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

So I still can't bring myself to go back to NLHE cashgames (last 50K-hand month I had was February) and I have begun the process of figuring out Pot Limit Omaha.

I have been playing 5/10-25/50. I'm up a decent amount but I have ran good at 25/50 and hands get logged so slowly that, despite dedicating myself to the grind and mostly 9 tabling when there are 9 games going, I've still only played 12000 hands.

Thus, it's tough to know where I'm at.

The games play very weakly and boringly. Occasionally cool spots come up, and it's fun having 3 draws at once or super-powerful strong double-suited hands sometimes, but overall I have been surprised - PLO is actually exceptionally boring.

To be fair, 25/50 is a world apart from everything lower as far as I can tell, and I'm sure that at 25/50 and above the game is super complex and interesting.

At midstakes though, you are basically a robot, grinding out more than your fair share of small pots and trying not to lose coinflips.

The games are definitely soft, but...

I was going to say it's not very mentally stimulating, but it's not really that, because you are always calculating stuff.

It's... the game isn't very competitively stimulating.

You can't just completely manhandle people like you can sometimes at Holdem.

You can't run them over, tilt them as easily, call them down as often in a way which exerts total dominance...

So it's just not all that fun. It's much more of a robotic math-grind.

But yeah, I'll slog it out a while, the money is nice so far and I just can't play NL cash anymore for some reason.

Something in my head broke (might have been doing a lot of coaching) and now the thought of playing NL cash seems like such a chore.

Anyway I have been up all night, and now I have to go to Disneyland.

Strange life.

Mixing limits can be tough psychologically sometimes. There weren't too many 3/6 games running tonight and the only two 10/20 tables up were very soft, so I sat down on both. Played about 100 hands, got AK allin vs JJ preflop and JJ vs AK allin preflop, lost both; T7 allin on T753 vs 66 and lost, and all of a sudden I was down $6K. Pretty standard stuff but it can hurt dropping that much and then trying to go back to 2/4 and 3/6 and still be enthusiastic.


Of course it goes both ways and winning a few buyins here and there with the same flip type hands when I play higher other times obviously makes grinding feel like the easiest thing in the world. But I could feel myself starting to feel negative (you know how it is, TT vs QJ on QJJT rather than a standard cooler that could have just as easily gone the other way now seems like absolute proof of the non-existence of god...) so I logged off and stopped playing.


I have been much better in that regard lately than I was for a while. I didn't really talk about it too much but I struggled quite a bit in October after a pretty savage downswing at the end of September. The downswing itself was pretty standard, -20K at 10/20 whilst playing decently in very good games... but the month that followed was just ugly.


I had no confidence or faith in the cards, I hated the game, I didn't want to be there. I knew I needed a break but I kept playing to try and win money, and anyone who has a philosophical understanding of the game knows that as soon as you are playing to win money it's over. You have to be playing out of love and respect for the game and the situations, and you have to take pride in your play, or you just aren't going to do well.


So eventually I managed to get myself away from home for a while, and I went on a really great holiday to Melbourne/Brisbane on the other side of Australia where I got my head right again. It cleansed most of my feelings of bitterness towards the game and I came back refreshed for a variety of reasons.


One was just purely not playing much for a week and a half. I can sometimes forget how competitive I am, but give me a week with no poker and I'm frothing at the mouth with the need to beat someone intellectually at virtually anything. So time off renewed that hunger.


Another was spending quite a bit of money on nice things like clothes, hotels, meals etc, which coupled with spending time in a beautiful city with so much to aspire to such as Melbourne, reinforced the value of the rewards from all the time spent grinding out cash at this silly game. Sometimes when you get into grindermode, it can be easy to forget that at the end of the tunnel, the pot of gold really does have a lot of value - it's not just a number.


But the most surprising and interesting thing that helped my attitude was playing live a few times at Crown Casino. Now I'm in the minority here and this is all too well known for most of you, because you have easier access to large live poker rooms. There is a casino in my city and poker there is quite popular, but the breakdown of players is basically 95% absolutely terrible but in the overall scheme of things, pretty much know they are terrible, and then 5% players who think they are quite good... but actually mostly are quite good. Also our poker parlour is a few tables set up smack in the middle of the casino floor which is otherwise dominated by roulette/slots/etc.


