Sydney has always been one of my favorite stops in the tour. I arrived late in a cool sumer evening the night of the 28th off a 10 hour flight from Honolulu, having missed all relevant preliminary events. Every day after that was perfect outside. As soon as I arrived I found my Australian friends at their apartment in Star City.

Naturally we rolled a number of joints and passed them around. We went downstairs into the lobby and ran straight into a line of eight police men with a drug dog. There was a moment like a Western movie showdown, where everyone stares seemingly forever into each others eyes; the very blurry and red ones in our case. The dog went staight for Stevo, the most stoner looking one of us, and the police pulled him aside. Twenty minutes and one thorough search later and we were off to dinner. Nobody had been carrying.

I decided to play the first day one and get it over straight away. It wound up going extremely well and finished with the chip lead for the day with 104,000 up from the 30,000 starting stack. The key hands were:

Hand 1:

Blinds 200/400, ante of 50.

I hold AKo in the BB.

My stack: ~26,000

HJ: ~8000

Jason Gray in SB: ~36,000

Preflop: Folds around to the HJ, HJ raises to 1100, folds to Australian tournament regular Jason Gray in the SB who makes it 4100. I debated making it 13,000 to look massive or just shoving, and I elected to just shove by putting 24,000 of my stack in. The HJ folded and Jason tanked and made the call.

Flop: K 7 5 rainbow

Jason shoves, I call, he shows QQ. The hand held and Jason said he knew I would play AA or KK that way (which I would to balance my range.) Seems I should have elected to go the 12,000 route and possibly gotten him to fold the QQ.

Hand 2:

Blinds 300/600 with 50 ante.

I hold KsQs in the SB

My stack: ~60,000

BB: ~30,000

Preflop: UTG limps, 1 fold, MP1 limps, folds to me in the BB, I complete, BB checks.

Flop: Js Tc 4s

I lead 1200, BB makes it 3300, folds back to me, I make it 11,000, he shoves, I call. He has JTo.

Turn: 9c

River: X

He looked at me so pissed for getting it in there. Pretty sure he thought I was a massive donk to get it on that draw, that or just generally upset about the situation.

Hand 3:

Previous round we'd played a similar hand where I raised button with J7o he calls big flop A52 check/bet/call, turn 5 check/check, river 8 he bets I fold. I had generally been very aggressive on the button but not very aggressive post flop after the flop unless I had a hand.

Blinds 400/800 with 75 ante.

I hold JcTc on the button.

My stack: ~85,000

BB: ~40,000

Preflop: Folds around to me, I raise to 2000, SB folds, BB calls.

Flop: Ks 5h 2s

BB checks, I bet 3300, BB calls.

Turn: Ac

BB checks, seemed like a really good spot to double barrel and I figured that if river bricks off I should bet any non K, A, or possibly J, T. I think he sometimes calls turn with a king since the ace is a clear scare card, but folds basically every king if I bomb dud river. Clearly bluffing a K or A is a bad idea, and a J or T might be enough showdown value to check back in case he has some kind of mid pair he's hero calling, plus some of his range will be stuff like KJ and KT. I bet 7,200 and he called fairly quick.

River: Qh

Easy game, I bet 16,500 he quickly calls and said he knew I had nothing when I turned my hand over.

By far the most interesting event of the day was the bikey fight though. In Australia bikey is the term for a biker gang member, and they are quite prevalent here in Sydney (and many other major cities as well.)

There was a roughly 60ish year old man playing in the high roller event during the late afternoon of day 1a. A big ass bikey came in and started shouting.

"Stay the fuck out of my business!!!" he threatened in the middle of the room, looming over the old guy.

"I reckon your a rat" returned the old guy.

"WHAT'D YOU CALL ME!? WHAT'D YOU CALL ME!?"
"A fucking rat!" And with that the bikey lunged upon the old guy and started delivering massive blows to his face. He held his face down then punched up while the old guy struggeled to get free. The room stopped of course and everyone stared at them in awe, not daring to interfere with the enraged bikey. The combantants were perhaps three meters away and it occured to me that at any moment they could smash into where I was standing so I jumped over my chair and stood behind the table. Roughly 10 seconds later they smashed directly into where I had been standing while the bikey rained down punches on the old guy. The floormen attempted to jump in and break up what they thought was a fight and didn't realize was a massacre, so they started holding down the old guy resulting in an even worse thrashing. "You've got the wrong guy!!!" everyone kept yelling.

