tilted behaviour

I managed only a couple of hours of sleep last night before having to wake up nice and early to make my way to the airport.

Heath and Kirsty were arriving into town to prepare for their upcoming weekend wedding and consequently needed my car to get round. I was happy to lend it to him and as I arrived at the airport we did a straight stop as they took the keys and I made my way to check-in.

After I made my way through immigration I stopped by Duty Free and pondered buying a DSLR since we wouldn’t have one for New Zealand and the fact that I would definitely be putting it to use. I was looking at the Nikon D3000 ($899), Canon EOS1000d ($999) and the Canon EOS450d ($1,199) which all came with twin lenses as well as the fact that the salesman was willing to take some more off the price.

I tried contacting some of my in-the-know photography friends before boarding, but was unable to get hold of them and consequently decided against buying one.

The three-hour plane ride was spent with me mostly wriggling round in my seat trying to get comfortable while occasionally nodding off. We experienced some heavy turbulence over the last few minutes of the flight, but still managed to land safely in Christchurch as the driver greeted me a little on the late side that dropped me off at the Millennium hotel in town. Unfortunately my hotel reservations had been stuffed up and they had moved me over to their sister hotel called the Copthorne Durham which was located just across the road from the casino.

Once there I was checking in and was told that they had upgraded me to a suite. I grabbed my key and headed to my room.

Walking in my first reaction was, “this ain’t no f**king suite” as I looked into a normal room featuring two double beds and a standard bathroom. That was until I opened the door next to the bathroom and found a huge master bedroom featuring a king-size bed. I settled in and had a hot shower before deciding to make my way to the casino.

The casino was probably smaller than the whole Crown Poker Room combined!

Nine poker tables, a dozen or so table games but plenty of slots were spread room a fairly un-organised and confusing floor, but I headed straight to the cash game registration to see what was on offer.

$1-2 NLH (buy-in $75-$200), $1-2 NLH/PLO ($100-$200), $5-5 NLH ($200-$500) and $5-5 NLH/PLO ($200-$500) seemed to be the major games on offer with a few interest lists for 3-Card Manila and satellites.

With a tournament running it seemed like I wouldn’t get on a table for a little while and decided to sit on a $5 Blackjack table with $100 – which with the exchange rate worked out to be like $80 or so.

I played for around an hour and won a total of six hands. I wasn’t hitting on 20 or standing on 5, I was just playing basic sound strategy but getting owned by the dealer. For some reason however I managed to increase my bets at the right amount and finished only down $50 bored as all hell. Over to the Baccarat table I went and after losing $25, then winning $25, then losing $50 I went and grabbed a steak before my cash game opened up.

Yann decided to take half my action in the $1-2 NLH game as I sat down on a new table with $150 (weird set buy-in amounts of $80 – $150).

Without going through all the boring details of my session, I was extremely card dead but still managed to profit $90 (well really only $45) on a table full of fish who had no real idea what they were doing. The only upside was sitting on the right of a cute Asian girl called Mina. Although her boyfriend was sitting at the other end of the table – and paid her no attention at all – we spent the whole session chatting, and after she went busto, we decided to play one card each in a hope to get out of the run of cold cards that I was having. It didn’t work and I cashed out at around 3am after paying Yann his share of the stake.

I made my way back to the hotel and called it a night with a plan of getting out and exploring Christchurch the following day.

But in the meantime, check out this video that makes me el oh el about New Zealand . . . gotta feeling I’ll be watching it countless of times while here!

The car was full, the boot packed and the esky filled with alcohol as I began my drive from Geelong to Doncaster and then to Traralgon for a weekend with the boys.

We ended up leaving Melbourne around 7:30pm once everyone had finished work with three cars including James, Mat, Brendo, myself, James’ brother Adam and his four Irish back-packer mates along with some of James’ soccer buddies.

Arriving at the Monash University Gippsland campus, we all checked into one of the on-campus residential dorms that had six bedrooms for us twelve guys. We settled in, grabbed some food, and began a long night of drinking, kicking a soccer ball up and down the hallway, Bluff and Kings.

After a 4am end to the previous night debauchery we were all woken relatively early due to the soaring heat that seeped into our rooms.

James had to coach a soccer match in Moe – the main reason why we all came down as he gets very very lonely – and had left early along with a full car of followers, while the Irish and Adam began drinking. Mat, Brendo and I headed into Traralgon to grab a pub meal, scoop out what the town had to offer and also let Mat place a bet or seven on the races.

The town, although small, still had everything that we needed as none of us managed to finish our pub meal. Mat was unable to gamble up riches, but still managed to keep some money in his pocket as we returned back to the University to play a six-on-six half pitch soccer match.

