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!

Full Tilt Poker $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em – 7 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Hero (SB): $464.80
BB: $80.00
UTG: $69.00
UTG+1: $397.20
MP: $78.00
CO: $1733.90
BTN: $637.00

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is SB with J K
4 folds, BTN raises to $12, Hero raises to $48, 1 fold, BTN calls $36

Flop: ($100.00) T Q A (2 players)
Hero bets $74, BTN calls $74

Turn: ($248.00) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $112, BTN calls $112

River: ($472.00) T (2 players)
Hero bets $230.80 all in, BTN calls $230.80

Final Pot: $933.60
Hero shows J K (a Royal Flush)
BTN mucks A 7
Hero wins $930.60
(Rake: $3.00)

My venture into the world of live donkaments wasn’t really all that blogworthy, but I’ll share the details anyway. I basically ran completely card dead for the most part, and the times I did pick up hands they didn’t go so well. I never got above my starting stack of 5,000 and last about 5 or 6 levels. The first big hand I picked up was QQ utg, I raised and the button and big blind called. Flop came ace high (yay), I decided to c-bet and just try and take it down, the button insta-insta called, the big blind folded and I just check folded the turn and the button showed me an ace (like I didn’t know).

The next hand I picked up was TT, raised and got four callers obviously, just check-folded on a king high flop and the guy who bet showed his king. A couple of hands later I got AA on the button, of course it folds to the HJ who limps, I raise and everybody folds… great. So my stack is slowly dwindling, everytime I pick up a somehwat shoveable hand someone opens or theres and open and a re-raise. I pick up AQ in MP with about a 13 big blind stack, a guy who had been realtively tight and just had me covered shove in the seat before me. I was mulling over my decision when the guy behind me gets really excited and pre-maturely calls. I could just tell HE had a huge hand and witht he original shover being kind of tight I let it go. It ended up being 66 vs. QQ where the sixes sucked out so I dodged going broke there. It was just a painful process of folding folding folding until I eventually got it in with K9 vs. AK and couldn’t suck out.

Hui had a bit better time of it, he actually managed to run up a bit of a chip stack. His starting table had Joe Hachem at it as well as a start Australian Rules footballer. He managed to bluff Hachem in a hand where he flatted his raise with 55 on the button pre-flop and then bluff raised a T high flop. Hachem told him he laid down AT,  but who knows. Later on he got moved to a table with Dario Minieri and a few other big names and held his own. At the end of the day though he got bsuted out right near the end, which was probably more painful and annoying than what happened to me.

Overall, it was an itneresting experience, but as with whenever I play live it really makes me appreciate the online game. Live poker is just so freaking slow and incredibly tilting…. and yeah everyone knows how much donkaments suck. The level of play wasn’t all THAT terrible, I mean there was a lot of stupid shit going on like limping and guys flat calling for half their stack and then check/folding flops, but still tehre were some guys who seemed to have somewhat of an idea what they were doing.

December Goals
Passed With Flying Colours, Could Have Done Better, Failed
- Reach 600,000 PokerStars VPP Milestone
- Be at 593,000 VPPs by X-mas
- $3,000 of sports wagering at BetCRIS
- Repair my bike for the summer
- Finish Trustamate.com web site
- Finish Suburbanball.com web site
- Finish TiltDaily.com web site
– 4 Days a week at the gym
- Get 15 new sites on my blogroll
- Aim to average 80 page views a day

Today I managed to reach my 600,000 VPP target for the year and I’m officially no longer prisoner to PokerStars. Next year my target is going to be a lot lower, allowing me to play less and expand my horizons at other sites and away from poker a bit.

2009 Life Goals
- Buy a house
- Keep fit and healthy
- Plan for the future, figure out what I want to get out of life
- Join the Liberal Democratic Party
- Travel within Australia a little more

I had a few reservations about it all. Mainly that I would never sit at a $200nl table filled with 8 tough players and also that a lot of these guys usually 16-24 and cutting back to 4 or 6 is going to change their games a bit. I thought it would be an interesting experience and I might get something out of it though so I agreed to participate.

I wasn’t all that happy with how my video came out. I didn’t have all that many interesting spots, I was pretty card dead for a while there. The two big pots I played were when I had KK and Artanis11 had KK and also I feel like I made a bad call down with AK on an A9336 board when TehBluffman showed me quads. By the river it was just extremely unlucky he was bluffing or value shoving worse given the line he had a taken and me not looking like I was going to fold.

The highlight of the video was definitely this one, although it was close as there were a few other sick calls. This one is pretty amazing on every street really, I think Yada’s call out of the blinds is pretty loose, but I guess he had a plan to check/raise any flop. SubV’s instincts were correct on the flop, he knows Yada likes to check/raise so he decided to float. SubV decided that if he check-raised the flop light he’d probably barrel the turn and give up on the river I guess so he decided to call the turn planning to shove the river if checked to. It seems like Yada decided at the last minute that it felt like he was getting bluffed and made a pretty sick call.

