Poker Blog

It really is the best tournament series. My entire day was a breeze. I woke up and played my normal 7ish hours of tournaments and unfortunately didn’t make any final tables. After that I went for a brief run, its briefness being uncommon these days as I’m constantly at Albert Park for 45 minutes an evening. I organized a dinner amongst a number of groups of friend, which wound up being 10 going out to Koreana BBQ in Richmond.

That’s right; the Aussie Millions is only a week away. Less actually, five days if we must get super technical. As I’ve mentioned somewhere in the area of infinity times, the Aussie Millions is my absolute favorite tournament series of the year. It’s a great three weeks because on top of having a great tournament schedule all my friends will be in the same place during the best month of the year in Melbourne.

There’s no reason for me to be hung over. I wasn’t even that drunk last night. I sat around the casino for hours waiting to sober up drinking water and eating food so I could drive home legally, constantly going back to the breathalyzer machine hoping it’d read .05. I mean seriously .05, you pussy ass Australians, where I come from its .1, I thought you people were a nation of drunks and moderately proud of that? Where’s your national sense of adventure?

I frequently get PM’s asking for coaching and staking. These days I do basically zero staking (though I do buy percentages of people now and then) and minimum coaching, almost never in the traditional sense (mostly people come over and watch me play and ask questions.) However, my friend StevoL and I are always on the look out for the next perfect horse-student.

I wake up at around 1pm on Christmas “morning”. It looks about 30 degrees Celsius outside and I go for a run in the heat. When I get back I call Alex and ask him for directions to his house for the BBQ. I assure him I’ll bring the Afghan white rhino blend my friend has hooked me up with for coaching him at poker.

I had the appointment with my immigration lawyer yesterday. I laid out the whole situation for him and asked how it would be possible for me to stay in Australia legally. As it turns out, it won’t be very hard at all. First of all, the two year visa I was given under Celina’s sponsorship still applies despite the fact that we’ve broken up. That means I have roughly another year of absolutely zero visa concerns.

It’s a bit of a strange period in my life right now. It’s come to my attention that because my relationship with Celina has been dissolved my legal ability to stay in the country of Australia is now very much up in the air. I’ll be calling my immigration lawyer tomorrow to set up a meeting and discuss what my options are (if any) when it comes to staying in the country. Otherwise I’ll have to figure out a new place to live, and at the moment I have no idea where that’d be.

I was sitting outside at a neighborhood café today looking to get a 1pm breakfast of pancakes and coffee. I’d taken the day off as I had some things to take care of during the afternoon. The café is on a fairly busy street with considerable foot traffic in a neighborhood that’s a pretty eclectic mix of people.

A few people have asked for summation of how I got to where I am in poker via forums or in PM’s, so I’ll try and write everything relevant to my evolution as a player and the events that brought me there and now, here.

Over the course of the evolution of tournament poker certain plays have come in and out of style and popularity based on how well known they’ve become and their effectiveness. In an earlier article I discussed the difference between manipulative and deceptive play and most of these plays fall down on the manipulative side of things as you’re often making said play with a pretty narrow range, and it’s important for your opponent to not be aware of what your doing in order for the play to work up to it’s potential.