November

I just got home from a fun night out. My cousin had her birthday and we had dinner and drinks which was interesting, with some funny stories told. It has been four years since we last caught up. She has been over in The Philippines and travelled through Europe a bit with her boyfriend Jason. Her name is now ‘Honey’ and that is what all her friends call her. I always knew her as Rachael and couldn’t quite get used to the name change yet. It was done for business purposes and before that it was Mia which apparently isn’t as catchy.

I have a trip to New Zealand coming up for the New Zealand Open in Auckland. I will be travelling with the NSW Institute of Sport and as with last year Carl Healey and Mat Miles will be coming on the men’s side. This will most likely be my last trip as a part of the NSWIS crew. I’m concentrating more on developing career and expanding poker/travel/academic time.

At Club Merrylands we missed out on the finals series. We lost to The Hills and competition leaders Raymond Terrace. I think we performed poorly. Against Raymond Terrace our team was under prepared and hung over? At The Hills we lost overall, I don’t know what to say, but I am pretty sure the team will play better next year. On the surface we made changes but I’m not sure they were the right ones. It is never an easy job and you have to do the best with the players you have in the positions they are picked in.

On Pokerstars I have been playing more PLO and PLO/LHE mixed games. I am trying to develop my game there and been making decent money. I still play tournaments. I am also on Cake Poker now as *shibby* and have made a good start. The games are really soft and the rake back is great. Stars has the consistent tournament volume due to a larger player pool (hundreds of thousands from around the world on together), where as Cake only has 3-10k people on at any one time.

I’m thinking of staking some people in live tournaments rather than playing them myself. They are so slow and the convenience of online play with the lower buy ins makes it a smarter choice to reduce the risk of ruin. I make a steady income online where as live poker tournament players where the buy-ins are between 2k and 40k are a recipe for ‘busto‘.

I have always preferred live cash games to live tournaments. My short handed cash game play has improved dramatically since my trip to Melbourne. I play short handed cash games (6 or fewer players) more frequently now. It is hard to get a game like that live. Live is mostly full ring (9 to 10 players). Generally only the better players are willing to play short handed cash games, so they rarely get off the ground live. The rake in a casino would be prohibitive also.