tilted behaviour

Probably the best thing about the Aussie Millions is without doubt the series ending Farewell Party!

It is a time for dealers, media and players to let their hair down and party hard on Crown’s wallet . . . and year after year that wallet gets pushed to the edge.

Driving up from Crown I met up with Heath as we made our way into Fusion and quickly grabbed a beer from one of the gorgeous waitresses. Surrounded by dealers we eventually found some common friends before the rest of the PokerNews clan rolled in along with some fellow poker buddies.

Basically the night revolved around lots of drinks, heaps of photos and conversations about poker before the bar-tab eventually ran out and people started shuffling elsewhere.

With the night still fairly young – 2am – me and Alex decided that we would pay a visit to the Teak Room to cash in a $25 free play voucher that I had received in the mail. Alex had a smoke, and I couldn’t resist the lure of the Baccarat tables and decided to gamboooool it up for a little.

Maybe thirty minutes later and up $150 we headed down to the poker room to continue our sobering-up by taking a seat on the $0.50-1 PokerPro table. Alex ran hot, I got rivered seventeen times and took by beat-up negative $100 ass to the real felt of a $2-3 NLH table.

I never got anything going but still managed to profit $40 on the table which meant I finished up for the night before eventually feeling sober enough to drive home.

With my lone Team 888Poker member Pierre Aoukar unfortunately busting within the first twenty minutes of the today’s play, I was left with a whole day of nothing to do.

Consequently I strolled downstairs and walked around doing nothing for a while before making my way over to Heath’s place to write an article and chill for a while.

After writing a few 888Poker articles me and Heath suited up to play some tennis. The previous match saw Heath and Kirsty lose 2-6 to me, but this time it would be just the boys. I took a 4-1 lead at one point, only to go down in the first set 7-5 before losing the next one in even quicker fashion when it finished 6-3 in Heath’s favour.

We both had a shower and made our way over to a suite at the Crown Towers where Lynn was throwing GG a ‘leaving PokerNews party’ for all his friends and co-workers. When we arrived only a few guys were there eating dinner, and before too long, I was cutting down chips and dealing a home game!

It would never be a great idea running a sizeable game, so we chose a rotation of NLH and PLO with blinds at 5c-10c . . . big stakes ey!

I bought in for $10, while most people bought in for $20, $30 and even $50, and once Jonno, Mike and some random others strolled in, the game got out of control with pots of $50+ playing out in both the NLH and PLO orbits.

But like most home games / hotel party’s / going away party’s things started to get out of hand with drinks being spilt and ridiculous room service orders being placed.

Eventually security came knocking and we warned to shut-up or ship out! The food eventually came, and I took a step away and began cashing everyone out as I knew things wouldn’t last too much longer . . . and I was right as we were soon on our way home!

Thanks to Lynn for hosting a kick-ass night of fun and degeneracy!

Following my semi-freelance blogging for Bet 24/7 during the Opening Event, it was time to do it all again . . . this time on behalf of 888Poker for the Aussie Millions Main Event.

With an emphasis on just Team 888Poker and the Online Qualifiers, the updates I would be doing would follow the lines of a regularly updated live blog on their newly revamped site; 888behindthescenes.

I had nearly twenty 888poker players to keep an eye on throughout the Main Event, but only two in Tyler Bonkowski and Pierre Aoukar would make the money. Aoukar would give the whole 888Poker crew a good sweat as his deep run resulted in a audacious 18th place finish for a $75,000 collect.

To check out how the 888Poker team faired during the Main Event, check out my daily blogs on the 888behindthescenes website.

Day 1a
Day 1b
Day 1c
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

I would love some feedback on these blogs as I’m hoping to do something similar for the 2010 WSOP with an emphasis on Australian’s.

Comment away!

edit: 888behindthescenes have done some editing and formatting of their webpage, and consequently the links have been moved round and the text adjusted

I posted something on Facebook a few days ago to see if I could drum up some interest in a stake for the Event 6: $1,100 HORSE . . . and thanks to the support of a few close mates I managed to find a seat in the event.

Before testing my mixed game skills I decided that I should flaunt my media pass and attend the 10am DeucesCracked HORSE seminar . . . and boy was it worth it!

The attendance was poor with only Kerry Stead and I awakening from our slumber to make the trip to the Crown Promenade meeting rooms, but this basically meant that both him and I got tens of thousands of dollars worth of one-on-one poker tuition.

