tilted behaviour

Not originally scheduled into the regular array of tournaments on the local poker calendar, the Big Game Poker Sydney Championships didn’t let anyone down!

Many people believe that it ticked off all the boxes in the continued development at Star City, and hopefully I can reinforce most of those points with The Eight Points of Enlightenment: Sydney Championships.

1 – Sports Theatre and Halo Bar: Previously when you visited Star City, you could really tell that it hadn’t been designed by a local (American to be exact) due to its outdated and inappropriate fittings. As poker started to boom, the bar was the negative focal point for many locals and visitors as the atmosphere was nothing comparable to Crown or any casinos around the world.
Not only does the new bar offer a huge array of drinks and nibbles, but it also houses over 50 screens – including one mega screen – for all your sports and entertainment needs. It also features a spacious stadium style seating area with a surround sound system. Throw in the fact that it’s open 24 hours a day – the Sports Theatre and Halo Bar is an experience!

2 –Good Choice Of Tournaments: With only a week available it was always going to be tough to organise firstly a schedule of events that satisfied everyone, but also that was schedule-sound. Starting with a Morning Series that featured two holdem events and an Omaha to a bigger buy-in Omaha as well as a bounty and deepstack event – the Sydney Championships catered for everyone. Throw in the Main and High Rollers Event, and everyone could get their taste of tournament poker from $150 to $5200.

3 – High Rollers Event: The only downside to the scheduling was that the High Rollers Event was run simultaneous to days two and three of the Main Event. This not only affected the numbers that forked up $5,200 but also depleted the quality of the field as many were either still in the Main Event or had returned home. Next time schedule the High Rollers beforehand so that a maximum number of entrants can be achieved.

4 – Connection? : As mentioned in a previous Eight Points of Enlightenment having internet problems always make life tough for a blogger. Normally at Star City we run off a fairly fast internal wireless system, but due to the ongoing refurbishments, the connection has been closed and left us somewhat stranded. We were able to use a wireless USB connection after it was expressed couriered to us, but this just created an unnecessary hassle during the whole tournament.

5 – Quick To Cash: One of the problems at most casinos in Australia (except for Crown) is that once a tournament table breaks the staff are normally very slow to set-up a cash game. Why is this a problem you may ask? Well rake is the bread and butter for any poker room, and in cash games you accrue the most. Star City however stepped things up for the Sydney Championships turning over tables quicker then I have witnessed in the past so that cash games were quickly running. It’s never a downside to have a full and busy poker room!

6 – Main Event Structure: With the Main Event only being a $1650 buy-in tournament, you wouldn’t expect that the structure would be fantastic. However Deb and Jason did a great job at structuring the tournament really well so that play was deep and slow, but finishing times on each day didn’t stretch into the wee hours of the morning. Playing ten levels on day one helped greatly, and combined with some of the jumps in the middle stages, the final table was reached at an appropriate hour. The final hand was dealt during level twenty-six of 40,000-80,000-5,000 which was fairly standard for a decent structured tournament, and hopefully in future Star City will follow the same structure for similar events.

7 – Strong Field: With the current poker calendar packed with events from around the country and the globe, it’s always hard finding not only time for an event like the Sydney Championships, but also to make sure that the turnout is strong. Fresh off the Vic Champs in Melbourne and APT and APPT in Macau, along with the upcoming PokerNews Cup; the Sydney Championships were always going to find it tough.
However the 324-player turnout was not only a great success, but the quality of the field that took the felt was extremely strong as well. Players like Jason Gray, Billy Argyros, Grant Levy, Graeme Putt, Joel Dodds and many of the country’s best players were part of the field that truly represented another great stop on the local tour.

8 – FlopNutsOnYou Flops Victory: There is no doubt that the best player to cash in the event managed to sneak away with victory at the Sydney Championships. Arguably Australia’s best young all-round player, Jarred ‘FlopNutsOnYou’ Graham looked at ease and in control for most of day two and the final table, and with this victory he added another notch on his poker belt.
Just to reinforce the last point, it was great to see a top player take down the event, and it’s a guarantee that the money isn’t going anywhere with Graham and his backer unlikely to stop playing anytime soon.

Next stop . . . PokerNews Cup!

An extra two hours sleep was great thanks to the late start of the Main Event Final Table and once 2pm came round the cards hit the air.

Unlike most final tables I covered, play was fairly loose with pots being contested multi-way and more than a single preflop raise needed to take down the hand. One of the chip leaders in Stephen Donlon was the first to exit after seeing his chip stack swing up and down over the three hours he was still in.

