Man, I've been pretty lazy with regards to playing lately but I've been doing so much work with the stable that I've felt like my MTT game is really sharp again - I know group HH review isn't exactly a new concept to a lot of you guys but I had never really done it before until recently and it's been awesome.

Seeing how other good players play, plus being forced to constantly articulate my opinions and justify them, and essentially micro-managing ~15 MTTers, thus being very aware of their strengths and weaknesses and trying to help with them has given me a really focused understanding of how MTTs work right now in December 2011.

So when I have played I've felt powerful (like AlexeiMartov might say) and like I was pushing everything in the right direction, so I've been feeling like I might win a bunch of stuff soon.

On Sunday I got a bit of run-good to go along with that and I took down the iPoker Major for $47k, a tourney I've always wanted to win as it has such a great structure, so many fish, and I'd never really run deep in it at all.

I also got 5th in Party Highroller for $9xxx, 3rd in a $55 turbo for $7xxx, and 3rd in another small turbo for $2xxx, so it was a pretty sweet day

I'm heading back to Perth for Xmas, then Albany for a few days after that, then back to Melbourne in the new year to watch a bunch of 80s flicks and get ready to crush Aussie Millions.

#quickbragposts #happyholidaysall

It was probably inevitable but after that 4 day stint grinding MTTs while mrs seabeast was away I've been wanting to grind them again whenever it's convenient, though lately that hasn't been very often.

I couldn't pass up playing Sunday Majors while actually wanting to play them so despite having removalists booked for 2pm Monday, I regged all the early stuff up until Sunday Million at 6:30 so that if I was still left in anything by the time they arrived it would be deep enough to be worth the embarassment of awkwardly monotabling on laptop like a degenerate while they started packing away all my stuff.

Happily when they arrived I was deep in something, 1/11 in the Party Major which was $56k for 1st, but I wound up losing a fairly massive CL flip with 7 left and busting for $7xxx.

Normally it would have been more disappointing but I felt like I got away with something even playing majors at all so making some profit before I spent the next however many hours lifting stuff was an ok outcome.

The move went well, didn't break anything, and the new house is great. Really good vibe on the street, no more slow elevators, having to buzz people in, 5 minute round trip to take out the trash, etc etc.

I set up my record player in the lounge room, got my old huge couch set up again (didn't fit into apartment) and the whole house has a really good feel.

I had my last exam for uni, it didn't go very well but I think I should pass - one of the few written answer questions was "explain the main difference between Expected Value and Expected Utility, giving appropriate examples"...

Was hard not to write about raise/folding +cEV hands at the WSOP main event FT but I wussed out and just wrote about coinflips instead

I played a bit of PLO this week on the iPhone tethering grind while the internet connection gets set up and it didn't really seem to disconnect at all, so this morning I played an MTT sesh and won the Stars $320 6-max for $9xxx plus an Ongame turbo for 3xxx and had a few other FTs as well.

It's nice to run hot, and I think my MTT game is super sharp atm and I'm definitely gonna grind here and there over the next few months being on holiday and all, gonna keep my game sharp and win something big at Aussie Millions

My girlfriend went on holiday this past week so I took advantage of the opportunity to get into degen mode for a while, and ground MTTs 4 days in a row.

I won a few small things and made a bunch of FTs the first few days, and I felt my play improve by leaps and bounds - not in terms of concepts, just focus and execution - and I was really looking forward to Sunday majors today.

Most of the session went pretty poorly, but towards the end of the day I found myself in the money of the 888 Sunday Major and the Stars $200r, so I two tabled them on my laptop for hours watching the WSOP Main Event stream which was surprisingly awesome what with being able to see their hole cards right after each hand.

I strongly recommend taking a look at the coverage three handed and headsup, it's fun guessing what they have, laughing at the terrible commentary, and sweating the board run-outs in real time.

Anyway I ended up getting 4th in the 200r for $8k, and winning 888 for $24k, which was very satisfying, I love winning tourneys I've never won before.

A fun surprise was that when it got heads-up, they put a graphic of a suitcase full of cash on the table next to our match WPT style:



A less fun surprise was that when there were 10 players left on the FT bubble, it went to hand-for-hand, but one table was 6 handed and the other 4 handed... lol.

Anyway it was a fun few days and I feel like my MTT game is really sharp at the moment, so future Sundays should bode well for a while.

Tomorrow I have my one exam for the semester, Cognitive Psychology - quite a lot of the content is relevant to poker as a lot of it is to do with what guides and influences our ability to focus and make decisions, there are even small references to expected value and game theory.

I'm really relieved that the semester will be over, not because I've had to work super hard or anything but just because now I won't feel guilty if I just feel like playing poker or hanging out with my gf all the time

I'm moving house next week too, just down the road, but out of a relatively soulless apartment and into a small house on a nice street.

