Hey guys, think I'm going to start blogging a little bit more.

The main reason I stopped was I felt like the whole self-promotional, thinly veiled brag aspect of blogging was a bad influence on my life, and poker was a little too much a part of my ego, but I feel like I'm over that now and I miss writing, reflecting, and being a little bit more a part of the poker community.

I've started staking and coaching quite a few people, and in the process started feeling more connected to the poker world again, which I have enjoyed.

Actually I think one of the main things that influenced me was going to the US June/July and not being able to play online poker.

I found it unbearable and was forced to re-admit to myself how much I love playing online - the stresses of all of the peripheral things that come along with the poker lifestyle can be very negative and draining, but man, when it comes to sitting down to play an online session, and forgetting that there's anything else in the world other than you and your opponents, it's just the best.

Sorry if that is insensitive to some! But wow, there's really nothing like not being allowed to do your job to make you realise how much you love it.

My life seems to change one month to the next...

Like in June I was some guy in a punk band, playing shows in Baltimore, Austin, LA, SF, and Phoenix, sleeping on floors, spending entire days in a van full of dudes, playing shows every night, eating at gas stations.

In May I was an online MTTer staying in a hotel in Toronto playing all the SCOOPs, waking up then hitting the gym and the pool, before playing 12 hours online until I busted the last tourney and passed out.

In July I was a lazy lollivepro living in a Vegas mansion doing virtually nothing all day occasionally playing day 1s of WSOP tourneys and busting them with an eye-rolling indifference.

Then in August I was getting up at 8am every morning to go to the casino to play nosebleed PLO with one of my favourite opponents after he dropped his kids at school (crucial to get him before he wanders off to baccarat, so funny all of us young bleary eyed complainers super tilt-prone because of the early hours, despite playing for significant percentages of our net worths)

Now it's September and I'm a budding empire builder waking up every morning hoping one of my horses shipped something, loading every lobby and slowwwwwly looking down the lists to give myself the best sweats.

So far staking has gone very poorly for me but I have been putting a lot more time into it recently (I've barely been playing myself) and it's become that latest of things that I am determined to beat.

I'm still at uni but I'm ridiculously slack, I'm just doing 3 units and I'm basically just phoning it in so I can look my parents in the eye, keep my girlfriend from thinking (noticing) I'm a complete degenerate and not hate myself quite as much during downswings.

Extortion is going really well, we still play quite a lot of shows, we have a new drummer who is this fucking insane 19 year old skinny faux gangsta who's name is Milky (because his skin is so white), still can't quite believe he exists - the self-proclaimed king of all kings.

I'm still seeing the same girl too, it's been almost 2 years now, she's a good one.

Sometimes the poker lifestyle (despite how hard I try not to live it) is hard for her but I have learnt to segregate the two things and it's a lot easier now that most of my own play is PLO cash-games (which I can play anytime), though overall that has gone fairly poorly for me post Black Friday - I was really determined to destroy the 25/50 shallow and cap games on FTP, and had gotten pretty competent at specifically 40bb PLO, which is now a fairly useless skill, and try as I might I just can't seem to quite get there at 100bb+.

It's not like I'm losing heaps or anything, I'm winning on some sites, losing on others; it's just a bit weird for me right now to not have one definable thing that I am *very good at*, like I would hope I'm still fairly good at MTTs (main problem right now probably being lack of desire, as much as people want to believe in the power of variance when it comes to MTTs there is a lot to be said for raw hunger) but as I'm mostly playing PLO (and still kind of sucking at it after all this time) and working with horses (who so far, have lost me a significant amount of money) sometimes I feel like a huge whale, in spite of all my past success.

In any case I am very much enjoying life and working harder than I have for quite a while, the trip to the US was really good in that way.

There's nothing like a life of drinking beers in the spa, going out to amazing restaurants every night and mindlessly grinding NBA 2k in a country where online poker is outlawed to make you want to get home and fucking grind again.

So yeah, I hope to update this fairly frequently again and I hope y'all are well, I was very sad to miss the Leggo party in Vegas but I had already booked a hotel in Portland when I found out when it was on. Next time!