Crown on the other hand has a basement entirely devoted to poker, and I was there during tournament week (Pokernews Cup) so there were plenty of wannabes around constantly. This was amazing for me. Obviously this would pale horribly in comparison to what Vegas must be like, but it was the first time in my life I had actually seen an entire floor full of poker players, all playing, waiting to play, or talking about poker. Hundreds and hundreds of grown men with Full Tilt caps and Pokerstars hoodies, talking about gutshots, satellites, semibluffs, donkeys - the whole deal.


And they were all absolutely goddamn terrible. I mean just absolutely, goddamn, terrible. I played 5/10 2K buyin 3 different nights, which was usually the biggest/sometimes second biggest game going, and there was not a single player to be seen. I mean there were mediocre nits who obviously win, but no-one who could beat 3/6 online. And yeah we all know that it's a truism that live players suck. But the live players in my city suck so bad they don't even count as poker players. It's like when I play golf or something and I'm absolutely hopeless - I don't even count as a golfer.


But these guys were so obviously immersed in the game, and clearly played all the time. It was probably the first time I've really come face to face with the people I take money from online... they know the terminology, they know the rigid preflop hand strengths, they know what equity a flushdraw has, they have developed their game structure over time to a way of playing they are fairly happy with... but really... they just don't get it at all.


They don't understand the fluidity, the adaptations, the situation by situation analysis, hand reading, adjustments, metagame... they don't get any of it. They just sit there with their mediocre way of playing going through the motions and seeing the cards fall. And to see that in the flesh, and understand it, and know that I was on a higher level, was unspeakably good for my confidence. So I came back to Perth eager to play, with no doubt that I deserved to crush and had the drive and discipline to do it, and since then poker has gone very well again.


The beautiful thing about poker is that it is like a mirror that reflects what you put into it. If you have the right attitude and put in the time, treating the game with the respect it deserves, you will flourish. If you sit there greedily hoping to win and merely going through the motions, you will suffer mediocrity. It's no coincidence that a lot of guys who come over from limit crush NL straight away... it's because they want to be there, and you have to want to be there.


Playing well doesn't equal waiting to flop sets vs overpairs. It's not playing 5 zillion hands and forcing an eventual profit, and whining about every beat along the way to whoever you're chatting to instead of paying attention to small and medium pots.


Playing well is caring and being focused enough to intuitively tailor your game for the dynamics you are playing within. It's noticing one of your tables has become mediocre and finding a better one... it's taking that extra 3 seconds and admitting to yourself he's not going to fold, or realising that your hand is no good but if you raise here he actually very likely can't call...


It's taking notes, it's already having a plan for the next street when you play the current one... it's so many little things that all add up to make the difference between a standard 2+2 style indoctrinated "winning player" and being able to really crush the games.


Most of all it's actually wanting to be there, and that was the big lesson for me the last couple of months.

Hey guys. For those of you who don't know me I am a longtime Party Poker MSNL grinder, known around various forums as SEABEAST, and on Party as EMO_BOYFRIEND. I play 2/4-10/20, usually playing 9-12 tables, and I have had a lot of success over the past 2 years. There's a pretty decent chance that I have been the biggest 2/4 winner on Party during that time.

About a month ago I was asked if I wanted to write a blog for LeggoPoker, which was planning to expand into a more comprehensive site. I thought about it, and decided that this sounded like something I would enjoy, so I said yes.

Well, I'm pretty damn glad I said yes because not long afterwards they asked if I wanted to also be a featured pro on the site, making videos and coaching people too. Greg and Chris gave the other coaches and I a very impressive presentation, and I was blown away by their vision.

So fast forward a month and here we are, launching already! It has been a learning curve practicing making videos - it's tougher than it looks, but I'm really looking forward to making the most of this opportunity and I hope some of you will enjoy my vids and this blog.

I plan to write fairly often and post a bunch of crazy graphs and insomnia fuelled philosophical tangents to amuse you guys. So yeah, this is very exciting and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the other guys on the site come up with too.