We lost two in quick succession before play returned to a somewhat normal state as the High Rollers Final Table began.

As the blinds and antes picked up in the Main Event, we were down to heads up play with Jarred ‘FlopNutsOnYou’ Graham holding a two-to-one chip advantage over Peter Zabow. Play wouldn’t last too much longer after Graham’s middle pair and straight draw improved to trips against Zabow’s top pair after all the money went in on the turn.

With an already impressive $310,000 in tournament earnings that include a High Rollers victory last December, a Six-Handed title in March and a High Stakes runner up finish in May, Graham added another $121,500 to a live record that matches any in the country over the last year.

Over in the High Rollers, a relative unknown in Tolly Sakellariou captured the $58,000 first prize after flushing out opponent George Moussa.

Once both tournaments were wrapped up both James and I hit the open bar for a quiet Corona or two.

Jarred and his entourage were also there enjoying more than their fair share of drinks, and as I finished my third drink I managed to convince them that a visit to the Craps table was needed – regardless of the fact that it was approaching 3am.

In total there were seven of us degens that hit the Craps table with both Jarred and Daniel Neilson struggling to keep the dice on the table while Monica Nguyen went on a few hot rolls to see us all pocket a profit.

However Jarred and Daniel wouldn’t last too long as they were eventually kicked out by the many security guards that were watching us closely. The remainder of us continued rolling away with Monica being the biggest winner of the group, while I managed to pocket $200 profit.

After everyone had dispersed for the evening I caught up with James and Romy as we went for a stroll looking for somewhere to eat – but at 4am we were unable to find anything and decided to just turn it in for the night to get some rest before returning home tomorrow.

The start of the weekend in Sydney only meant one thing . . . well two really as we were covering both Day 2 of the Main Event and Day 1 of the High Rollers Event.

Beginning the day with just the Main Event, we saw 103 players hit the felt with action being fast-paced over the first level. We lost many of the notables such as Eric Assadourian, Patrick Fletcher, Bill Jordanou and Daniel Neilson before Andrew Meldrum became the unfortunate bubble boy as the High Rollers Event began.

Only 29 players were able to fork out $5,200 for the PokerNews Magazine branded High Rollers Event with play finishing at a final table of eight after seven hours of play while the Main Event wrapped up a couple of hours prior thanks to some power poker.

191 players turned out for Day 1b action of the Big game Poker Sydney Championships.

Today saw a greater majority of locals playing including Grant ‘grunter’ Levy, Joel ‘StrongPlay’ Dodds, Saidal Wardak, Jai Kemp and many more . . . but when the chips were bagged many (such as the above mentioned) wouldn’t survive.

Grant ‘grunter’ Levy moving all in . . . and then all out

One of mates Callum Ford finished the day as chip leader of the remaining 67 players as play ended for the night.

As we were packing up for the night, Michael ‘pokerlife’ Tran came over and forced us to join him on a cash table for a few hours.

We all locked up seats on a new $1-2 NLH table as Michael went to grab some chips from the cage for all of us. As I was heading to the table Ali Khalil grabbed me and asked me what I was doing. After informing him of my plan to play some cash, he tossed me a $100-denomination chip and said he was buying my action with a 50/50 split of profit with all losses on Ali.

I sat down on the left of both James and Michael as we ordered a few drinks to get the night off and running.

I stacked a guy when I three-bet all in from the small blind over Michael’s weak cutoff raise holding Ace-King. The drunk player in the big blind shipped it all in with King-Jack, and when the board the bricked out I was up about $50 on my $100 buy-in.

After an hour or so of play I was sitting on $190 and when my Kings held up against two players I was up to $390 and decided to call it a night to take care of some of the backend PokerNetwork stuff.

James returned a little later a few buy-ins down in combination with a profit (well, really a loss) share with Michael as we both hit the hay while watching a combination of sport and reality TV.

Both James and I made our way downstairs to the poker room at around 11am for the Big Game Poker Sydney Championships Main Event.

We had to organise our press passes and where we would set up before Day 1a action would be kicking off.

It was a fairly standard day with the original 133 players being cut down to 36 with under twenty minutes remaining on the clock during the final level of play. Sheldon finished on top of the leaderboard while Joel Del Duca, Antonis ‘Toothpick Tony’ Kambouroglou, Tim ‘LuckyShades’ Horan and Monica Nguyen all hit the rail.

Once I typed my final word we headed upstairs to watch some TV before starting one of the most epic Facebook spam’s of all time . . .