I played the Sundays again this week, it went absolutely awfully until right at the end when I wound up winning a $13k Aussie Millions package on Cake after getting outplayed in the small pots headsup (1 seat) and getting it in bad preflop all three times and winning all of them, lol.....

Rest of the night went so badly that if I profited at all for the night it wasn't much though.

Went to see Slayer last night, was a bit weird being the whole huge stadium thing...

Maybe I was too wasted but it felt like they weren't even playing their instruments, was just so disconnected from it.

Ah well. Slayer fucking rule and it was just a couple of hours of my life, whatever.

In failing at life news my phoneline got disconnected today for the second time in a couple of months, this time over a $93 bill.

Good times - why wouldn't you disconnect my phoneline after a couple of weeks of nonpayment of a double digit bill?

I decided tonight to delete all the people on my facebook friends list that I don't know irl.

I have a bit of a duality going where I play donkaments and have a poker blog and post on various forums and stuff but I don't actually want that much attention, I like the thought of being respected especially by my peers but it's a bit weird having that blend in with your real life world via facebook.

So anyway this seems like as good a place as any to say sorry if I deleted you, not personal I just want to keep my worlds separate

In other news, how fucking good is the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm?

How can a show with such a simple premise keep getting better and better?

Amazing.

Ok screw this.

I came 14th in the $535 6max on Full Tilt this morning off the back of the 12 hour 37th in SCOOP #1, and I've been feeling way too sorry for myself the past few days despite how hot I have run overall lately.

It's SCOOP time, the weekend tourneys are here, I'm currently 9th in the world on pocketfives PLB, and I'm semi-housebound... it is time to get over my hesitance to play, and time to just get it together and grind.

I'm gonna go get dinner and 2 coffees at 11:30 tonight, and then I am coming home to play on my desktop computer oldschool style...

I have 2 30 inches that just sit there while I lay on the couch on my laptop like, 13 tabling, with crazy overlap... but tonight I'm rewinding back to my old ways and I'm gonna enter every single thing with decent prizepool from 12:00-01:00 (as in 13 hours of registration), playing on my desktop so I can handle it all no matter how many tourneys pop up.

Then I'm gonna pass out, wake up at a weird time and do it all again for the Sundays.

Too much philosophising lately and not enough degeneracy.

Well I made it, sleeping 31 hours in 2 days along the way.

Have been staying at a hotel in Venice Beach the past two nights - it's a nice little hotel, and Venice is suitably bizarre.

After all the rest and with none of the other guys wanting to do much today as they're all low on money I couldn't help myself but play a bunch of poker.

Obviously I was chipleader from 200 left until 35 left in the Quarter Million ($55K for first) and then lost a 110bb flip vs agriffod who was 3rd in chips (97hh on T65hh vs AT in sb vs bb).

So gross, so much ****ing tournament equity in that pot.

125bb and double second place chips with 33 left, what's that worth, 20K USD? More? FFS

Played PLO most of the rest of the day.

I've made a few breakthroughs recently and am feeling good about working on my game.

I won 4 buyins today over 2000 hands at mostly 200PLO some 400PLO.

I am feeling both determined to crush the game as well as humble enough to accept being patient and slowly and methodically beating all levels from 200 up.

It is hard when you have won large amounts of money at other games to be humble when playing a new game, especially one as visibly soft as PLO.

But I have always maintained that egolessness and respect for the game when on the felt is a huge part of winning at poker, so it's very important for me to feel that coming back in to the way I look at the game (ie. I'm not just racing to try and win dollars, which is what tournaments teach you - play until you run hot and do whatever you have to to chase big scores).

Another thing I have always believed in is the power of the unconscious - the difference between knowing and thinking, sort of.

I am pretty intuitive, as are many poker players (even if they weren't before playing poker) and I know that for myself, whether it's in poker or in something else, whenever I get an unconscious, non-deliberate feeling suddenly that something is so - a revelation, it is pretty much never ever wrong.

It's sick the amount of times I call my opponents unlikely hand mentally as I'm calling a river bet that I know I "have to call".

Or even more sickeningly than that, on the turn I know my opponent has a certain hand, specifically, like, 100% he has it, due to timing tells and just *that feeling*, yet when the river peels off his card I still can't bring myself to check/fold as "my hand beats everything else"...

