Pre Aussie Millions

I woke up Monday morning feeling pretty good as I spent a whole week waking up at 6pm and gradually woke at 11pm.  I am fairly tired right now I have accumulated 28k VPP so far this year.  My MTT's have been finishing pretty late and I have been throwing in a ton of SNG's.  I don't feel like I played my A Game today but with a good nights sleep I think I can do well tomorrow.

I am heading down to Melbourne for the Aussie Millions soon.  I'm playing the 6 max, so I can play a few hands.  Full ring live poker can be a sleepy affair.  The main is a huge event.  I played last year and had KK beat by 9-10 spades on a 9 high board with two lower spades on the flop we got in on the flop and he rivered 2 pair before the day 1 break.  My dream was over...until now, I am back stronger and better than ever.

I will be fully focussed and ready for anything.  Donks and pro's, I am sure there will be some super strange plays.  I watched a ton of last years televised cash games and the 250k.  Even Phil Ivey has 20-30bb tourney leaks.  I guess he is just so used to playing deeper or planned to check raise some flops with the 9-3 off he defends.

I am pretty comfortable live and in some ways miss it, but I love being home and grinding when I feel good and well rested and feed etc.  I will set some goals to focus on in game and try to keep consistent with my pre-betting routine.

Crown Poker, Pale Ale, Jeep...ship it all to On The Mac.

New Year, Fresh Focus!

I started the New Year with a couple of final tables.  My best result was 2nd in the $51 hyper for around $4.7k and 8th in a late $109 with 500 runners for about 1k.  I felt my energy was strong in today's session and I posted up 4,266 VPP.  I played a few big SNG's including a 2.1k Euro Step, I have 4 Step G's that I have ground up from the lower steps.

New year, new avatar!  The pic above is of an Afghan girl in 1985, the photo was taken by a National Geographic photographer and for 17 years no one knew who she was.  She remained nameless and her haunting and exotic look hung over many (Oprah even did a feature on her a few years ago).  Here is the full story of what happened http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text  I found it very interesting and I hope you do too.

Over Christmas and New Years I mostly spent time going on long walks and watching movies, eating out, ordering in and drinking with friends and family.  I got some good advice at my families gathering on Christmas day about motivating teams and I am implemented some of the ideas.  My Uncle is a trader and has run some businesses and we discussed a few ideas and he was really helpful.

I am heading to Melbourne soon for the Aussie Millions, I will probably play the main event only and stick to my bread and butter online.  I spent heaps of $$$ this year travelling and going on holidays, but when I was home and had my head down I got some great results so I want to keep focussed.  The PokeStars Team Online application has motivated me to grind and I like it.  No news as of yet.  I hope more than one of us gets the gig.  Also with the news of Joe Hachem and PokerStars parting ways, it may or may not lead to a reconfiguration of who and how PokerStars do business in the Asia Pacific.

All ANZ players received a new newsletter for our region that will be monthly.  It included significant achievements by players in our region in PokerStars tournaments and leader boards and individual scores.  It also stated that the new Australian Team Online member would be announced in this newsletter in January, so keep and eye out, I know I will be.  I still have no idea and am still just plugging away.  This whole process has given me renewed vigour and motivation to play on PokerStars.