Joe Tall and Chuck ‘danzasmack’ Danielsson were the hosts, but Brian Roberts, DeathDonkey, Entity and a few others were there contributing. All in all I learnt a huge amount during the two hours with both my Omaha Hi-Lo and Stud Hi-Lo games reaping the most reward before making my way down to the poker room.

With a 10,000-chip starting bank and 30-minute levels, the structure was still fairly fast.

I took the blinds with eights before winning a sizable pot holding A♦ Q♦ in the big blind after four players saw a flop of A♣ Q♣ 5♠ in a single-raised pot. I checked, the raiser bet, two folds, I raised, he re-raised and I called to see the 8♦ land on the turn. I check-raised again, but he just called before the K♣ came on the river and we both checked. He flashed an Ace and mucked as the game switched to Omaha Hi-Lo.

I flopped the second-nut book holding A♠ Q♠ J♦ 2♦ and got a few streets of value against 10♦ 10♣-x-x on a A♦ Q♦ Q♣ 10♠ 6♠ board against Tim ‘TurnRiva’ Marsters to move to over 13,000.

I bricked out in Razz before my 10♦ 10♣ / 2♠- 10♠- 5♥- 4♦ / K♦ found seven streets of value against split Aces in Stud.

Once we were back in Holdem I played an awful hand holding top pair against two flushes before losing the first pot in Omaha Hi-Lo to drop to 8k before quickly mounting a comeback to move up to 11k and then 15k.

After returning from the first break I was moved to the feature table that included Graeme ‘Kiwi G’ Putt, Richard Holmes, Jan Suchanek and Eric Assadourian. Nothing exciting eventuated on that table before I was again moved to a table featuring Mel Judah, Steve Topakas and Rob ‘JacksonTens’ Campbell.

I then managed to eliminated Topakas during Omaha Hi-Lo when my A♣ J♣ J♠ 2♠ cracked his A♠ A♦ 10♦ 2♥ on a board that ran out K♣ 9♣ K♦ 6♣ J♥ after all the money went in on the turn.

My newly found chips would soon find a way to vacate my stack and find a home in other players when – during the last four hands of Stud – I was forced to bring-in every time. The final hand saw me begin with A♣ J♥ / 2♠ and when two players just called I caught another deuce as we all checked before I caught an Ace. Bet, I raise, all in, fold, I call and was up against a very well hidden rolled up Jacks and was never able to improve. The next hand saw me bring-in once again – this time in Stud Hi-Lo – and I open completed for my last 700.

I managed to make two-pair and a low draw against a bigger two-pair, but when my sixth and seventh streets bricked out, I hit the rail in 38th place out of the 91 starters.

I felt I played very well – and this was without a doubt courtesy of the DeucesCracked seminar – but was just plain unlucky when the structure quickened up.

A couple of cooler hands and I was out . . . pretty simple . . . but it happens.

Thanks once again to the guys that threw their support and moolah behind me.

I wasn’t having a good session playing cash on PKR, and just before I logged off I stumbled across a nightly $12 six-handed tournament and decided to register.

98 players ended up playing the tournament . . . but I’m not going to bore you about the details of how I got to the final table, or my interesting hands, but instead show you something neat about PKR.

After (unfortunately) losing the heads-up battle when my shove with sevens was snapped-off by Queen-Ten and an obvious Queen fell, the PKR user interface launched into a celebration.

Firstly my opponent oneplaner’s avatar stood up and started dancing wildly before cash started raining down onto the table and the surrounding stage area.

Although I wasn’t satisfied with the $199.92 payday in comparison to the $329.28 first place, the enjoyable celebration did cheer me up slightly as it is something that I haven’t witnessed on any other online sites before . . . well to this degree anyway!

The 193 players returning for Day 2 action had a leaderboard dominated by local talent – and hopefully within 192 eliminations time – one of them would be happily wearing a Gold Championship Ring!

It took around 150 minutes, but the bubble eventually burst when Englishmen Dan Carter’s A♠ J♠ was unable to hold against Brendan Edmonds’ Q♣ 7♠.

Just on Midnight, the much-loved and occasionally loathed Tony Hachem bit the dust in 11th place to miss out on making his first Aussie Millions Final Table.

Seat 1: Anthony Kingston (983,000)
Seat 2: Jim Mastorakos (1,710,000)
Seat 3: Trung Tran (826,000)
Seat 4: Sam Vakili (366,000)
Seat 5: Glenn Croft (1,696,000)
Seat 6: Brendan Edmonds (1,632,000)
Seat 7: Aaron Wilt (1,299,000)
Seat 8: Brad Rawiller (344,000)
Seat 9: Brent Thomas (1,095,000)
Seat 10: Matthew Ephraums (2,040,000)

The final table was fairly stacked for a 1,143-player field as it featured tournament regular’s Jim Mastorakos, Brent Thomas and Sam Vakili, as well as DeucesCracked instructor Aaron Wilt along with two good mates of mine in Trung Tran and Brendan Edmonds.

