It's been a while since my last post, and since then I've been a busy boy. I busted out of the ANZPT Perth Main Event in the last 8 hands of day 1 when I flopped bottom set on a TJ5 flop and wound up getting about 60% of my stack in the middle vs. an open-ender that got there on the turn. I was the one doing the raising and I think that the line I took in that hand was the most equitable.

After busting out, I quickly made my way back to my hotel room to consider my options. I was just about to book a flight and hotel in Melbourne, when I realized that I would be spending about 4 days in Melbourne without poker, and spending about $250/day in the process, so I re-evaluated my options and decided to instead fly back to Cairns for a couple of days and go on another scuba diving trip. What can I say, I go where the fish are...

When I came back from another amazing trip out to the Great Barrier Reef, I booked a flight to Melbourne and right away jumped into $340 Accumulator Tournament in the Joe Hachem Deep Stack Series held at the Crown Casino in Melb. I really like this new format as it allows you to play both day 1a and day 1b and then combine your chip stacks from those two days at the beginning of day 2. I think the format is a great improvement over the traditional freeze-out structure as well as both the rebuy and repecharge formats. The way it works is you buy in on day 1a and are also given the option to buy in again on day 1b. Now from my perspective the reason that this format is so good, is that it reduces the variance from busting out in any one day. It is the same thing as playing a $680 tourney but being given the opportunity to bust out twice. An additional reason why this format is good, is b/c as I see it, there are still a lot of people that don't understand rebuy/addon strategy and dont wind up buying in on day 1b if they make through day 1a. The bigger the stack, the less likely they are to commit more money to a tournament in which they are already in. This greatly reduces any kind of advantage they might have due to their stack size and again gives back some of the equity to players who didn't run like G-d the first day. Yet another reason I think this format is really good, is because I feel that like myself, other good players will not wind up playing day 1b if they don't make it past day 1a, so you are less likely to face the tougher range of opponents if you wind up making it to day 2.

I wound up busting out of the tournament on the second day when I 4 bet shoved JTo into a competent player's 3bet from the blinds, after I opened in the CO and got flatted by a spewy button. I was about 40BB's deep at the time and I was covered, but I knew that the 3bettor's range was going to be really wide and I was honestly shocked when he tank/called my shove for 2/3 of his stack w A8s. Given the fact that this was early in the second day, and my range is so polarized, I don't think his call was correct, especially if thinks he's a better player than me. In the very next tournament I played, where I got all my money in preflop early in the game with TT vs and obvious AK, (the guy actually wound up having AQ) I was reminded as to why I try to stay out of flips early, especially versus players with whom I should be able to find better spots against.

Overall I'm pretty dissappointed with my live performance this year, thus far, if for no other reason than the sheer attachment I experience to a live tournament. Whereas when I'm playing online and busting out of one tournament means I have that many more pixels available to load another table, in the casino you have to take the walk of shame back to your hotel room and find something else to occupy your time with. Instead of seeing 100's of hands an hour spread between 12 tables, you're seeing 30 hands an hour and you're immersed in the activity at that one table. This adds up a lot quicker in terms of time spent not cashing/winning within the boundaries of variance, and to someone such as myself who is used to at least cashing once a day, who is now 2 for 15 this year, is leaving much more residual dissappointment considering that I've invested at the least 10x the time to play the same volume.

As a matter of fact it is quite possible that if it wasn't for online poker I would even start questioning the validity of some of my most equitable plays because I experience such a small sample size of hands in a time frame during which I am used to experiencing a much higher sample and one that is more accurate in its representation of the true value of my lines. There were a couple of spots where I chose high-variance plays over low variance plays and none of the four spots worked out. All of these plays were in crucial spots according to # of people left and my stack size, but they were also all spots in which I could have avoided the conflict just as easily and waited for opportunities to play the short-ball strategy that was pretty effective against the field I was playing. Had I won either 42%, 48%, 56% or 76% flips for the 2x + pots that they were, I would most likely be sitting next to a crystal trophy by now. However bricking out an geting outdrawn stings just a bit more when you cant just make the table dissappear at the push of a button and make another one reappear in its place just as quick. Tomorrow I get a chance to redeem myself, if I wake up in time to play the $2200 High Roller Event, Friday is the Main Event and Tuesday I am taking the dreaded 20+ hour flight back to NYC, hopefully I'll be flying with a trophy to keep me company..:)

In other news, I cemented my dreams to attend this year's WSOP ME when I scooped a seat on Cake Poker this Sunday. This will probably be my 3rd 10k Main Event (I dont see myself playing anyting else that big, sooner) and I hope that 3 really is a charm seeing as how I couldn't make it past level 5 in the first two majors I've played. In any case, ready or not, Vegas, I'll be seeing you soon...