Anyway I read a really great book on the plane called "Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking" (Malcolm Gladwell), about the importance of harnessing this ability (that we all have), and it was great reading.

All stuff I already knew but he uses awesome stories as anecdotes and it's a real pleasure to read (I read it cover to cover on the one flight).

I brought two notebooks on the trip, one for poker and one for life, and I'm going to work on my PLO game as much as I can during my time here, both through grinding in cafes and writing down ideas.

The other book I brought on the trip is "The Mathematics Of Poker".

I really want to work on my math precision, there's so many spots that I could only guesstimate within like 5% what is correct, and when you think about it 5% is huge.

So I guess my plan is to inform my subconscious by working on the math, and then utilise my adaptive unconscious to play better in-game

Anyway those are my thoughts for the day.

We have rehearsal tomorrow then first show here in LA on Friday, should be fun...

So as I've written a couple of times in here now I am pretty unsure of what the year ahead has in store for me.

However, ideas and concepts are starting to take shape.

I can't be sure enough to make actual goals for myself, but I do have some plans.

There are some recurring things I keep thinking about, that I really need to get done.

The most basic and most prominent is one huge flaw of the way my life is set up...

Everything I spend my time doing, draws the respect and admiration of *slightly nerdy males*... and is of very little interest to females...

Now don't get me wrong, playing in a band, as a concept, helps with girls - it doesn't really matter if they hate the music, the mere fact you are in a band is a plus.

Same with having money, it doesn't really matter that poker is of very little interest to most girls - the fact that you are good at something that makes you money is a plus.

I'm not talking about not being able to impress girls.

I'm not even really talking about picking up girls...

Just, the way my life is structured... I meet interesting females almost never.

Pretty much every girl I've had a thing with the past couple of years has been either a friends ex girlfriend or friends relative... which is kinda weird and messed up, but I live in a small city and the scenes that dominate my interests are both almost entirely made up of SLIGHTLY NERDY MALES.

Now I am a slightly nerdy male... and I like, slightly nerdy males... but cmon.

It's absurd to structure your life in such a way that all you are ever meeting or impressing are other slightly nerdy males.

I love girls, in general, I grew up in a house with a single mother and a younger sister...

I really value female friendships, and I have quite a few, but yeah...

This whole dating peoples exes and sisters and **** has got to stop, I gotta get some interests that girls like, god.

I think I really just need to go back and study.

If I died without a degree I would consider my life a failure.

I really wanna do psychology/criminology again.

So yeah, I guess I plan to get the ball rolling again for university this year.

Other stuff... gotta finally get my drivers license...

One that everyone writes in every poker blog ever but still bears repeating...

I GOTTA GET IN SHAPE AND LOSE A FEW KGS...

Seriously though, I wanna step it up and get super fit this year.

And as far as poker goes, well...

Tournaments - I wanna either be ranked in the top 10 in the world at the end of the year, or outside the top 100...

It would be great if I could either ship hardcore and get a couple of six figure scores, or get myself out of the tourney quagmire and back to some nice cash grinding.

Travel... Yeah I wanna travel. I salivate thinking about playing EPTs, I'm already plotting my revenge on WSOP...

But I dunno, when I'm playing music I feel like I should really dedicate this year to music, as in 5-10 years I'm sure I'll still be doing things like hitting up Europe, playing big live poker tournaments etc...

Who knows what I'll be doing musically though?

While I'm young, with good friends who have great songs ready to go and a scene very open to all the stuff we put out it seems like I should stay involved in that for as long as I can...

I don't wanna be 35 and wish I could go back in time and start more bands.

I doubt I'll ever hit 50 and look back and wish I played more poker though.

Especially since you can be just as degenerate at 50, but good luck starting a punk band

Poker wise my main goal is to respect the game as much as I can.

With MTTs coming so easily to me at the start, and with running good while staying in five star hotels, at some point I really stopped respecting the game, fearing variance etc...

I've since had that beaten out of me, but I have always prided myself on respecting the game and maintaining a significant edge at all times by only playing close to my A game.

That's very hard to do playing such long sessions in MTTs, but I definitely play tired too often and it's gotta stop.

Especially falling asleep during a $1600 WCOOP event this year, I mean that's just sick.

