I’m writing this blog from Newmanmi’s kitchen table after a week of hanging out with him, pwnchizzle and RaiderDuck. It’s been fun as always, but at the same time a sad reminder that we were all holidaying in tropical North Queensland this time a year ago without a care in the world. So much has changed in our worlds has changed since April 15th, 2011. Pwnchizzle is only chilling with us when he’s not busy saving lives as a doctor and poker is much less a topic of conversation.

Pwnchizzle had a couple of days off and we headed on a road trip North to a small fishing town called Cervantes. I went on monkey tilt because the local tavern couldn’t show me the Lions game live on TV and we had to wait for two hour delayed broadcast and then at 3 quarter time the entire town was blacked out. The next day with few less drinks in me a I realised I had a season pass on my phone to watch every game live. Thankfully, we were getting thrashed and it didn’t matter, but it soured the first night a little.

The next day was much more enjoyable though as we visited the Pinnacles (limestone formations sticking out of the ground). Newman’s lowered car struggled to tour as round the narrow and rocky dirt track through the

National Park, but got through unscathed. I was kind of hoping I’d get see him in rage mode having to change one of his brand new tyres (after he blew one of hisod one’s in the boiling heat on middle of highway last time we were on a road trip).

The weather has been great the whole trip and we’ve been spending a lot of time by the beach and swimming pool. RaiderDuck has been to pole dancing class twice to keep up his skills, as well as an amateur pole dancing show with some randoms he met on Facebook. I’m averaging about 15 games of pool a day, and still enraged by the Newman house rule that you must nominate a pocket on the 8-ball and that pocket is yours and yours only for the rest of game, results in some ridiculous end game play. Other than that, we’ve just been waching/betting sports, playing basketball and having a few drinks. Good times.

There may or may not be a video blog published at some point later in the trip (it’s been too long!). For now, enjoy this…

October was a pretty grueling month, apart from my success playing live I was pretty disappointed with it. It’s kind of a weird time of year in general for me, footy season is over and cricket hasn’t really started and I don’t have a lot of distractions outside of poker. I think next year I might look to do some traveling at around this time. A while back I posted about having some concentration/blurred visions issues, which at the time I attributed to going cold turkey on caffeine. I got checked out by a doctor and optometrist this month. We kind of figure out I was getting temporary short sightedness as a result of gazing at my computer screen all day. SO since then and definitely from now on I’m going to be looking to take more breaks to allow my eye muscles to relax for a bit.

October Results

- 80,000 hands – Achieved

- 1 session of sweating a friend per week – Failed

- Review top 5 regulars on my list – Failed

November Goals

- 80,000 hands

- Work on my discipline and concentration, in particular making some big laydown vs. nits

- Take more breaks

- Talk more strategy with friends

Gym/fitness

Not quite as happy with my effort in October as I was in September. Didn’t set the world on fire in gym, but also didn’t slack off too much. Had ambitious goals of running a lot, but struggled for motivation most of the time and cricket kind of got in the way a bit. Total fail at playing a single game of squash in October, hoping to rectify that in November. I’m going to Europe at the end of November for a few weeks, I really want to try and keep up my gym work and more importantly eat well while I’m traveling.

October Results

- Run 100km – Failed

- Get back into Squash – Failed

- Set some new PBs with weights – Pass

- Attend on cricket training per week – Achieved

November Goals

- Run 40km

- Play 2 sessions of squash

- Set some new PBs with weights

- Attend on cricket training per week

- Don’t eat crap while on holiday

Other

October Results

- Learn 4 new Ukulele chords and work on my strumming and chord progression – Failed

- Play a ton of Fifa 11 – Achieved

November Goals

- Relax and have fun on holiday and use time away to just think more about the future

Clip To Inspire

This month’s song comes from the Soft Pack, from petteytheft’s hometown of San Diego. I like their sound

In October I’d like to get back to playing some serious volume as well as work on really improving my game away from the table. I’d like to try and go beyond reviews of my own hands and into studying some other regulars, taking in a bunch of videos and delving into some strategy discussion.

