Nothing particularly good ever seems to happen to me in Melbourne. I must say I quite enjoy my life in Sydney, why would I even bother coming over here? First off we are in the season of summer, there’s really no reason for me to have to take a jumper or jacket with me interstate. Or so I thought. I’ve been freezing my ass off here fr0m as soon as I stepped off the plane. What kind of rediculous Australian state is 17 degrees with high winds in summer. It’s un-Australian in my opinion. Then you get to the casino and you would think that they keep the temperatures cool but pleasant. Wrong again. I played my first event in the poker room yesterday and shivered the entire time. I don’t really see the logic behind it. Everytime I went to bet my hand was shaking uncontrollably, everyone must’ve thought that I was really nervous, or had a monster hand, or had Parkinsons.

The event was the $1100 NL Event 1. I started pretty solid moving from a starting stack of 5k to 7k pretty early before moving back to 5k just as quickly. In the third level (75/150) a middle aged Paul ‘Fatty’ Vautin lookalike raised utg with a 3.5k stack. Utg+1 with 1.5k called and the chip leader at our table called from mid position. I looked down at 34h on the button and the 4 of us saw the flop. It came down 6s 5s 2. BANG! All in announces the utg player. I’m also all in says the utg +1 player. I’m doing all I can to look as disinterested as possible as the player in mid position goes into the tank. He folds and I call and quickly turn over THE NUTZ. Utg player shows 10s. Utg+ 1 player turns over….10s. MBN to be me. I only have to dodge running spades. Turn comes a 2. I’m the only one of the 3 of us that realise that they’ve actually turned outs against me. Luckily the river bricks and I’m up to 12k early.

Over the next 4hrs nothing particularly exciting happens as I move between 10k-12k and move tables 5 times. I lose 9s<2s all in pre to go to 18k but other than that I don’t really get involved. At 600-1200/100 I have 14k. It folds to a young guy on sb who shoves for 6.5k. I have Q5 on bb and feel as though my hand is good enough vs his range which is most likely 80ish% of hands. He turns over A10 and leaves me drawing dead to runner runner on the flop. I shove one hand on the table before moving tables for the 6th time.

Being able to play good shortstack poker in live tournaments is a huge advantage over the majority of live players who don’t really have a concept of 10bbs and the range of hands you would shove in various positions on the table. Its now the last level of the day and I shove K10 and 10s and don’t get any callers. Big stack limps at 800/1600 and I shove 14k with A2s. He tanks then folds an A face up. I show my A trying to gain the image that I’m not shoving total crap and he made a good fold. I shove 8s and get folds again and now I’m up to 19k with 20minutes left in the day. I pick up AQ utg and shove it all in. Sb asks for a count and then makes the call with JJ. First all in for my tournament life and I’m feeling pretty confident. Flop comes 234 rainbow. 5 will do! Turn comes a 2. I’m still feeling it. River…….8. GG me just short of bagging my chips again. Needless to say I was pretty cut. More angry actually. But after whinging to Teek for a good 10minutes I sort of felt less sorry for myself and more sorry for him having to listen to me.

Dinner and arcade games managed to de-tilt me. That was until I got back to my room and read my emails. I have been trying to get my proof of completion for my Commerce degree so that I could enrol in a post-grad marketing course at UTS. The email I received back informed me, much to my suprise, that I haden’t in fact completed my Commerce degree at UNSW. I went through the course handbook and found that I was short 12 units of free electives. This pretty much put me over the edge and into full blown life tilt mode. Unfortunately I can’t really blame anyone but myself. I’ve enrolled in the 2 courses for the next semester now so I should be done by the end of that but who knows. The UNSW criterea for completing subjects is so fucking completed I probably can’t do 2nd year subjects from the management facultly on Wednesdays when I finished all my Marketing courses on a Thursday. But I’ll probably only find that out once I’ve completed it.

Anyway, I have recovered from the past 24hrs. I generally feel that most things happen for a reason. To be honest I was having major second thoughts about doing my post grad degree so maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. As for poker I’ve got the limit omaha hi/lo and horse events coming up which I’m looking forward too because its the first non NLHE events I’ve ever played live. Hopefully Melbourne has some suprises in store for me over the next 2 weeks!

Kochan