James and I shared a mutual friend in a young boy named Mateusz Pater, and we decided at precisely 2:47am that we were going to have some fun at his expense. I wrote a comment on his wall, and along with another PokerNews / PokerNetwork employee Andrew Oataway, we began a back and forth conversation that would end at 4am.

Apologies Matty . . . but after you decided to delete the post, we really felt that our comedic genius needed to be available to the world so that they could chuckle along with our early morning antics!

It had been a little more than a week, and I was back on the road for the Big Game Poker Sydney Championships up at Star City.

I caught a flight from Avalon airport and was at the hotel in two hours. James and I were sharing a room at Star City, and from first inspection, it wasn’t at all shabby.

Once James arrived we met up with our point of contact Scott Colvin before heading out to grab some dinner with one of James’ friends Romy.

We hit a beer garden in the city, and after downing a chicken parma, another one of James’ friends, Sam, arrived and we were straight into the prop bets.

Sam had to finish a 500ml beer mixed with hot chocolate in under 25 seconds to win $100 off James, and after finishing it off comfortably James would be down a $100 . . . but it wouldn’t be too long until he attempted to win it back by trying to eat five cheeseburgers in 35 seconds at a McDonald’s up the road.

After barely finishing one in the allotted time, James emptied his wallet to Sam once again as we called it quits for the night.

Finally being back home in Geelong I decided to venture to cricket training at my old club Alexander Thomson (ATCC).

I’m still unsure if I’ll return to ATCC or continue playing at the Richmond City Cricket Club for the third year running – it is really a decision of where I’ll be living and if I can commit to the club 100% or not.

I bowled marginally, landed it well and spun it a little, but I was really impressed with the timing of my batting as I thought that would have suffered the most over the winter break due to the wrist injury that I picked up at the latter end of the 2008/09 season.

With cricket training wrapped up I packed my stuff, had a shower and headed up to Melbourne to join James Bernarkopoloupolous in our aim to ship a PokerNews Cup seat.

I sat around watching the start of the Dogs (yay) and Cats (boo) match before Crown Director of Tournament Operations Jonno Pittock dragged me up to the bar for a chat and a drink.

Discussing all things poker and beyond for over an hour, work eventually came calling for Jonno while I bought into the $65 PokerNews Cup Phase One satellite.

Both me and James sat down to play, and once he lost to a three-outer to elimination, it was left to me to hold the fort down. Only two tables made up the tournament, and consequently only three seats and some cash were on offer. I flopped a set on my first hand to increase my stack by 800 or so, and after eliminating someone with Ace-Jack to his King-Queen, I was on the final table. I found a double up with a dominating Ace-King and a few orbits later we were four-handed. Everyone chucked in $40 and I put in a little extra with $45 to make up four seats for all of us as we were fairly even in chips with crazy high blinds.

I grabbed James from the cash game tables and we grabbed a drink and took a walk along Southbank to bitch about shit while we waited for the 7:10pm PokerNews Cup Phase Two satellite to begin.

After speaking to Mat and deciding that we were going to do something after the satellite, he decided to come in and rail the both of us.

Lining up on the feature table and seat one meant that it was the perfect spot for Mat to view from as this seat is right on the rail. It’s not a great structured satellite with quick levels and only a 4,000-starting bank, but it’s probably the best you can hope for when the buy in is $250.

With blinds at 25-50, an early position player made it 250 to go and I flatted with Q♣ Q♦ before the small blind made it 625. Original raiser folded and I called to see a flop of J♣ 8♣ 4♣ fall and a bet of 1,200 follow. I tanked for probably five minutes before folding figuring that at best I could be up against two overcards and a flush draw and at worse a bigger pair with a club draw. My fold may be disgusting to some, but I felt that I could find a better spot (even though that sounds weird holding an overpair and flush draw) with my edge and skill set against the rest of the table.

During the next level I would get those chips back when I flatted from the big blind holding A♦ J♦ when the three-bettor from the above hand made it 300 to go from early position over a limper. Three of us saw a K♠ Q♦ 8♠ flop and checked it round to see the 4♣ land on the turn and a check from me and the limper. The original raiser tossed a single 500-denomination chips, and after deliberating for a little and putting him on a Queen or a pair of Jacks or tens, decided to make it 1,250 to go. The limper passed and after telling me that I had nothing, the original raiser folded as well.

Not much would develop until during the 300-600 level there would be three limpers round to me in the small blind, only to have me shove for my last 3,800 with K♥ K♠. The first limper – Kane Sherwell – instantly called holding Queen-Jack for his last 3,500, and when the board ran out with a Queen on the flop and river I was left with just a small blind and a small case of tilt!