So I have taken the last week and a half off from poker/internet/phone/earth and it felt really really good. I went on a live aboard dive trip for a week to the great barrier reef off the NE coast of Australia, and I had the best time of my life, getting as close as you can to being on a different planet. The aquatic life is spectacular, and I've seen (and sometimes touched) things that I've only seen on TV before and some things I've never even heard of, as well as the general sensation of being weightless and being able to travel in 3 dimension at the flick of a fin is still pretty surreal to me.

I haven't played a single hand in that time or since I got back to terra firma, but I feel very confident about my game and I'm really looking forward to the ANZPT Perth Series which kicks off today with a $100 freeze-out which I think will be a really good way to gauge the local game (as well as my own). From what I gathered in Adelaide and Melbourne, the tournaments shouldn't be too tough, many people are still new to the game and the ones that aren't are pretty easy to spot by the way they handle their cards & chips.

I really agree with the old time advice of taking time off from poker and completely immersing yourself in something else. Although I haven't played any poker in the last 12 days I have been analyzing my play and results via tracker/db and there is definitely a positive correlation between breaks and improvements in my game. Since I've started playing I've taken six 2-week+ breaks from poker and every time after coming back my ROI improved as well as my bottom line. The reason that I think that breaks are so beneficial is because as you remove yourself from the poker environment you also become more objective in your thinking because you get a relief from all the emotions that do wind up piling on one after another after several months of grinding. I know that even the best of us get frustrated and happy, regardless of our effort to contain the emotions that we experience, and after several months we get system overload and its pretty important to cool off, come up and refill your air tank before you go petting sharks again..

Well for a little bit at least.

Tomorrow morning I will be catching a flight to Cairns to do a week-long scuba diving/boating trip out to the Great Barrier Reef and Cod Hole, two of the best diving destinations in the world, and I hope I will be able to snag some good pics underwater with my newly acquired G11 +wp case.

It always feels weird to leave a city after spending just enough time in it to get used to way of life there, and Melbourne is no exception. So far I've been having the time of my life first with my friends from back home and now with the locals most of which have been the most hospitable and nice people I've met in my travels. My next stop is not poker related at all and it will feel good to take a complete break from poker, internet, cell phones and the such.

Today I played a full schedule 13 hr day starting at 5:45am local time with 45 min late reg into the sunday warm-up and 100 freeze on stars. BTW... I think there is no +EV in pre-regging for tournaments that you think you might be late for to start. It's one thing when you pre-reg for all your tournaments in one session so that you don't wind up missing one by accident, but I think that if you are worried about whether or not you might make the first tourney of the day (esp. on PStars w 1hr late-reg), then just wait until you get there. If you prereg for a tournament that you don't wind up playing until after a couple of rounds of blinds have passed, then you are losing chips that would otherwise remain in your stack if you had just late-regged half an hour late...

The day went fairly well as I was able to ICM chop the $59 Super Turbo on FTP heads-up while 12-tabling for ~13k which definitely made my day a successful one. I also got 14th in the 1st 100r on stars for around 3.5k and although I'm always happy to pick up some $, I felt dissappointed with my performance once we got down to 18 players. I went from 35 to 20 BB's without really playing a hand, mostly passing up marginal spots because of the tough line-up at my table, and I wound up playing the last stretch of it super weak-tight, however, it seems that no matter what I do in the 100r on Stars I can just never take it down.. I guess perseverance is a virtue...

My next stop after Cairns is Perth in Western Australia for the ANZPT there, so if anyone is going to be heading that way, feel free to drop me a line. I'm also starting to plan the next leg of my trip post-Australia which will include Colorado and Vegas, and starting this month I will actively start playing all sorts of stallites for the WSOP. My hope is to freeroll into a couple events online and then sort out my schedule accordingly.

As always if you any questions or comments feel free to leave them here or PM me..