I think that is going to be a nice change, and I want to try and make the place more my own, though I've been saying that about everywhere I've wanted to move for the past x years.

But yeah, couple months chilling being domestic and grinding a bit, then Aussie Millions in January should be sweet, tempted to do PCA too.

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!

Dear Blog,

Hi! It's been a while, and I feel like posting an update. Plus uni is done for the year, and I have been playing a ton of poker.

The middle half of the year was really stressful - balancing uni, poker, girlfriend, etc.

I had a sharp downswing playing live in August or so, losing 200k in the space of three sessions - we play 25/50/100 usually, sometimes 100/100/100 or 25/50/100/200.

It really stung since before that I had sorta been doing the play live once a week and every third Monday donkament session 'poker is free money when you feel like showing up' thing.

Think I forgot what it was like to lose, and it really bruised my ego.

So for a while I went a bit insane and wound up playing way more of the WCOOP than I would have otherwise (trying to get unstuck), and not putting as much effort into uni as previously.

I also took a couple of months time-out from the live game, to lick my wounds and work on PLO.

For the first time in a long time I started feeling like I was under a ton of pressure, and I was finding it hard to balance everything.

Fortunately I managed to prioritise and after WCOOP was over I realised how ridiculous I was being, and to just let go of the money and stop degrading myself chasing tournament scores, and make sure I took care of uni/gf.

Then with poker forgotten about that all came together nicely (funny how easy succeeding at life is when you aren't playing poker at all), before I was done for the semester in October.

Since then I have been playing a bunch of PLO cash, bumhunting 6-max on pretty much every site.

Have been running pretty well higher and terribly lower, which is fine with me.

Here's a graph since I am going back to WA for Xmas and thus, free from karmic punishment as I won't be playing again in 2010:



Overall, it's been a really good year.

I might start updating more since I'll be playing a lot of poker until uni starts again next March.

Hopefully I can keep running above expectation...

Happy holidays!

So on Wednesday I managed to take down the SCOOP High 1k/rebuys event, for $205,110!

The tourney went slowly and smoothly from start to finish - I played quite carefully throughout and won the important hands when I needed to.

I ended up beating David Benyamine headsup, with Steve Sung coming 3rd - it was interesting playing shorthanded with live players whose betsizes and math related play were far less optimal than mine, but who were using creative and unorthodox lines at different times to kinda stay afloat.

I got really lucky with about 15 people left when my AQs beat Amak's KK after 4betting allin preflop - this gave me a commanding stack and also knocked out probably the best player still in the field.

It was a long grind and I was exceptionally proud of how I played, I thought I held my own throughout - though of course I was very lucky, even in the final hands, where I won a big flip with TT vs Sung's AQ and then coolered Benyamine to win the tournament with straight vs set on J754...

I really enjoyed playing these last couple of weeks, and it's going to be weird not to be getting up at 3:30 am and getting a redbull out of the fridge to kick off the day.

Obviously I had a good series overall, and I feel really good about poker at the moment.

There's a ton of variance in this game, but it's amazing how often when you DECIDE you are going to win, and you put in the requisite effort, things come good for you (as opposed to when you are simply going through the motions, and hoping for the chips to fall the right way).

I said to my girlfriend if that tournament had been held on the first day of SCOOP I wouldn't have won, but because it was 10 days in and I'd been sharpening and refining my game 12 hours a day for 2 weeks straight, I was tuned in enough to channel the good fortune I had into a win.

Anyway, I guess I have to go back to the real world now and finish off the uni semester.

I'll probably come back and write here from time to time, I hope you all had a good SCOOP - what a great exercise in profitable degeneracy it always is

Well it's been 4 months and I've been playing a lot of poker lately so it seemed like a good time to write a bit of an update.

I'm settled in Melbourne and really enjoying it - uni is going really well (88% of the people doing my course are female!) and for most of the year I haven't been playing much online poker at all.

I play fairly high stakes poker live twice a week or so, Crown Casino is in the city and a short walk from my university so I walk down after class when there's a game on (usually either 25/25/50 PLO or 25/50/100 NLHE).

I've run pretty poorly overall, and have lost a lot of big pots in memorably sickening ways the last few months but I think I'm roughly breaking even for the year.

I've been buying pieces/staking more than usual too, but so far all my horses are losing.

I started really missing donkaments recently and I'm 3/4 through the semester at uni and getting good grades, so I handed in a couple of things early so as to be able to essentially take three weeks off - one week to practice for SCOOP and then two weeks for SCOOP.

The practice week went poorly but seemed to do the trick, as I got my eye in and the day before SCOOP started I finally won a tournament, a $55 cubed for $5k or so.

