2010 and into the New Year

“Depp said, ‘Hey, man, I found this thing, this island!’
Brando said, ‘Well, what’s the elevation?
Do you have a water system there?
What about the electricity?’

I have had a pretty exciting year and want to wrap up what has gone down. I am looking forward to continuing to develop, mature and grow as a person in 2011. Electric is the feeling that most describes this year for me. There were certain moments when I felt an inaudible jolt of electricity fill a room and a clap of lightening strike down simultaneously at key moments on otherwise fine and sunny days. I feel I really lived this year.

A few live achievements I am most happy with, being a relative newcomer to live tournaments
ANZPT Sydney T. Hachem bounty event in Sydney 2nd place 12.6k, APPT Cebu deep stack 3rd place, APPT Cebu bounty 1st. Online stuff here http://www.pocketfives.com/profiles/onthemac/

I was able to go to Australia and New Zealand Poker Tour (ANZPT) events in Canberra, Melbourne, Gold Coast, Queenstown and also Asia Pacific Poker Tour events in Cebu (The Philippines) and then Sydney this month for the grand final.

I moved into multi table tournaments online from just sit and go's online in 2009. I Made twice as much as last year online in half the time. I received coaching and developed a great network of friends and players from around Australia which I am greatly appreciative of and humbled by their knowledge and achievements.

I skipped the number 1 pennants in bowls and played the majority of the premier league season. I played masters (not old but majors winners) tournaments in Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour as well as a few other Sydney tournaments.

Next year I want to work on my deep cash game skills
Play all ANZPT and APPT main events
Graduate
Maintain fitness and health
Continue to balance work and life
Get a reliable phone with long battery life
Try some yoga, work on mental skills
Go to more live concerts
Get over Ikea
Continue to travel and make more money

Longer term I want to buy an island Branson style or Depp style.

Home Ground Advantage

A few weeks before the main event I qualified for the APPT Sydney which is a 6.3k buy in event through Pokerstars by winning a $530 freeze out. I was hesitant to try to enter the event because it is a pretty big buy in and obviously the quality of player and the amount of money spent to satellite in might be high as well. I won some hyper turbo's into the $530 sat and entered a tournament where there were 24 runners and it was winner takes all with a few places getting there money back.

The night before the main I won a 3x turbo for the same event and was super pumped and felt like I was free rolling for sats and the main. I also sold about 37.5% of my action which is re-rolled into my normal bankroll. I won a bit in cash games and was feeling more comfortable than before. 1st in the event was close to half a million and Jono Karamilakis won it. I finished about 60th after 300+ entered.

I was sitting 13th/60 when I got it in with top 2 pair A Q 10 flop Vs probably the guy I wanted to target but he happened to have the nuts and I didn't improve to a full house. I feel I played really strongly throughout the tournament. All my decisions were clear and well thought out. I made some variations versus different opponents that I was very happy with. I have a wide range of influences on my game and I listen to all sound advice and think through different lines that people put forward. My background is a mix of cash, tournament PLO and NLHE as well as specific bubble skills allow me to flex my game to certain unique situations. This one I feel was reasonably unavoidable.

A unique opportunity has come up in the past week. I have the opportunity to go to the Aussie Millions in January down in Melbourne. I am going to satellite online for ANZPT Adelaide but live sat for the 10k Aussie Millions with half my action taken by an investor. Marketing opportunities and investment money may be shot into me to really give me a clear line at having a six figure roll to make some decent in roads and become a player in bigger games that I only wish I could play now. I appreciate vision and hard work and am willing to put in the volume, sacrifice and consistent improvement to become better at what I do.

Many people don't really understand what poker players do. I guess at one level I shouldn't worry about what people perceive to be the practice, as surely we all have different approaches to the game. Many people do simply gamble and are degenerate in the process. Others are more methodical and work strategically, others take mathematical and psychological approaches to the game. Still others take a trial and error approach. Mostly the game is fun and it involves money and decisions. The way in which people accumulate chips in tournament poker varies and has a lot to do with their general or individual philosophy for winning. Tournament poker is about accumulating all the chips, cash games are about getting all the money, but how we do this? Well we all take different paths.