tilted behaviour

Waking up to a barrage of emails regarding our Visas for Brazil, both Brett and I decided to make an unexpected trip back to the Rio to the PokerNews office.

I had to fill out an online application twice since the first one decided not to work, before Brett and I were finally free so as to enjoy his last day in Las Vegas. Venturing over to the Miracle Mile shops, we walked round there for an hour or so, not really finding anything until the very last store; Urban Outfitters.

I found about a dozen t-shirts that I instantly fell in love with, along with a couple of cool jackets, but decided to hold off until later in my trip before I leave. Mickey wanted to join us for dinner, and since we had around $120 in Hard Rock comps, we decided to eat at Johnny Smalls. Johnny Smalls is a really nice restaurant located at the back of the casino that serves tapas-styled food at a semi-reasonable price. With the three of us being joined mid-meal by Brett’s friend Jess, we ordered over twenty dishes while – since we’re all degenerates – playing nine-card Omaha flips as the bill totalled a little more than we expected.

With nearly every media member that was still in town heading to the Gold Coast for some midnight dollar bowling, the four of us made our way there.

As the beers began to flow freely, the cards came out once again as we played an intense hand on nine-card Omaha where Mickey flopped middle set, Elissa top and bottom set, Brett a straight flush draw and I a gutshot and nut-flush draw along with an overpair. I dinged an Ace on the turn to take the lead and leave everyone drawing dead apart from Brett who held the one-outer draw . . . of course it was delivered on the river as I spat chips and made a hasty exit from the bar to hit the bowling lanes.

Brett and I both valued ourselves as decent bowlers and decided to play 25 cents a pin, 50 cents a spare and $1 a strike, while also spotting Mickey fifteen pins to make the game even. Unfortunately for Brett and I, we bowled like complete dogs, and although we still beat Mickey, the fifteen pins we spotted him hurt our pockets. The next game I managed to convince both Mickey and Brett to spot me the fifteen pins. Mickey bowled roughly the same score of around 125, Brett bowled something in the 150s, while I bowled worse then an epileptic salmon and struggled to even pass 100 as I shipped the moolah to both of them!

I opted out of the last game as I decided that I wanted to bowl left-handed. Originally I tried to get a line off Brett at bowling over 75 pins, but he wouldn’t give it to me. He must have sniffed something as I came out and bowled a whopping 147 left-handed while he still managed a strong 170 and Mickey a standard 124 as we called it a night and headed back to the Hard Rock.

Brett and I decided to play some late-night cash as a send off to his Vegas trip as we both found ourselves on separate $1-2 NLH tables.

Brett scooped a huge pot just as his table broke to see cash out a rack and change as he called it a night as his flight left in a few hours, while I tried to stick it out to try and make some money. Finding myself all in preflop with Kings against an online kid’s Ace-Queen seemed good until an Ace found its way on the flop and I made my way up to the room to try and get some sleep before checking out tomorrow for Donnie and GG’s place.

Finally arriving at the ANZPT Queensland Main Event Final Table was something to look forward to a the table was stacked with some quality players!

Two super online players in Scott ‘Punty’ Smith and Joel ‘StrongPlay’ Dodds, along with fellow Sydney-sider Danny Joukhadar, and once you add in the aggressive Kiwi in Phillip Willcocks – things were always going to be tough for the other four players.

Dodds soared to over 40% of the chips in play while Willcocks also climbed as Joukhadar slipped to the bottom of the pack.

Ex-White Sox pitcher Paul Gibson exited along with Joukhadar to see Dodds lock up third placing in the PokerStars.net ANZPT Sponsorship Points race as good friend Smith exited.

Third would be as far as Dodds was reached when he was two-outered by Willcocks to see the first Kiwi / Australian heads up battle of the tour.

Willcocks took a seven-two-chip advantage into heads up play with Star City dealer Scott Kerr, and after a dominating battle mixed with some luck, skill and poise, Kerr would come out on top taking down the title as ANZPT Queensland Champion and $168,075 in prize money.

With Heath and Kirsty already returning to Melbourne to cover an event and Duffy retiring to bed, I headed upstairs and wrote a quick article for PokerNetwork before heading downstairs to get some food before making my way to the cash games.

I bought in for $200 on the $1-2 NLH table and was quickly town to $120 and forced to top up another $100 after missing every flush and straight draw that I flopped and have every pocket pair and preflop open totally fluff the flop.

Just like the previous night – these guys were again atrocious!

But of course I could get none of it.

I flopped bottom set in one hand on a Broadway flop and got one street of value on the river from an underpair (see what I mean), but otherwise nothing.

After slipping down to around $55 I straddled all in dark and got some action from a player with a pair of deuces. My seven-five was the nuts when a seven flopped, and after doing it again the next hand from the big blind I was up to over $110.

A few hands later I open-shipped dark from the button and my Q♣ 8♦ some how didn’t get there!

Off to bed and off to pack for my 8:30am flight tomorrow morning!

Day Three is here with both the Gold Coast and Brisbane fields merging at Conrad Jupiters on the Gold Coast to play down to the final table.

Duffy joined me down here to see the remaining forty players battle it out on their way to see one of them be crowned ANZPT Queensland Champion.

Lee Nelson, Stewart Scott and Tim ‘LuckyShades’ Horan would all find themselves on the rail, and following the unusual simultaneous tenth and ninth place eliminations, we found ourselves at a final table just eight hours into the day.

Seat 1: Paul Gibson – 352,000
Seat 2: Phillip Willcocks – 536,000
Seat 3: Scott ‘Punty’ Smith – 806,000
Seat 4: Scott Kerr – 532,000
Seat 5: Lee Fraser – 483,000
Seat 6: Shoshiro Karita – 239,000
Seat 7: Joel ‘StrongPlay’ Dodds – 1,528,000
Seat 8: Danny Joukhadar – 431,000

With the early finish for the day we all returned to our room to get ready for the Player’s Party at the lobby bar.

