APPT Sydney Trip

I’ve just returned from a poker trip to Sydney and feel obliged to post a trip report! I was there for the duration of the Asia Pacific Poker Tour main event and had a really awesome time. I shared a 68th floor apartment with epics views of the centre of Sydney with 5 other full-ring cash grinders. We had Raiderduck from AP, LacieK, Newmanmi, skelm from FTP and petteytheft from Stars in the household and ponchoko from Stars chilling with us most the trip. I was meeting all the guys, besides RaiderDuck, in real life for the first time after talking to them online/playing against them for a very long time. I couldn’t have been happier with how we all got along and have some great memories from the trip.

Petteytheft was the only non-Aussie in the group and we had a lot of fun teaching him about cricket and other things culturally foreign to him. He played in the main event, made it to Day 2, but unfortunately busted. I also had the chance to meet Fantasticcow and sethsethseth, Cow managed to cash in the Main Event.

I teamed up with skelm to play in the teams event and LacieK paired with Newmanmi. Star City has a new poker room, but this event was played on the floor of the sports lounge, it was kind of like an arena. Together we nursed a 20bb stack pretty much from the 3rd level onwards, never really getting above that in chips, but just managing to slowly chip up each level. With about 20 teams out of 70 odd remaining with skelm playing we got a crucial double up with AA > KK. Then the pressure was on me heading into both the money and final table bubble with about an 18bb stack. Early in the level with 15 players remaining a guy who had about two big blinds less than us raised in MP and it folded to me in the big blind, I shoved AQ obviously and he thought for ages then called with AK, not really sure what he was thinking about there… No luck sucking out and the next hand our K5 couldn’t crack AQ and it was all over.

A pretty frustrating night in the end, I would much rather have just busted early, but I loved the format of having one blind level on one blind level off, it almost made live tournament poker bearable. We played 8 odd hours all for nothing though, the other two busted in the first few hours with KK < AA and were joined by Pettey after he busted the main event. We had a good solid sweat from them as they watched from the bar. It would have been nice to make the final table and take a shot at Joe Hachem and co. who were playing at the feature table all night.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was our park cricket game. We bought a cricket set and managed to find a decent spot to play in Hyde Park. Pettey had obviously never played before and the other guys hadn’t played any serious cricket for a good few years. The standard was actually pretty high though, Pettey proved to be an absolute natural, especially with his bowling and he played some marvellous on drives with the bat, Newman showed some freakish agility with a run out in the field and ponchoko was much better than he had let on beforehand. The best moment though was one of the craziest catches I’ve ever seen, the one-hand one bounce rule was in play when skelm’s friend Johnny spilled a sharp chance on the full at deep mid on, he recovered quickly, avoided a lamp post and did a forward roll as he grabbed it to take a brilliant one hander on the bounce.
Our final night was spent ordering pizza in, drinking and playing a small stakes mixed game cash game in our apartment. The game was unbelievably crazy, for instance I over called a shove pre with 22 in NLHE, got it in vs QJ and AK and held and there were a bunch of other crazy pots, it was a late night and a great way to end the trip.

Hopefully, I’ll be catching up with all the guys again in Vegas next year!