There are people begging for change on the streets and I'm falling asleep during a tourney that could feed them for three months...

I don't wanna be that guy.

So, 2009... structure life a little away from solely appealing to dudes, get healthier and stay there, put as much in to and take as much out of music as I can, and when it comes to poker, respect the game.

So it's Monday afternoon 2pm my time, and another long night of Sunday Tournaments is coming to an end.

I went into last night with high hopes, having gotten a decent sleep, and heading into day three of the Ongame Million Guaranteed 6-max with a good stack.

Sadly, I just never really got going in this event today - the euros are pretty easy to push around, but I kept missing every single flop and never won any big pots at all...

No antes at all during the event either so blind accumulation couldn't make up for having to give up in every pot of decent size.

I went out AQ < AK in 70th or so for $2800.

As far as the other majors went I cashed in more than I usually do but only managed mincashes or thereabouts, so nice to recoup some buyins but alas no joy.

The one tourney that I have consistently been doing well in is the $55R on Stars.

I love that tourney so much...

I got 4th in it today for $12,521; and 2nd in it yesterday for $10,160.

Really nice end to the week and I guess to the year.

December was a struggle overall.

I put a lot of energy in and got very little out of it.

PLO went really badly, I won a bit at 2/4 and stuff but one night I played 10/20 on Party vs a 90 VPIP Russian and lost 5 stacks, erasing all my profits at lower stakes in half an hour.

I'm banning myself from PLO for the foreseeable future.

I played a bit of 400NLHE just to get a taste for holdem cash again and felt like I actually played extremely well - usually I take a while to adjust back to cash but I felt like I was seeing everything clearly, which was nice.

I feel pretty comfortable with grinding a mix of 400NL and donkaments at the moment.

I am starting again in a lot of ways right now.

My roll after having paid off the house is pretty small, and a lot of the ideas I conjure up for myself of doing (like packing up and heading to Europe to play some live tourneys for eg) just aren't feasible for me right now.

I am hoping they will be soon, getting a few scores this week helped and will hopefully kickstart a nice run.

It's exciting in a way, actually caring about and needing the money, and trying to go robusto again.

It also runs parallel with the way my non poker life is going...

In 5 hours I'm flying to Melbourne to play a NYE show with Extortion.

I will be there for a week, and then home for a week, before flying to LA to begin the US tour.

After the tour (goes for 3 weeks) I'll be in Canada, with no firm plans on where to go from there, when to come home, or where I'm even going to be living.

I have been flirting with the idea of moving to Melbourne again.

The March/April run of live tourneys in Europe are very appealing as well.

And then of course I'll be heading back to WSOP in June/July.

I don't know how the year will take shape.

I'm not sure what to do.

I am very tempted to put all my stuff in storage and then just hit the road...

I could stay in North America a while, then hit up Europe for some live tourneys, see how I feel...

But it's hard to leave my bands behind, especially with two of them newly playing shows.

I will be making my decision somewhere between Melbourne and the USA.

I can't complain, all my options are pretty great.

Best of all, I've really acquired a determination to crush poker again at the moment.

I'm pretty sure next year is going to be sick.

It's pretty amazing to look back to how low I was feeling at the end of September.

I was really losing the plot, donating tens of thousands at omaha, feeling burdened by the weight of my mortgage but lacking in the enthusiasm to *really* make anything happen.

All until that one conversation with Bond18 where I realised that I just, really, love, tournaments...

Since the blog post I made the next day where I said I was gonna let myself play tournaments for the conceivable future, I've made about $150K, and come first in the P5 Monthly Leaderboard.

Pretty amazing to reflect on, and even though I have obviously run above expectation, there is really just SO MUCH to be said for "wanting to be there".

There is so much subtlety in poker, so many close decisions, small decisions, patterns and presence that we project with all of our play.

If you don't want to be there when you're playing it's hard to ever truly play well, whereas when you really do wanna be there, you find a way to win.

So anyway now that I've paid off my house and achieved most of what I wanted to achieve from the grinding side of tournaments, I'm going to be putting in a lot less volume and focusing more on other stuff, like taking care of my health, sleep, diet, exercise, organisation, music, coaching, leggo etc.

