Aussie Millions TR

miw210 — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:24:00 GMT

1/13 14:30

just finished checking in/unpacking/etc.

Melbourne is beautiful. hotel is banging, but internet is charged by the minute

mental prep for ownage tomorrow.

need foood.

1/13 21:00

met the rest of the team. really awesome bunch. liam runs good at roulette.

1/16 01:00

Long, long day. Over 11 hours of poker. End Day 1 with 2X average stack.

Level 1 50/100

I get KK in the first hand. MP raises to 250, 3 players call. I raise. Either I take down the pot right there, or on the flop with a cbet.

A few hands later, I have JJ in the CO. MP raises. I call. (Big?) blind calls as well. I flop top set on a board of [J52], two clubs. 3 checks. Turn comes [7], adding a heart for another two hearts. MP makes a smallish bet. I make a 3x or so raise and the blind reraises me a somewhat small amount. I smelled a lower set, so I decided to push all in, despite being a huge overbet. I was afraid of the huge number of scare cards that could come on the river that would kill my action. Also, I was hoping on having made somewhat of a loose/crazy image from my action on the first hand. The blind thinks for a long while and folds. He indicates to me that he had 22 (bottom set).

Played TAG.

End of first break: 29k

Level 2 100/200

Folds to me with TT in late position. I raise it up to 3x BB. BB, who seems loose, calls. Flop comes [KXX] (one overcard, two undercards with possible straight draws). He checks. I bet like 1/2-2/3 pot. He calls. [J] turn. He checks. Again, I fire about 2/3 pot to either take the pot down there or prevent a river bet and hopefully see a cheap showdown. He calls. River comes some trivial card. He checks. I check. I take it down. My first showdown.

Call in UTG+2 with 75s. Folds around to BB who checks. Flop comes [K8X] all spades. BB checks, I bet $300. He calls. Turn comes [2] club. He checks. I bet out $1k, he reraises me to $3k. I call. River comes a non-spade 8 and pairs the board. He bets $5k, I make a pretty easy call. As he shows his K2, he says "you probably got me on the river." Then I flip over my flush and the table laughs.

Still playing pretty TAG.

End of second break: 40k

Level 3 100/200 25ante

Middle to late position makes a standard preflop raise to 600 or 700. I call. Tight SB makes reraises to $3k (a significant portion of his ~12k stack). Original raiser folds. I put $3k more on the table and say, "call." However, dealer informs me that I'm forced to reraise because I put too much on the table (I put $3k on top, instead of $3k total) and also because I said "call" (a split second) after I put the chips in. SB 5-bets all-in. By this point, I'm pretty committed with my AK, so I call. Villain flips over QQ, and his queens win the race.

Folds to me. I raise in late position with A5o. BB calls. Flop comes [Q88]. 2 checks. Turn comes [2]. I bet like 1/2-2/3 pot. River is a trivial small card. We both check. I take it down with Ace-high. My third showdown at the table.

Folds to me. I raise in MP to $600 with 99. Tight player directly to my left calls, as does BB. Flop comes [36cQc], two clubs. BB checks. I cbet like 2/3 pot. Tightie calls, BB folds. By now I have a pretty good read that Tightie has a pair, jacks or below (maybe even a set?). Turn comes a [9]. I check. He bets $2500. I reraise to $6k. He calls. River comes [4]. I bet $10k. He calls. I flip over my set of nines, he flips of a set of sixes. He is not happy.

Playing pretty TAG but mixing it up now and making more steals.

End of third break: 45k

Level 4 150/300 25ante

Pretty card dead; made a few steals and bluffs. A few got caught. Nothing too interesting.

End of fourth break: 42k

Level 5 200/400 50ante

Took a pretty huge bad beat. I raise $1200 with A8 in UTG+2. Folds to BB, who calls. Flop comes [A6X], two spades. He checks. I think for a while, and then check. Turn comes a meaningless brick. I bet $2k, he reraises me all-in with a stack of about $11k. I go into the tank and call. He flips over K6. River comes a miracle [K], I get 5-outered and double up shortie.

Playing a bit more LAG than before, nothing crazy though.

End of fifth break: 35k

Level 6 300/600 75ante

Turned up the aggression against the other players in the table.

Very good LP makes it $1700. I call in the CO with 66. BB, a maniac LAG with a huge number of chips, calls as well. Flop comes [236]. LP raiser bets $3k, I reraise to $8k. BB calls, original raiser folds. Turn comes [4]. He checks. I go into the tank and bet out $10k. He reraises me all-in. I cringe and call, hoping he has a lower set or maybe even two pair. I flip over sixes, he flips over deuces. My sixes hold up, and I double through in a monster pot.