I'm not sure how long it took security to get there but it seemed forever. When they had finally pulled the bikey off him the old guys face was beat to pieces and he was bleeding all over the place. We sat back down. The dealer asked if we wanted to finish the hand. I said that we did; my straight lost to an over straight. The tournament director put everyone on a must leave the room 15 minute break and we all stood around taking turns making fun of Terrence Chan for not leaping in and destroying the bikey with his jujitsu (though in fairness, you'd have to be completely fucking nuts to start a fight with a bikey that wasn't yours.)

My night off I went out to a jeans company party with Brooke Howard-Smith. I thought for a fashion industry party you couldn't be over dressed in a suit but I was dead the fuck wrong as everyone was in tight jeans and dress shirts buttoned all the way to the top. The only guy with a jacket on was wearing a thin tuxedo jacket paired with a massive V-cut shirt. The music was two Japanese guys connecting numerous electrodes to their face then playing buzzing noises that sort of made music. I decided to get drunk.

I left early to go watch the Danny Green vs Roy Jones Jr fight. I'd run into Danny in the elevator the previous night since he stayed on the floor the boys had the apartment and he seemed like a really nice guy, and came off pure class in the ordeal leading up to it. The guy is a national hero around here now.

I rocked up to day 2 well rested and got things up to around 140,000 before they started going wrong. I lost a couple of straight forward medium pots and then had an interesting spot vs long time Australian pro Leo Boxell who is pretty tight about putting in large amounts of chips post flop and seems to 4X and 5X often pre:

My stack: ~110,000

Leo's stack: ~130,000

Blinds 1000/2000 with 200 ante. I hold 9s 9h in the BB.

Preflop: Folds to Leo in MP2, Leo raises to 8,000, folds to me in the BB, I call.

Flop: 9c Tc Ac

I check, Leo checks.

Turn: Jd

I bet 15,500, Leo quickly announces raise and makes it 40,500, I tank and fold. I just don't think he raises any worse hands and our implied OOP aren't that awesome plus sometimes he can have a set of jacks where we have massive reverse implied.

I busted out go and go'ing 88 for 35 BB's against a guy who had flatted 100% of my three bets against him that day (three or four) and almost never folded to preflop reraises. I started with 72,000 and popped his HJ raise of 7,000 up to 22,000. He flatted pretty quick. The flop came 972 with a flush draw, shoved, and he snapped top set. That was that.

I spent the next couple nights looking to go out. Last night we finally had our big one. It started in Bondi drinking and having dinner with Brooke, his wife Amber, her friend Nicky, Peter Eastgate and his friend Neil. Those Danish dudes are chill as hell and Brooke and Amber are always pure quality. We downed several rounds of Singha beer with our Italian food, then went over to a margarita place and did a round there. I refused the tequila shot as anything brown is pretty much instant vomiting after a few college experiences.

We took things over to "The Scheaf" if I spelled that correctly and met all the Australian online boys there. Even Stevo came out, I assume the apartment was being fumigated. We kept doing shots and mixed drinks and things started getting lose. Neil somehow obtained a plastic gun and gave it to me upon seeing my excitement at his find. I jammed it into my crotch and ran around about the bar asking people "Hey!! Crotch gun, good look or bad look!?" Brooke chased me down and demanded I didn't do that in King's Cross when we went over there and I relinquished my toy to him after much resistance.

We wound up at Piano Bar in King's Cross doing more shots and mixed rinks. A hens night asked us to eat the candy off the brides neck. I jumped enthusiastically at the chance and went to town on her neck. Peter and Neil soon followed. I started flirting with the bridal party and took one of them dancing. The whole group showed up and we went about the business of getting smashed. There was an excellent band playing, and by late into the night I was hugging everyone I saw and had obtained some sort of glowing dildo from another hens night which I ran about brandishing in a threatening manner at people, from the Australian grinders, to the Danes, to pokerstars staff, to my ex Celina. Nobody was spared the sight and potential harm of the glowing dildo.

I woke up exhausted from it all today. I decided to take it easy, so I went up to the boys apartment, got stoned, and met up with Peter and Neil to check out the movie "ZombieLand". I haven't done much else since except write this blog entry, and I'll go to bed and return to Melbourne tomorrow.

It's been a long but fun month of travel. Although I never had a night so big I wound up vomiting or feeling very ill the next morning I realize now that after being alcohol free for two months in Melbourne I spent nearly every night of the last month engaged in some degree of social drinking save the ones before a tournament. It will be nice to be so clean again for a while in Melbourne.

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