Comment Tunes That I’m Bopping To - 07/26/10

With the WSOP now wrapped up and Donnie and I predominately having the house to ourselves, our days consist of listening to music, nanna-napping on the couch and a lot of online poker!

Playing a small MTT schedule on Full Tilt mixed with cash games on Absolute Poker, I might delay the poker talk for a few days until I get some interesting hands, and instead share with you some of the songs that have been on loop over the past few days.

Listen to them, like them or share them . . . it doesn’t bother me, but I assure you that they will continue to play wherever I am in the world!

Dirty Picture – Taio Cruz featuring Ke$ha

I Like It – Enrique Iglesias featuring Pitbull

I also wanted to include the song Silly Boy by Eva Simons, but couldn’t find a version that let me embed it.

Simons is a Dutch singer who won Popstars in 2004 as part of the band Raffish, before embarking on a solo career last year after this song was leaked, and then gained popularity, online.

Simons has a style and look of Rihanna mixed with Lady Gaga, but her biggest drawcard is a hairstyle that for some reason reminds me of a Tyrannosaurus Rex!

Check out the song here.

Comment The Brunson Beer Pong Invitational III - 05/26/10

With Mickey flying in from the east coast late last night, Greg, Mickey and I decided to all meet up for some lunch at the 24-hour dinner-type restaurant called Mr. Lucky’s 24-7.

Funnily enough we all ordered breakfast and spent the next hour or so catching up and sharing laughs before they both retired to their rooms for some quiet time as I prepared for the Brunson Beer Pong Invitational III!

I wasn’t actually playing, but we had a few representatives in with F-Train and Eric teamed up while GG and Kristy were also playing. Throw in Doyle and Todd Brunson, Erick Lindgren, Vanessa Rousso, Eli Elizra, lots of alcohol and pride on the line, and it was bound to be an interesting day.

F-Train and Eric busted first round while GG and his partner made it through to round two only to exit pretty quickly.


GG shoots . . . and scores!

GG and Donnie however started some $20 games and proceeded to make some handsome moolah as they dispatched of team after team – including smashing by Beer Pong cherry . . . but in my defence I did manage to sink six cups like a slanty-eyed white Kobe, however it was just my partner Rich that epically failed after declaring his Beer Pong super skills!


Garry Gates . . . Beer Pong excessive celebration example one

We all called it an early night again with meetings tomorrow before the WSOP kicks off on Friday with Event 2: $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship (8 Game Mixed) being my first event of the 2010 series.

Comment Are You A Gleek? - 05/13/10

Look . . . I’ll be honest with you . . . I am a GLEEK!

And proud of it!

Some of you may be wondering what exactly a Gleek is, and basically it is someone that loves the show Glee with a passion.

Many people think that Glee is pretty lame, but once you start watching it you will no doubt be hooked. From Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch of The 40-Year-Old-Virgin fame) laying the smackdown, guest stars like Olivia Newton-John, crazy plot twists and huge musical numbers, how could you not love this show.

Oh . . . I forgot to mention the girls . . . such as Dianna Agron.

Hailing from Georgia, 24-year old Dianna plays Quinn Fabray who begins the series as a popular Catholic girl who is also head cheerleader, president of the celibacy club and girlfriend to Quarterback and fellow popular kid Finn Hudson. That is until she falls pregnant to his best mate and gets stripped of her cheer-leading gig while simultaneously becoming a member of the Glee club.

She may not lead too many musical numbers, but without doubt makes the show more enjoyable when these eyes are looking deep in your soul.

Note: There will be more Glee girls to come!

Comment Farewelling The Aussie Millions - 01/31/10

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.

Comment Tennis And Saying Goodbye To GG - 01/29/10

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!

1 Comment Presenting . . . Timbaland’s Shock Value II - 12/13/09

Following hits such as Give It To Me, The Way I Are and Apologize, Timbaland’s third solo studio album Shock Value II has hit the stores!

After Shock Value was such as success, it was great to finally see Timbaland release the highly anticipated second volume – and it seems as though his fellow artists have lent their full support with every track bar one having a feature artist lending vocals.

My favourite track is the third released single called Carry Out featuring Justin Timberlake which you can listen to below, but in reality, you should listen to every song as they are all great!

1 – Intro (by DJ Felli Fell)
2- Carry Out (with Justin Timberlake)
3 – Lose Control (with JoJo)
4 – Meet In Tha Middle (with Bran’ Nu)
5 – Say Something (with Drake)
6 – Tomorrow In The Bottle (with Chad Kroeger and Sebastian)
7 – We Belong To The Music (with Miley Cyrus)
8 – Morning After Dark (with Nelly Furtado and SoShy)
9 – If We Ever Meet Again (with Katy Perry)
10 – Can You Feel It (with Esthero and Sebastian)
11 – Ease Off The Liquor
12 – Undertow (with The Fray and Esthero)
13 – Timothy Where You Been (with Jet)
14 – Long Way Down (with Daughtry)
15 – Marchin On (with OneRepublic)
16 – The One I Love (with Keri Hilson and D.O.E)
17 – Symphony (with Attitude, Bran’Nu and D.O.E)

1 Comment Family Get Together With DJ Hero - 12/5/09

It was an unfortunate day on the cricket pitch today.