Action started fast, but soon grinded to a halt as the final hand wouldn’t be dealt until the 17th hour of play.

Unfortunately Edmonds would again fall short as Matthew Ephraums played a strong heads-up game to be crowned the 2010 Aussie Millions Event 1 Champion, pocket the $200,025 first prize and sport a new Gold Championship Ring!

Note: Stop reading if you don’t like mushy remarks.

On a personal note I would like to thank PokerNetwork and Bet 24/7 for giving me the chance to jump back in the blogging saddle . . . and hopefully it leads to some more opportunities down the track.

Aaron Wilt, Peter Aristidou, Champion Matthew Ephraums, Jarred Graham, Brendan Edmonds, Con Tsapkounis, Dan Carter, Vincent Wan

Today marked the end of the third flight from Event 1 of the 2010 Aussie Millions!

Like previous years, the poker extravaganza that is the Aussie Millions kicked off with the $1,100 Opening Event that has seen record increases in attendance over the past few years; and 2010’s case was no exception!

A total of 1,143 entrants created the epic $1,143,000 prizepool thanks to a mixture of 919 unique entrants and 224 who repechaged.

When the dust settled on Day 1c, 193 players had made it through with many big-name local players, amateurs and international guests all having seats for action tomorrow.

As most of you know by now I was working the event on behalf of PokerNetwork and Bet 24/7, and if you want to catch the updates as I saw it, then click the links below.

Event 1 Day 1a
Event 1 Day 1b
Event 1 Day 1c

With work wrapped up around 9pm, I decided to join the PokerPro tables with Garry, Chris and Heath.

The tables were full so I decided to jump on the newly located $15 Squeeze Baccarat table that they had moved to sit nearby the PokerPro tables.

Buying in for $400 I slowly grinded up some profit before Brendon Rubie decided to join me for some degenerate gambling action. After explaining the rules he decided just to bet whatever I bet, but couldn’t really get a handle on the art that is squeezing!

At my high point I was up around $200, but left satisfied with $175 profit as Brendon had easily doubled his $100 buy-in before we both moved to the PokerPro tables.

Since Heath, Chris and Garry all had in excess of $300 – well apart from Heath who had around $200 – I decided to short-stack it to increase the fun factor and bought in for $20 on the $1-2 NLH PokerPro table that they were playing.

Those buy-in’s went fairly quickly – and from what I can remember – Kings vs Ace-King (all in on turn, river Ace) and against Chris as we shoved dark, my K♦ Q♣ went down to his 9♠ 5♣ when the board ran out A♦ Q♦ 6♦ 5♠ 5♥.

Consequently I decided to take it seriously after dropping a quick $100, and bought in for the full $100 amount. I quickly chipped up to $150 when I made two-pair and then just slowly took down pots every orbit to hit a high-point of $320 before making a move on Chris.

He made it $7 under the gun with 3♠ 4♠ and I three-bet to $23 with A♣ 9♠. The button called and so did Chris to see a 3♦ 5♥ 3♣ flop land. I bet out $25, the button moved all in for less, and Chris gave me this big talk before making it $75. Obviously he cashed out after that hand with around $500 as me and Heath were soon joined by Elaine once Garry and Brendon had left.

Elaine nitted it up and only lost pots to me when I would three-bet and then continuation bet with 7-3 off etc.

The night finished around 2am with all of us enjoying some play time outside of work!

I have a huge dilemma and need your help to sort it out.

My Dad’s computer broke down the other day and he decided to head to Harvey Norman to Flexirent one. For some reason they gave him a free Wii – and since he knew I wanted one – he also bought me FIFA 2010 so that I would have something to play on it.

Problem you may say with a definite undertone of sarcasm.

Well, yes, because recently I’ve decided that I’d rather get a PlayStation 3 instead of a Wii after spending many hours at my friends and cousins house playing it.

However, I’ve also been looking at some new sunglasses – something similar to the BVLGARI ones below – and therefore have the dilemma of either trading the Wii in at Myer and getting the sunglasses or going to an EB Games or JB HiFi and exchange the Wii for a PlayStation 3.

Tough decision.

Help needed . . . NOW!!!