The blazing heat continued to beat down on us as the Irish, along with Adam and Brendo, were no match for the ‘home’ team. We all returned back to the dorm to shower and prepare ourselves for a huge night out!

Our first stop was Star Bar and an order of Jagerbombs! We all settled around the pool table as the place was fairly quiet. Eventually the ladies started pouring in – and what surprised us all was the fact that out of the whole place there were only about twenty blokes; with us making the majority of that number up. More and more alcohol began to be consumed as we all hit the dancefloor to show these country-folks what us city slickers are made of.

Probably the funniest part of the night was when I organised a funny photo with James involving two bridesmaids on a Hens night. They both had these blow-up dildo’s and I asked them to spitroast him for a funny Facebook photo.

”Do you want to do him from behind or from the front?”
“I take it from behind, but I won’t give it to you from behind!”

We all burst into laughter and snapped away at scene before making our way to the second stop of the night – Inferno / Saloon Bar.

If any of you have been to Cheers on Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, then you would know exactly what this place was like. Two different dancefloors with different music, pool tables, multiple bars and a young crowd overfilled with guys. We all went from room to room dancing and drinking the night away before a few of us ended the night early at around 4am.

Waking up around midday to find a few of the boys returning home early due to prior commitments, the rest of us packed up the dorm and grabbed some lunch before making our way back to Traralgon to catch the last match James had to coach for the weekend.

A favourable 3-1 scoreline ended our weekend as the Irish and Adam headed to Phillip Island while James and I made our way back to Melbourne.

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.

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.

Having an early flight at 7:15am from Melbourne was never going to be fun, but to make sure I slept on the flight to Hong Kong, I decided to stay up all night before driving to the airport from Geelong.

I left just before 5am armed with two Redbull’s as I began the drive up the dark and foggy highway.

I dropped my car off at Jetport Parking and headed to the airport to check-in and catch up with Lynn. It was a pretty uneventful flight as we touched down at around 9am and made out way to the International gate.

Here is where the problem starts.

A few days earlier we had received a text explaining that the flight would be delayed by a few hours, but once at the terminal we were informed that the flight had been cancelled.

After speaking to a Viva Macau Representative on the phone we were told to wait round till 11:30am when someone would be able to help us out. Lynn and I grabbed some food, checked out Duty Free and joined a few other Aussie’s sitting around until we were able to seek help.

The basic jist of the situation was that the flight was cancelled due to bad weather and that if we booked a flight on Virgin Atlantic, Viva Macau would refund the cost of the replaced flight.

Along with a bunch of Australian’s that had slowly trickled in from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, we all made our way to the Virgin Atlantic office to book a flight that left in a little over two hours.

After over an hour of waiting, Lynn and I finally got our seats, took our bags back downstairs to check-in and rushed to our gate along with the remainder of the Aussie entourage.

Since we were last to check-in, all our seats were scattered and I wound up sitting next to a some random Asian guy.

The flight was delayed by around an hour due to maintenance issues – it might have been longer, but I was asleep the whole time . . . well until we took off anyway!

Once we were in the air, I didn’t get one wink of sleep and was forced to watch TV the whole time – first of all the movies I Love You, Man and Ghosts of a Girlfriends Past before hitting some comedy sitcoms for the last part of the journey.

After collecting our bags we organised two mini-buses to house all eleven of us as we made our way to the ferry terminal a little past 1am.

We caught the 1:30am ferry, and in a little under an hour we were in Macau. Lynn headed to the Sofitel while me and Van headed to the Grand Waldo where he was kind enough to let me crash with him in the Versace decked out Presidential Suite.

He went out with Troy and Kevin for a massage, while I ordered some food, played a game of pool and had a hot shower before hitting the hay.

Grand Waldo Presidential Suite

After another stint abroad I was ready to return home back to Melbourne – except for the fact that it was straight to the Victorian Poker Championships for the State of Origin!

It was an early start in the morning as both me and Duffy had to catch an 8:30am flight out of the Gold Coast.

We were pleasantly surprised to find out that Grant ‘grunter’ Levy would be joining us, and consequently we split a cab to the airport.

We chomped down on some breakfast before boarding the plane; only to find out that I drew the short straw and was forced to sit next to James Honeybone (haha) as Grunter got an upgrade to premium economy as someone had been allocated his seat.

Duff stared out the window, I fell asleep to some Coldplay and Honeybone chucked his iPod on while watching the sports recap.

Another successful plane ride (landing is a success IMO) that featured me sleeping from take off to landing saw us pick up our bags and catch the Jetport Parking bus to my car.

