt like a lot of his range was draws and that if he had something big like a set or two pair he’d be checkraising the flop. I made the call on the turn unsure what my plan was on the river if it bricked off but intending to fold if it was a club. The river was a brick and Josh tanked for quite a while then checked. I checked behind and he showed AcJc.

3. Aussie Millions $1100 Turbo event prelim (okay technically post lim but w/e.) The blinds aren't turbo, it simply means players have 20 seconds to make their decision.

I'm at a fairly new table. On the first hand two players in MP limped for 150 to me on the button. I raised to 750 and when it folded back to the second limper he limp reraises to 3500 and i folded (we were about 7k effective.) He then showed 22. That's my only history with him, and the rest of the time at the table he's played fairly normal and accumulated well. He's a youngish guy, i'd guess mid 20's, and while I'm not sure I think he might be Euro, but I have no idea what kind.

The BB in this hand is a huge mega donk station that does a TON of calling. I would imagine the probable Euro is aware of this having played with him for a while. Giant station.

My stack: ~8k
CO: ~ 15k
BB: ~12k

Blinds 100/200. I hold T 9 on the button.

Preflop: Folds to MP1, MP1 limps for 200, folds to CO, CO limps, I limp on the button, SB completes, BB checks.

Flop: K T 9 (Pot 1000)
Checks around to me, I bet 800, SB folds, BB calls, MP1 folds, CO quickly calls.

Turn: 3 (Pot 3400)
BB checks, CO checks, I bet 2100, BB calls, CO calls.

River: 7 (Pot 9700)
BB checks, CO leads 6500, hero?

Results: I folded the river as did the BB. Although very little makes sense in his value betting range, very little makes sense in his bluff range as well. I figured especially with his knowing what a huge donk the BB was he probably wasn’t going to try and bluff us both. We’ll never know. The consensus on 2+2 when I posted the hand was that the river fold is fine but I need to bet the turn bigger.

4. Sydney APPT Grand Final High rollers event, 15k AUD buy in (about 10k USD.) 37 entrants with 6 paying. We're quite a few hours into the action but the structure is very slow so we're all quite deep. I've recently moved tables and wound up on the right of Chad Brown. I've developed a pretty aggressive image since sitting down and have open raised many pots. No major history between us two, I think he might have folded to a C bet in one hand, maybe raised another in a different one.

My stack: ~73,000
Chad: ~50,000
Blinds: 250/500 with 50 ante. I hold 4 4 on the CO.

Preflop: Folds to me, I raise to 1400, Chad calls, both blinds fold.

Flop: Q 4 2 (Pot 3950)
I bet 2000, Chad raises to 6000, Hero raises to 16000, Chad calls.

Turn: 6 (Pot 35,950)
Hero thinks briefly then shoves,

Prefer any other route of getting value here?
Results: When I posted the hand there was a debate between whether betting 16k or shoving the turn was better. Opinions seemed roughly split. Either way Chad folded on the turn.
5. APPT Grand Final High rollers event (15k AUD, bout 10k USD.)

Open raiser is Jarred Graham aka Try_an_Hit on 2+2
Button is online cash player Andrew Pantling. I'm told he wins at mid-high cash online over a large sample, and plays and speaks in a manner that suggests that to be accurate.

Jarred has been quite aggressive with open raises and I've been 3 betting him often. Andrew is also quite aggressive but one thing I've noticed is he tends to call reraises considerably more wide than tournament players, though the hands I've seen that in are nearly entirely in heads up pots.

My stack: ~36,000
Jarred: ~80,000
Andrew: ~90,000
Blinds 300/600 with 75 ante. I hold J J on the CO.

Preflop: Folds to Jarred on the HJ, Jarred raises to 1600, I reraise to 4600, Andrew thinks for a while then flat call, both blinds fold, Jarred folds.

Flop: 3 9 5 (Pot 12300)
Hero?

Results: I think this was the toughest spot of the five. When I got to the flop I really though the decision was between check/fold and check-raise all in. Check/call feels awkward to me particularly since I’ll have invested ball park 40% of my stack once we reach the turn. I don’t like bet/folding because he can show up with hearts that semi bluff and may sometimes have a under pair that winds up bluffing me out if he elects to shove the flop. What I really needed to think over was whether Andrew really flats too wide pre flop to the reraises. I decided from his play he probably was flatting a bit too wide and check shoved over his roughly 8k bet. He tanked for quite a while then made the call with 88 and I held to get back in the tournament.