Folds to me. I raise to $1800 with JJ in MP. Tightie to my left calls. Flop comes [J2X]. I bet a measly $1k. He calls. Turn comes something like [8]. I bet $4k. He goes into the tank and folds.

End of day 1: 85.5k

Thoughts on Day 1:

Pretty good run of cards, except for that bad beat I mentioned earlier. Not to brag, but in all honesty I think I played great. With a few exceptions, I think I made all the right moves in almost every situation. I think however, I was too aggressive in the two hands that I had top set of Jacks (refer to above). In the first hand, I would have taken more in the pot by just calling the turn and betting the river. Even if the 3-flush comes, he still may well have called my value bet. I may even stack him if he fills up and there is a 3-flush board. In the second hand, I think I correctly read his range as middle pair or AK/AQ, so I have no idea why I chose to bet the turn. I blame fatigue.

Note: I don't think I played a perfect game. There were a few instances where I missed value because of my bet sizes and betting patterns. I don't think I ever managed to put myself in a -EV situation, though. Come to think of it, I think I won every showdown except that bad beat where K6 rivered me.

Going to sleep now, got to get ready for another 11 hours of poker tomorrow. Kill me now.

1/15 20:50

lots of big names gone in Day 1a so far: Gus Hansen, Patrick Antonius, Chris Ferguson, Phil Laak, Jennifer Harmon, Lee Watkinson, Paul Wasicka...off the top of my head. Ivey has the dominant chip lead right now, which scares me. also, Joe Hachem is right behind him in chip count.

going to rest up early for the tournament tomorrow. still thinking of a gimmick I can use.

1/16 11:30

Not feeling very well rested.

My Day 2 table and chip counts. I hate being on the ends.

Sam Khouiss 26 1 41100
Richard Holmes 26 2 28300
Mary Vella 26 3 17000
Jonathan Turner 26 4 66300
Dusan Stoevski 26 5 113000
Sergey Ershov 26 6 41400
John Tabatabai 26 7 88400
Joshua Weiss 26 8 10800
Michael Wang 26 9 85500

Doing some homework with Google on who these people are. I have PearlJammer at my table (fuckk) and the runner-up finisher to WSOP Europe ME. And both have a large stack. ...gl me

1/17 10:30

The dream ends. Busted out about 120th/780. 80 cash. Almost made it to the last level of Day 2.

Been up and down all of Day 2 from a low of $45k to a high of $120k. Been trying to play TAG, but played LAG/made steals for a while because I was absolutely card dead for two levels. Too many hands to report, can't remember most of them by now. But here's the hand that busted me:

Blinds $1k/$2k, $300ante. MP raises to $7k and gets a cold call from a tight guy to his direct left. I know MP doesn't have much, so I decide to try a squeeze. I reraise in the CO to $20k. MP instafolds but cold caller calls my reraise after some thought. Flop comes [379]. He checks. I'm a bit baffled by this point as to what he could hold based on his line thus far. I decide to check behind to represent a monster hand, as he had seen me slowplay a set in position in an earlier hand. Turn comes [K]. He checks again. I decide that he has a pair TT-JJ. His cold call and call of my reraise preflop, as well as his check on the flop and turn would make sense if he wasn't sure I had QQ-AA. I bet $25k. He thinks for about a minute and calls. River comes [J]. He checks a third time. With over $100k in the pot, I push in my remaining stack, about $40k. He goes into the tank and thinks for about 5 minutes while I have a heart attack. He calls. I flip over my A6 bluff, he flips over AK, which for some reason surprised the hell out of me. I expected any strong king to shove preflop. After all, my preflop reraise was like 25% of this stack, but I guess I could have expected it knowing how tight he was.

I may have been able to make it to Day 3 and maybe even a cash by playing premium hands for the remaining time (to make the money but with a crippled stack). My chip stack was like $85k and average was about $115k--not tiny, but I needed a large stack if I stood a solid chance of taking down the tournament. That meant making moves, putting players to a decision for all their chips. I was playing for the win, baby! In the end, it was a bad read and wrong timing. What a bummer.

I've replayed that hand like a thousand times since last night. Should've bet the damn flop. Sucks how one hand can be your undoing after 20 hours of good decisions.

Overall, though, I'm happy with my play. Just being able to play in the Aussie Millions is a huuge opportunity. Met some really great people with Poker.com. Saw a ton of poker celebs face to face (haven't seen Dan Negreanu or Antonio Esfandiari but I think that's pretty much it), and I even got to play with a couple of them.

In other news, I'm famous!

http://www.carbonpoker.com/blog/
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1/18 17:50

WHAT. A. FUCKING. NIGHT.

Thanks to liam, foxy, mark, todd, and barty for showing me the best goddamn night of my life

miw210

**Aussie Millions TR**

Aussie Millions TR