We dropped Duffy home in St Kilda before checking at Crown Promenade so that Grunter could dump his bags so that he could play the Heads Up tournament.

I grabbed a haircut before heading down early to scope out the set-up for the State of Origin.

Following the highly successful inaugural event last year, the State of Origin returned with a room full of to overfed egos, millions of dollars in earnings and plenty of hubris ready to battle it out!
Eight states competed from reigning champions South Australia, favourites Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, the quiet kids from Tasmania and Queensland, along with the two noobs of the Territories (Northern and Australian Capital Territory) and New Zealand!

The tournament was played as an eight-handed shootout with the winning state on each table progressing through to the final table, but everyone that is eliminated earning points that go towards the overall team score and $32,000 team prize.

When the dust settled at 4:30am (sigh) New Zealand had sent three people through to the final table, while all other states managed to sneak one on there apart from Victoria and the Territories to see the overall points tally sit at:

Current Standings
The Territories – 250 points
New South Wales – 240
Queensland – 180
Victoria – 160
South Australia – 130
Tasmania – 110
Western Australia – 70
New Zealand – 60

Another day and another flight somewhere . . . the life of a PokerNews Blogger!

It was an afternoon flight to the Gold Coast to see me touchdown around 5:30pm and after getting into contact with Heath, I told him I was on my way to the hotel.

As the taxi took off I expected to be at the hotel fairly soon, but alas, 15 minutes had passed and we were still driving along the highway.

I kept looking out for signs to see if we were actually driving to Brisbane just in case I had told the driver the wrong thing.

The taxi ticked up to the $40-mark and I messaged Heath to see if it cost him the same amount. Once informed that I was indeed on the right track, I settled back to finally arrive at the Conrad Jupiters Casino and Hotel only $55.30 out of pocket.

I met up with Heath and Kirsty at a nearby shopping centre where we sat down at a seafood restaurant for a relatively early dinner.

Fish, calamari and squid were our choices, and after discussing everything from LA to Lebanon, PokerNews to PokerNetwork we were on our way back to the room so that Kirsty could finish off the latest edition of our PokerNews magazine while me and Heath battled it out heads-up.

He won the first two matches pretty quickly and easy and after flirting the idea for what had seemed like eternity we decided to play the Out-of-Position Game.

Basically it is heads-up where Heath always has the button and both blinds are the same. It all came about when we were discussing hands etc and I stated that I enjoy playing out of position and feel that I can play it fairly effectively.

The battle began, and after a few check-raises here and bluffs there I took down the first match. The second match started and I crippled Heath early on with my top-pair versus his overcards and diamond-draw. I switched gears right up and played extremely aggressive three-betting all in with weak holdings like Queen-Three and actual hands like Ace-X and pairs.

Finally Heath called off his remaining chips to be in terrible shape against my pocket tens, and when he was unable to improve I would indeed be the Out-of-Position Champion!

We played some Chinese poker before calling it a night as I was planning on heading to the poker room early tomorrow just in case of any difficulties . . . the final stop of PokerStars.net ANZPT begins tomorrow with Queensland running two simultaneous events in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

The day had finally arrived to see me vacate Las Vegas for another year.

I packed what was left of my belongings before heading to the Premium Factory Outlets for one final time (I think this makes it four or five visits). I picked up some BOSE headphones for Kirsty while getting two-pairs of American basketball shorts . . . American you may ask? Well basically all our shorts back home don’t have pockets, while the ones purchased here have pockets as they are more for casual wear than play (unless you’re allowed to play with pockets in the States).

I returned to the Golden Nugget and ordered a shuttle to the airport to arrive nice and early at the United check-in. I had to pay a baggage fee, but was quickly on my way to Los Angeles.

It took me a while to find the Virgin Australia terminal, and after they also slapped with a US$100 excess baggage fee I was finally through to our gate where I sat there twiddling my thumbs for several hours.

Like normal I fell asleep straight away after being granted my request of the centre row left aisle and was fortunate enough to have a spare seat between me and a striking 20-something brunette.

After snoring my way to Sydney I nearly (along with many others) nearly missed our connecting flight to Melbourne, but after packing a transfer bus and rushing through the terminal I was only one flight and one bus ride away from home.

I rushed through Melbourne airport as I knew I only had a slim chance of catching the bus down to Geelong – otherwise I would have to wait over an hour for the next one.

I made it on time and was on my way home after another enjoyable stay in Las Vegas (and partly Lebanon) that lasted one day shy of two months.

GG Las Vegas and Lebanon . . . see you both soon!