With twenty players remaining I officially gave up and went over to James to bitch about my bad beat. I quickly raced back to see what my button would deliver, and when it was a pair of nines, I shipped it in and double to 1,200. Next hand I shoved the cutoff with King-Jack and picked up the blinds and antes and was up to 2,100.

I went on to fold the next few hands before doubling though my Queen-Jack nemesis and then once again when I picked off a triple barrel bluff from the nit on the table as we made the ten-handed final table.

Sitting with 13,000 in chips and needing roughly 35,000 to have a chance at capturing one of the three seats or $1,320 on offer I looked down at fives on the first hand after a player opened to 3,000 with blinds at 500-1000. I mucked and when I flopped a five I felt a bit sick – he did show pocket tens when he took the pot down and I patted myself on the back for making a good fold instead of being so results orientated like everyone else.

I slowly began chipping up and knocked a player out holding Q♦ 3♠ to his pocket eights when the board ran out A♥ J♥ J♦ 4♠ A♠ to see me sneak into the chip lead with around 28,000 – basically he shoved my big blind for like 3x and I had to call, I wasn’t just being a douche!

Bernarkopoloupolous was still on the final table and seated on immediate right with a short stack. Before the final table began I tried to give him some advice about letting players crumble round him and to not do anything silly or unwarranted. I also told him that he could shove my blinds without any risk of me calling if it meant that those chips would see him come out of the danger zone. However with blinds at 1200-2400 James decided to ship it in with K♣ 6♣ for 13,500 and when I looked down at A♥ A♦ I threw my head back, shook my head at Mat and – wanting to fold – made the call to put my buddy at the risk.

Of course the board ran out 10♥ 9♥ 8♠ 7♥ 2♠ to see him double up as I was left crippled with barely 10,000.

The volume dial on my iPod went up, and I just tried to regain focus as I still had a chance to capture my seat with seven players left.

I folded until I was dealt K♠ Q♦ under the gun and managed to double against Ace-King when a turned a Queen. I stole some blinds, and before I knew it I had snatched the chip lead back.

Once I knocked out a player holding Q♦ 2♣ when he shoved my big blind with K♥ J♥ for a little over a min-raise we were down to just five.

Michael Pinzone and I shared the chip lead while James sat comfortably in third. The other two however were very stubborn and just waited for the other to be knocked out so that they could walk away with the whole $1,320.

After three orbits of chips getting passed between us three, the two shorties eventually decided to chop the money once both their stacks were equal to just one big blind!

SHIP IT ONE TIME FOR THE CHIP AND A CHAIR was all that was going through my head as I was able to achieve one of the toughest poker accomplishments – come from a single chip (well in this case just a small blind) to win the whole tournament (well chop first as it was a satellite)!

Summoning Jack ‘Treetop’ Staus, I hope that the feat I achieved in the satellite can see me turn my $110 investment and back from the dead story into $250,000 and title of Champion of the 2009 PokerNews Cup Australia!

To celebrate we went to Stalactites Greek Restaurant in the city before heading to David Saab’s house to round out the night with lots of laughs and banter.

After packing up and checking out, I made my way to the ferry terminal to begin my long journey back home.

I managed to get on the 3pm ferry that headed directly to the airport – which was a plus on so many levels as it meant I didn’t waste near an hour transferring from the main ferry dock to the airport, and also it saved me around HK$400.

Once at the airport I checked in and spent my time in the duty free store tossing up purchasing a Digital SLR or not – either the Nikon D5000 or the Canon 500d.

Attention if anyone out can pass on any additional knowledge or information then please contact me!

With the rest of my time being spent surfing the internet or grabbing a quick bite to eat, I eventually made my way to the gate to board last (like normal).

I made my way to my favourite and always requested centre row left aisle seat I was again – for the second flight back to Australia in the past month – greeted by a stunning girl seated in the same centre row, but one seat away on the opposite aisle.

Her flowing blonde locks and curvaceous body would soon disgust me when she turned out to be a bitch for a random comment she made to me regarding my iPod.

With her now behind me and the plane jetting off I struggled to sleep and consequently was forced to watch four movies; 12 Rounds, Bride Wars, Miss March and The Proposal . . . one action, two romance and one comedy was not my expected mix for movies, but most of the ones on offer I had seen or just plain old sucked!

I landed in Sydney early and spent most of my time trying to sleep at my gate, but it wouldn’t be until I returned back to Geelong and the comfy family couch and trusted heater that I would find some much needed hours snoring away.