The weather here is getting amazing, every day is that perfect 25c/77f where it's not *hot* but it's just warm enough, the sky is a beautiful shade of blue, the wind is blowing through the trees, birds are chirping etc... I love spring.

I'll play here and there of course, probably every Sunday and the better FTOPS events and stuff but I'm just not stressing myself out over this game anymore.

I've made ~1M the past 2 years and really, I'm still young, I own a house, I live in a beautiful city, have tons of great friends none of whom really have any money anyway, when I look over my life I really just... don't need to be grinding anymore.

How much is enough?

Basically I'm just going to try and do life-extending type stuff, and read, and watch movies, hang out with people, enjoy not being dead, enjoy having some semblance of youth remaining, etc.

I've been pretty slack about Leggo/Coaching related stuff for a while now too, and that's gonna stop, I wanna put a lot more effort in and make some improvements in those areas.

I feel good about the future and great about having gotten far ahead enough of the curve that I don't have to be a slave to the game anymore.

I think Apathy is a great example of doing it right, how much money would that guy make if he just stayed at home and grinded?

Inconceivable amounts, but that's not what life is about, it's about sailing around the world in the sun with friends and then shipping live donkaments here and there, imo

For posterity's sake here is my list of 4-5 figure scores for October:

4th 1k monday - $31727
2nd 200K gtd - $27000
1st 55+R - $25850
1st 60K gtd - $19942
3rd 90K gtd - $11188
1st 30K gtd - $10670
1st 40K gtd - $10160
1st 30K gtd - $8100
3rd 40K gtd - $6240
1st 20K gtd - $6113
4th highroller - $5362
6th 100R - $5116
4th 100 cubed - $4567
1st 17K gtd - $4287
2nd 18K gtd - $3984
1st 10K gtd - $3975
3rd 30K gtd - $3764
3rd 30K gtd - $3684
6th 100+R - $3665
12th 100R - $3628
2nd 21K gtd - $3420
3rd 27K gtd - $2940
3rd 20K gtd - $2300
6th 55+R - $2191
19th ipoker 250K gtd - $2000
59th 1M gtd - $2000
7th 100 cubed - $1692
7th 50K gtd - $1675
8th 40K gtd - $1441
4th 15K gtd - $1312
4th 33+R - $1222
7th 40K gtd - $1220
4th 10K rebuy - $1137
26th sunday brawl - $1120
23rd 200K gtd - $1100
7th 40K gtd - $1080
9th 50K gtd rebuy - $1054

I busted the APPT Main Event yesterday in the last 20 minutes of the day.

It was pretty boring stuff. I didn't see AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, or AK. I never really had over starting stack.

I lost every hand until I had 20% of my stack left, then I won every hand until I had starting stack again.

Then I found no cards for 2 hours as usual and had 15bb during the last level.

Started shipping it in light cos I wanted to either bust and get to go home early, or have a reasonable shot at moneying if I was going to stay at least a few more days.

Got A6 allin vs 44, as always it came KKQ to keep it a flip, but then it blanked out and I was done.

Went to Mortons Steakhouse afterwards with Max (AceHighWine) and his gf Marie, and Grant Levy (Grunter321) and his bf Joel

It was pretty awesome but the portions were so ridiculous, even by American standards, and I ate about 1/3 of what I ordered.

So anyway I won a little bit for the trip thanks to the 100R, and though I didn't have a great time I have definitely been getting to know people in and around the Australasian circuit which bodes well for fun times in the future.

The other night I listened to the LeggoCast while winding down a long day, and heard myself talking to Greg about tournaments and how soul destroying they are.

It was pretty poignant to listen to myself saying these things, while about to pass out after being awake a looooong time (I slept for 16 hours) playing tournaments.

I like travelling to events, it's fun. It's cool to see new cities and countries, and having a shot at a pot of gold each time is very exciting (I thought it would be less so after winning one, but it isn't).

But doing that **** online, it's so bad. It's just so, so, so, so bad.

I need to balance the live tourney travelling by playing cashgames and seeing friends and being healthy during the 75% of the time I'm not on the road.

I know I've said all this before but it's just so true, and it's so easy to get trapped into P5 ranking wars or playing ridiculous hours to try and crack a huge score when all it really does is turn you into the same kind of filthy degenerate gambler we all pride ourselves as NOT being, as poker players.