Poker Stars $1/$2 No Limit Hold’em – 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Artanis11 (CO): $206.00
ryanmack91 (BTN): $191.00
YaDaDaMeeN21 (SB): $240.00
ADZ122 (BB): $203.00
zachvac (UTG): $200.00
Coordi (UTG+1): $202.00
EurekaKid (UTG+2): $228.55
TehBluffman (MP1): $200.00
Subv (MP2): $224.00

Pre Flop: ($3.00)
4 folds, Subv raises to $6, 2 folds, YaDaDaMeeN21 calls $5, 1 fold

Flop: ($14.00) J T 6 (2 players)
YaDaDaMeeN21 checks, Subv bets $8, YaDaDaMeeN21 raises to $24, Subv calls $16

Turn: ($62.00) 6 (2 players)
YaDaDaMeeN21 bets $42, Subv calls $42

River: ($146.00) 5 (2 players)

YaDaDaMeeN21 checks, Subv bets $152 all in, YaDaDaMeeN21 calls $152

YaDaDaMeeN21 said, “lol”
YaDaDaMeeN21 said, “im gonna look like such an idiot”
YaDaDaMeeN21 said, “smells like qk so much”
YaDaDaMeeN21 said, “sigh”

Final Pot: $450.00
YaDaDaMeeN21 shows 5 7 (two pair, Sixes and Fives)
Subv shows 5 7 (two pair, Sixes and Fives)
YaDaDaMeeN21 wins $223.50
Subv wins $223.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Anyway, it was a fun experience and I thank the others for letting me be involved. Mayve we will be doing another one in the future, I don’t know.

November Goals
Passed With Flying Colours, Could Have Done Better, Failed
- Earn 65,000 VPPs
- Finish real estate investment book
- $3,000 of sports wagering at BetCRIS
- Repair my bike for the summer
- Take first wicket at cricket
- Start Trustamate.com web site
- Finish Suburbanball.com web site
- 4 Days a week at the gym
- Draw up a personal finance budget for 2009
- Write Madden 09 review

Know Your Game & Opponents
In order to mass-table you really need to have a good feel for full-ring poker and it mostly comes with experience. Knowing your opponents, both specifically and just by looking at certain stat ranges is very important too. The speed with which you can adjust your decision making depending on player type is crucial. If you aren’t across a lot of the intricacies of what is going on, you are going to be stuck thinking long and hard all too often and you won’t be able to manage a heavy table load.

Use AutoHotKey Scripts
If you don’t know what these are I wrote a blog titled Auto Hot Key Scripts – PokerStars FRNL Cash Games a while back. That should cover all you need to know about AHK scripts!

Build Your Table Load Up
Don’t suddenly jump in the deep end and decide you are going to go from playing 4 tables at once to 12. Slowly add tables at a pace you are comfortable with. If you reach a point where you feel like you are struggling then don’t be afraid to drop a couple for a while. Slowly you will find yourself more comfortable as you get more experienced with it.

Remove Distractions
When you only play a handful of tables you probably aren’t costing yourself much by having your IM open, reading forums while you play or watching the ball game. As your table load increases though you are going to need as much time as possible to ponder your decisions. Do yourself a favour and remove temptation at the start of your session and switch all distractive devices off.

Play Longer Sessions
If you are really looking to maximise your playing time, you should try and play as long as you can each session. You are going to get in more hands playing one 5 hour session than you are five separate hour long sessions. Loading up tables at the start of a session and then winding down tables at the end actually sucks up a lot more time than you may think.

Play At Good Times of Day
On some sites the traffic might be lacking at certain hours for you to sufficiently fill your table quota with good games. Even if you play on the bigger sites where getting games is never a problem you should still try and play at the peak periods. This is when the best games are going to be available and you are going to have to waste less of your time on waiting lists. Wherever possible, try not to sacrifice good table selection just in order to play hand volume.

Life, Love & Poker – Belok
Belok is a fellow full-ring grinder on PokerStars and I play against him most days. He made the decision to make a run for PokerStars Supernova Elite in 2008 and he is on track to achieve his goal in late December. All year long he has been providing updates on his quest. I’ve also enjoyed his entries on his Wedding (hilarious that he paid for it with FPPs) and his massive bible post on 24-tabling on PokerStars.

RaiderDuck – Poker, Life & Travel
Rohan is one of my best mates and I love reading his blog. You can read about all our adventures from our Vegas trip in June 2008 as well as all the happenings in his life.

Tilt Vicariously – Tiltbad
Plays as tiltbad on PokerStars and posts as PartysOver on 2+2, his blogs are usually highly amusing. He likes to post his funny hand histories as well as share stories from his life.

Bluffing My Way To The Top – Vizer02
Vizer mainly plays 100 and 200nl full-ring and is basically about where I was at about a year ago. He posts lots of hand histories and graphs of his play. He also shares anecdotes from life in college.

A Shifting Perspective – WCGRider
I ahd the pleasure of meeting Doug in real life earlier this year and you couldn’t know a nicer guy. He is known for his outlandish 25nl full-ring prop-bet as well as his LAG approach to full-ring. A video instructor at CardRunners and mod on 2+2 he is known to many in the poker community. He blogs speratically, but when he does they are usually highly enjoyable essays about poker and his life.

VINNY VT – Poker, Business And Free Poker Training Videos
Lately, Vinny has been on his poltical horse trying to rally support for leaglized online poker in the US. Of course, all online poker players support this message. He also has some great training videos on his blog for free that you should definitely check out.