September Results
- 80,000 hands – Failed
- Constant and thorough hand reviews ala August – Achieved
- At least 5 poker free days – Achieved
- Tackle 3 of the most important concepts I want to delve into – Pass Mark

October Goals
- 80,000 hands
- 1 session of sweating a friend per week
- Review top 5 regulars on my list

Gym/fitness
Started out the month really well on the cardio side, but that has kind of slipped away in the later half of the month. The guy I’d been playing squash with went overseas and my girlfriend and I haven’t found the time to go and play badminton. From a weights point of view I’m really happy with my output in September in terms of volume of gym sessions and effort I put in. I’m going to Europe in late November and I know I’m going to eat crap and not exercise as much as I should while I’m over there so I kind of want to be in awesome shape before I get there. Hence, through October and early November I really want to push myself. The weather is starting to get better in Melbourne and I’d love to get out and do more running in the next few weeks.

September Results
- Really push myself each weights session, not just go through the motions – Achieved
- Protein shake after every session – Achieved
- Play either Badminton or Squash at least once a week – Pass Mark
- Attend every pre-season cricket training session – Achieved
- Dedicate more time to health and fitness and less time to poker – Pass Mark

October Goals
- Run 100km
- Get back into Squash
- Set some new PBs with weights
- Attend on cricket training per week

Other
September Results - Learn a song on the Ukulele – Achieved
- Test drive more cars and make a decision on a purchase – Achieved

October Goals
- Learn 4 new Ukulele chords and work on my strumming and chord progression
- Play a ton of Fifa 11

Clip To Inspire
Nick Cave is one our best Aussie musical exports and I’ve been enjoying this song from his side project band Grinderman.

All this watching/listening has made me keen to learn how to play, even though I barely have any spare time as it is! I ordered my very own Ukulele off EBay the other day and I’m going to set about learning whenever I can. It arrived today and I’m already annoying my girlfriend with it and my dog likes the sound even less. My good friend and fellow LifeFish RaiderDuck, who is already an extremely talented musician, is keen to pick it up as well. He very nearly bought one when we were in Hawaii and has now ordered one off Ebay himself.

Hopefully one day I’ll be good enough to jam with RaiderDuck and post a clip, but for now here are a couple of my favourites from YouTube. Enjoy!

I’ve never been a coffee drinker, my daily caffeine use was generally a can of Coke Zero every time I played a poker session (usually two a day) and the occasional green tea and a bit of chocolate through the week. It’s amazing how you can innocently be consuming these products without ever realising your dependence on them until you stop.

For the first couple of weeks in particular I was popping paracetamol regularly to numb the pain of throbbing headaches. I played some truly awful poker as my concentration and focus became easily waivered and no-existent at times. I found myself in a really grouchy mood a lot of the time and really easily irritated. I think the scariest symptom I actually suffered was some mild depression, I just found myself feeling sad for no apparent reason and really unmotivated to do things.

As I started researching all the withdrawal symptoms to make sure I wasn’t completely losing my mind, I came across something pretty interesting. I read that there is a direct link between caffeine use and grinding your teeth, which is something I do a lot (I have to wear a mouthguard every night). It makes total sense though, my caffeine dependence started in my late teens, exactly the time that my grinding first started. I’m really interested to see if it subsides now that I’ve cut back my use.

I’m still not feeling completely myself a month after giving up caffeine cold turkey. My energy levels aren’t what they once were, I’m still a bit moody, my concentration through poker sessions isn’t as sharp and I still get a bit of blurred vision. Now that I’ve come this far though, I’m determined to keep going and try and severely limit my use of caffeine in the future. I’m definitely giving up soft drink for good! In terms of my poker playing, I’m hoping my stamina returns, but if it doesn’t no big deal, I’ll adapt.

My whole experience got my curious though about the use of drugs by poker players. I’m sure the majority of players use caffeine on a regular basis, but doing some reading I found out that there are people using drugs like Ritalin and Adderall. After some research, I came to the conclusion that any of the benefits of using more serious drugs to assist your poker playing would be far outweighed by the side effects and consequences.