So I hereby retire from online tournaments, outside of happening to be awake when ridiculous tourneys are starting (100+R, WCOOP etc) and sliding them into my wall of cashgame tables.

I've already been phasing cashgames back in, PLO is so swingy it's hard to tell where I am but I'll be playing 400-2K PLO probably across all sites, just mostly Stars atm because I'm clearing the stupid $4K bonus thing.

Graphs and stuff to come, I'm not gonna make any goals for Sept because it's still gonna be a disjointed month...

Next Tuesday I am flying to Sydney to be interviewed for a half-hour TV show on online poker in Australia, then in late Sept I am going to Seoul for another APPT.

In between though, I'm definitely gonna focus my priorities on going to the gym, seeing friends, and playing $1000 PLO.

Anyway even if it was mostly from a dumb donkament score, August was my best ever month.

I had about $30K net profit in online tourneys, $20K in online cash, and $190K in live donkaments hoho.

I'm leaving for Melbourne in a few hours.

I am going to attempt to detox, not just from poker (though I am not going to play any poker for a week), but also my diet and overall habits.

I'm going to eat lots of organic/vegan food (some fish here and there but close to no meat other than that), I'm going to drink tea instead of coffee, and I'm going to spend as little time as possible on the internet.

Instead I will live at a slow pace, hang out with friends (so many arts and poker minded people move from Perth to Melbourne that I have almost as many friends there as here nowadays) and just generally relax and take stock.

Will be good for me I think, though it sucks to be leaving my bands behind for another couple of weeks.

Had a practice for the band I'm drumming in last night and it went well.

We are called Hospital Beds, and are probably the most accessible sounding of any of the bands I've ever been in, it's indie music written by a punk guy, basically.

I am really torn at the moment, because I want to go to Macau and to other APPT events that are in really interesting places like Seoul and Auckland, but taking time off delays the progress of the bands I'm in.

It's tough. It might seem ironic but I think that if/when I eventually do well in a live event it will make it easier for me to stop wanting to go to them - at the moment it's one of those male pride things where "it's just something I have to do".

I tried to play a bit of poker today. Was heading for a solid win then I got AA allin for 400bb pot on the flop vs KK and he insta spiked a K, and then I got nut flush allin vs ten high flush and he rivered a gutshot straight flush, nh sirs.

My fuse is pretty short atm so I quit, still up a little but *sigh*.

Anyway, I can't wait to get to Melbourne, I'm staying with a friend that I really miss, and Melbourne is just one of the best cities there is or will ever be.

At the same time as the live tourneys are on the FTOPS starts, so after my week off there will be plenty of opportune moments to rediscover some run-good.

See you guys in a week.

I lost 30K yesterday playing a mix of games.

It's far from my biggest downswing, and a lot of the damage was at 25/50 so obviously it's not really that big a drop... but it provides yet another symptom/consequence of my carelessness and lack of focus the last couple of months.

It is about time that I admitted to myself that, cynicism and a healthy sense of humour aside, doing so poorly at the WSOP after setting aside 3 months to specifically practice and work on my tournament game in the leadup to the series, hurt me a lot, and I'm still feeling depressed about it.

I have no discipline, no focus and whatever motivation I convince myself to muster is almost completely contrived.

I thought that PLO would provide the spark but it didn't.

It's just too easy up until a level where the swings are too big for someone like myself who prefers to pump money into my mortgage rather than aspire to playing 200/400.

So, I have decided to banish myself to $400NL, and I am only allowed to play $400NL until I win $20000.

On the day I make my 20kth dollar I will post a screenshot and consider myself cleansed.

As far as PLO goes, I can play 3/6 or 5/10, but no 10/20 PLO until I've made a significant amount at 5/10 PLO and below, and no 25/50 PLO whatsoever in the foreseeable future.

I have drifted so far in my focus that I need the punishment - and my confidence, not so much in MY game, but in THE game (although that is pretty much always a defensive front anyway) is low enough that I need to win consistently for a period to remind myself what is possible with discipline and with flow.

It has been a long time since I had to do something like this, but it has always worked in the past.

Let's just hope I can still beat 2/4