It was pretty much the usual crew of PokerStars.net Pro’s and satellite winners along with the travelling tournament junkie contingent.

After a few beers and lots of snacks we headed back to the room to battle it out playing Chinese poker.

End result – I was losing eight points but high carded to break even!

The two flights on the Gold Coast merged today to see day two action get underway in the ANZPT Queensland Main Event.

Chris Levick fell early to see Tony Hachem crowned the ANZPT Points Champion before he too fell to the rail. Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick was unable to get much motoring today and exited to the rail courtesy of running tens in to Aces, soon to be followed by Emad Tahtouh as Scott ‘Punty’ Smith surged up the chip counts.

At the end of the day, Punty would lead the remaining 40, but still have to contend with Joel ‘StrongPlay’ Dodds, Tim ‘LuckyShades’ Horan hot on his tail.

Andrew Meldrum, Techni-Colour Chips, Julian Cohen, Linda Tyler, Scott ‘Punty’ Smith, Graeme ‘Kiwi G Putt, Putt’s Chip Stack, Tim ‘LuckyShades’ Horan

Once the tournament was wrapped up for the night, I headed upstairs to watch the Ashes with Heath as Kirsty was meeting up with some girlfriends for a few drinks and a good night out.

As our room service arrived, I was sent a text message that my $1-2 NLH table was ready, and after polishing off my Chicken Parmigiana I headed downstairs.

It was weird taking my seat at the table, because I had played a live cash game since heading to Lebanon – nearly three weeks ago – a gap that is very rare for me!

I bought in for the minimum of $100, as I just wanted to have some fun and not donk off too much before heading back to Melbourne and then off to Macau. I check-called top-pair with K♠ 9♣ out of the small blind, and then when I tripped up on the turn, I check-called another pot-sized bet before being shown a King and weaker kicker on the river to take the pot down.

My biggest hand came up when I opened K♣ J♠ from early postion to $7 and was met with four callers. The flop fell down A♠ K♠ 5♠ and I fired $27 at the pot. The tight player on my left called, and I went into shutdown mode unless a King, Jack or spade fell as I had this guy on just an ace. Brick, brick and I mucked at the sight of his A♥ Q♦.

I reload another $100 and after a few orbits of boring nothingness I flat $10 with 6♥ 6♦, two callers before there is a min-raise to $20 and an all in for $25, I call the extra $15 and five of us see the flop of 4♣ 7♥ 8♦ land. I check-call $10 (WTF?) from the min-raiser and when the 5♠ lands on the turn I ship it in, only to have both the remaining active players muck. The all in player folds his Kings in disgust as I move back to $180.

My final hand see me call down a solid player with 5♥ 5♦ on a four over-card pot, and when I table my hand on the checked river he mucks his double barrel.

Up $11 and I head back to my room to play some HORSE with Heath.

Of all the pots we play, at least 94% of them are against each other and with an average of three-bets on each street! We also start up a sit-n-go, in which I dominate to third as he bows out in sixth.

2am rolls round, and I decide to call it a night as I’m up $30 from the sit-n-go and two 25c-50c HORSE tables and the Aussies are unfortunately in control of day one of the fourth test.

Another day behind the computer at the ANZPT Queensland Main Event and another day of tournament poker.

Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick was in the field today, and consequently, after missing out on a piece of his 100k collect in Melbourne, I bought a small 4% share for $100.

The field was fairly stacked with the likes of Lee Nelson, Graeme ‘Kiwi G’ Putt and Celina Lin playing, but rather than going through some of the ways the above mentioned players took down pots with Aces, I thought I’d share with you a hand I wrote that I found rather amusing.

(Not a bright day for the Tasmanian!)

It is quite obvious that the current players on Table 9 didn’t follow the ANZPT Melbourne coverage when Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick earned the moniker of Heath ‘No Set No Bet’ Chick.

Currently struggling on just above his starting stack, Chick recently opened to 800 and found one caller in Derek Cheung to see a flop of 7♣ 4♠ 6♠.

Chick fired out 1,250, only to have Cheung raise to 3,000 to prompt a near insta-fold from Chick.

With Chick’s previous range during his runner-up finish in Melbourne being a set plus, it can only be inferred that Cheung held 5♠ 8♠ . . . ballsy play from the Hong Kong native!

Heath, Kirsty and myself wondered down the road to find a place to eat, and after searching for a while we found a place where there was a $12 steak night special.

We all ordered a steak and a beer . . . and they both went down perfectly!

With Cold Rock across the road, there was no way we could resist and walked home enjoying some ice-cream as the weather began to cool.

After four stops, we have finally reached the last stop of the inaugural PokerStars.net ANZPT with the Queensland Main Event kicking off today.

Duffy was based in Brisbane while I took up base at the Gold Coast where we were greeted with 62 entrants to take today’s day 1a field up to 116.

We had a fairly strong field mixed with tournament enthusiasts from around the country such as Eric Assadourian, Emad Tahtouh, Danny Joukhadar and locals Stewart Scott, Richard Holmes, Lisa Walsh and Jamie Pickering.

Quads, one-outers and Jack-high squeeze plays were the norm, but instead of running through a few hands of the day, I thought I would post some of my favourite photos from the day.

Emad Tahtouh, Jamie Pickering, The Buck, Conrad Jupiters Dealer, Chips and the Shoe, Richard Holmes, Stewart Scott, Andrew Hinrichsen

To check out the rest of the photos from the day (and upcoming days) check them out here.