Anyway, that’s my story, hope someone found it interesting. I thought it was something neat to write about because caffeine consumption really is very socially acceptable and seemingly innocent. With the hardest part of giving up behind me though, I can definitely assure you that it is at least a little bit painful to try and kick your habit, even when you don’t consume extreme quantities of it on a regular basis.

As I walked out of my local supermarket today, I was living the dream! Wearing my full PokerStars tracksuit, a smile on my face and looking forward to a wonderful weekend, life couldn’t have gotten much better. Little did I know, my world was about to be rocked.

The car park doesn’t provide a lot of breathing room at the best of times, but then just as I was about to reverse out some idiot decided to snuggle their car right up next to me leaving only a few inch gap. Traffic is meant to flow one way and I had no room to back out that way, I was trapped.

Being quite busy, I had to sit there for about 10 minutes waiting for a backlog of cars to clear and look for an opening to quickly sneak out the other direction. My opening arrived, I could successfully duck around a corner without impacting on any traffic and no one would care… or so I thought.

Out of nowhere streams this crazy old Italian lady, waving her walking stick in the air and pointing in the opposite direction and yelling what I can only imagine were some colourful words. At this point I’m sure a lot of you would have honked at her incessantly or lowered your window and told the crazy bitch where to get off. I’m a pretty chill driver though and I just chose to ignore her and try to slowly creep past her.

She didn’t take a liking to that! BANG BANG BANG! She took her walking stick to my window and as I tried to get past, still yelling things at the top of her voice. It was at that point that it struck me that it was Friday the 13th and the only logical conclusion was that this lady was putting some kind of hex on me. Once I was clear I sped off, sweating profusely and feeling like my whole world was crumbling.

I burst through my front door, threw my groceries on the ground, rushed to my computer and pulled up a few tables. If I was to be cursed for all eternity, I wanted know right away! 5 minutes in, I sucked out on someone for a stack, my heart rate slowed and everything felt good again. I will however, always be looking over my shoulder in fear of that crazy old lady every time I go grocery shopping.

Poker
July was probably one of the worst months I’ve had poker wise, basically got owned shot taking at higher stakes early in the month and then battled running bad, poor concentration, low confidence, crappy software and lack of hand volume later in the month. Feeling much better about things now, learned a lot of lessons out of it all and August is already looking a lot better.

Indoor Cricket
Finals campaign for both Agent Orange sides was woeful/depressing. We just can’t seem to perform when it matters. Someone should sack the captain…

The Ashes
The series has been going pretty terrible for Australia thus far, but at least my prop bets with RaiderDuck have been keeping things interesting. He’s been doing pretty well in the batting department with his team of Watson/Hughes, Ponting and Clarke vs. my Katich, Hussey, North. Thankfully though, Siddle and Hilfy have minimised the damage for me in the last couple of tests with their wickets.

Interesting Clip
This is a few months old, but pretty amazing if you haven’t seen it.

• Poker
  • Re-capture form by playing a lot, being more focused and studying hard
  • Move to Titan Poker and reach highest VIP level
• Complete settlement process for new house and move in
• Blog more (Yep, it has been a while)
• Go to open days and decide on a tertiary course
• Fitness
  • More cardio at gym leading into cricket season
  • Get the most out of pre-season training

May Goals
Passed With Flying Colours, Could Have Done Better, Failed
- Finish Agent Orange MVP voting
- Study the higher stakes games and players
- 3 new PBs at gym
- Include more abs/core excercises in my program
- 5 hours of cardio a week minimum
- Go to the LDP monthly meeting after missing the last two

May Goals
- Finish Agent Orange MVP voting
- Study the higher stakes games and players
- 3 new PBs at gym
- Include more abs/core excercises in my program
- 5 hours of cardio a week minimum
- Go to the LDP monthly meeting after missing the last two

April Goals
Passed With Flying Colours, Could Have Done Better, Failed
- 1 hour of cardio every day after I get back from holiday
- Finish Agent Orange MVP voting
- Contact mortgage broker and start looking at houses
- 10k VPPs PokerStars
- Play less tables/start more tables

• >10k hands 6 players or less

- Poker Study

• Deep stacked play
• Late position/blinds situations
• 3-betting in all positions
• Raising flops