Well personally anyway as we locked up first innings points by bowling out last year’s premiers for 100 and making the score and a further 40 by the end of play. There is no need to talk about my dismal performance at the batting crease . . . let’s just say I should be back in the seconds soon enough if I continue to play this bad . . . 0*, 80*, 32*, 31, 0 (* = not out).

Afterwards I met up with my cousins for a family get together as my cousin Scottie and his girlfriend were in town visiting everyone.

Now this might not sound like a big deal, but back when we grew up our cousins were always closer than any of our friends, and as we were all close in age we spent holidays and weekends together. However with most of us growing up and going our separate ways in terms of living and working, it’s always hard to just randomly meet up for a catch up even though there are fourteen of us just on Mum’s side of the family!

Dinner was at an Indian restaurant in town, and after a quick stop off at Cold Rock for some much needed dessert, we headed back to Adam’s house to continue a recently started tradition of playing video games all night!

Last time it was Buzz, but this time Adam had a new toy with DJ Hero and we all took shots at becoming DJ Jazzy Jeff all night long!

DJ HeroDJ Hero follows the same concept of Guitar Hero and has a controller based on a turntable. There are three buttons to activate accented beats while you scratch away and adjust their crossfade between songs. There are over 80 remixes of two different songs from a selection of over 100 songs across numerous genres; for example Daft Punk megamixes, Vanilla Ice mixed with MC Hammer and even Jackson 5 mixed with Third Eye Blind!

This is simply one of the greatest games I’ve played in ages, and being able to mix some old school classics with new pop songs, some corny but cool graphics and great songs and music quality nearly – actually – does beat a night out at the club . . . once you minus the drunk randoms, overload of guys and cramped space.

Just check out this sample from the game with Kid Cudi’s Day N Nite mixed with the Black Eyed Peas Boom Boom Pow.

Comment Life Decision One: Purchasing A Nintendo Wii - 12/1/09

Today I made a decision that will most likely change my life forever.

Correction.

It will change my life forever!

Today I decided that I will be purchasing a . . . wait for it . . . a Nintendo Wii Console!

Nintendo Wii
Yes the picture is large . . . but that is to reinforce the dramatic nature of such a huge decision!

Now you all might be thinking how the hell is buying a Wii such a big life-changing decision? So let me break it down for you.

Beginning my gaming days with a Super Nintendo before moving on to a PlayStation and then a PlayStation 2 – combined with a GameBoy here and a few PC games there – my inner Asian nerd wouldn’t be satisfied until I took the next step and evolved my current gaming situation.

With currently three superior gaming platforms on the market –XBox 360, PlayStation and the Wii – it was always going to be a tough decision about what platform would be next in line to drain my brain cells of precious life and continue my evolution to an albino due to lack of sun.

The XBox 360 is the older of the above mentioned platforms, but that doesn’t mean it lacks an edge in the gaming market. I believe that the XBox 360 is the leader in online gaming, and since I don’t have any real need for that, it was ruled out early on.

For the past few months I have had my eyes locked firmly on purchasing a PlayStation 3 after testing it out at a few different friend’s houses. The graphics were phenomenal and the game play was unbelievable – and in reality there was no doubt about it – the PlayStation 3 was what I wanted! The only problem . . . the cost . . . but that has now been solved with prices plummeting downward so that the plebs of society (myself) can now afford one.

So you must now be thinking how does the Nintendo Wii even get a mention? Technically the PlayStation 3 may be far superior, but I believe that the Wii offers more than it’s Sony counterpart. Games that interest me; such as FIFA 09 and FIFA 10 and the soon to be released FIFA 11, are all available on Wii with the same capabilities as on the PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 versions. Combined with the ability to alter controllers into guns, steering wheels and tennis racquets to play the vast range of non-FIFA games is a massive plus. Throw in Wii Sports, Sports Resort and Wii Fit and my inner Asian nerd may actually get off his fat ass and bowl some strikes or hit a home run.

Considering that I’m starting to get old, the need for a gaming console that could entertain a more mature group of friends that don’t spend their time cracking level 17 on Super Mario Kart or playing ten tables a day for fifteen hours was also a positive. This is where the Wii Sports and other such interactive games push the Wii into the number one spot in my search for a new gaming platform!

I hope now you can understand that choosing a gaming platform is truly a life-changing decision that shouldn’t be rushed, but heavily thought about, so that the inner Asian nerd in everyone can be completely satisfied when his or her eyes turn square!