Since then I have gone on a huge tear, and had winning days nearly every day this week - I won the $1002R1A two days in a row, won the $40k gtd, chopped the UB 1K for 32k, got 4th in Party Highroller last week and 2nd this week (8k/18k), and got 12th in the 1500r PLO (13k).

Paid a lot in entry fees too obviously but I'm still up quite a lot, and I won a bunch live the last two times I played (though I was coming off a big live downswing).

Another whole week of SCOOP to go and though I'm exhausted my game is really sharp at the moment and I'm ready to give it a good shake.

It's gonna be hard to detach after the week is over, but I've been much happier this year spending my time going to uni and hanging out with my girlfriend... my plan for the rest of the year is to keep doing what I'm doing but also play most Sundays online and keep playing live after class as it doesn't disrupt my schedule too much.

I'll play a bit of PLO cash online too but that's more of a when I feel like it, 10k hands a month type thing.

So yeah, I'm still alive and all is going well

I have been in Sydney since last Tuesday night, the first leg of my three week holiday spanning the APPT Grand Final and then a short Extortion tour in Melbourne/Adelaide.

There has been a big PLO game running, it starts as 25/25/50 uncapped but often morphs into 25/25/50/100 or 50/100/200 (or when it gets 3 handed, 50/100/300).

I've run hot so far and am up about $170k.

It's been insanely epic, I have played through til 10am three of the nights (aka until none of the fish have any money left).

Shorthanded PLO is a beautiful game, though really I am barely competent and mostly getting paid for already having money if you get what I mean.

The tournaments went terribly, I never caught a break in any of them, meh.

Holdem sucks!

I've had a weird couple of weeks, I was offered a place on Poker Stars 'Team Online' for next year, a 30 man squad they are bringing in of pseudo red-pros.

It was obviously pretty tempting to take the deal but I am determined to change my life next year and essentially committing to getting paid to go for Supernova Elite would be a pretty massive backwards step in that regard.

Strange the way life works sometimes, sponsorship was something I wanted and hoped for most of the past year or so, and then just as I moved on from that an opportunity presented itself.

Felt a lot like the devil on my shoulder, or 'just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

Butnahhhhhh, it just wasn't the right decision for me at this point in my life.

I got an early offer for Psychology at RMIT which was my second preference, so I know for sure now I'll at least be able to do that next year - but hopefully I'll get in to Uni of Melb when the main round of offers go out.

Am applying to rent a house in Fitzroy North with two friends over the next few days as well, so things are moving forward nicely!

So I guess it's been a while since I updated...

Mostly things have been continuing along the same trajectory - I failed the driving test again (fourth time) and have been putting in a lot of work at PLO.

I moved down to straight 2/4, and cut out mixing in small sites, and started logging at least 1k hands every day.

This week I finally caught the upswing I felt I was starting to deserve and I won 20 buyins over the last 3 days.

Very satisfying to get some results after putting in so much work, and yeah lol variance and all of that - I'm sure I was running bad before and I'm sure I'm running good now - but I have improved hugely even just in the past two weeks.

I haven't played a donkament in the last month or so, and even though things have gone far from perfectly I'm pretty happy with the progress I've been able to make lately.

The next couple of months are gonna be pretty hectic, I'm going to Sydney on Tuesday for two weeks for the APPT, then I'm going on a small three-show tour of Melbourne/Adelaide with Extortion.

Then I'll be back home for xmas before trying to find a house in Melbourne over the new year - ideally I would like to have papers signed before Aussie Millions (I know this is a bad time to try and find a house!).

Then by the time AM is over I'll only have a couple weeks before uni starts.

So pretty much the next 2 months are mapped out, it makes me feel better about things now that I have some plans and structure in mind.

Poker wise I'd be pretty happy to be a lazy 5/10 PLO reg next year while focusing on uni, I really want to get top marks and try and study overseas in 2011.

And you know, I feel good about not playing online donkaments anymore but it'd be nice to win something at the APPT

Got back my STAT (mature age university entrance test) results - I scored top 1% of population for the comprehension part/top 3% for the written essay part.

Pretty happy with those, especially after the driving failures, and should get into my first preference: Bachelor of Science majoring in Psychology, at the University of Melbourne.

Poker has been going terribly, cashgame wise I've played 11k hands this month for a 57k loss, tournament wise I'm maybe up 25k.

On the positive side I have been working pretty hard on my Omaha game, and even though I've been getting completely and utterly raped I feel like I am making good progress.

The other night I went and saw Nick Oliveri play an acoustic set, he was wearing an Extortion t-shirt and said on local radio here we're the best band he's seen in the last 10 years (lol).

Speaking of which, I'm going to be going on tour and playing some shows for the first time in ages in December - we are playing in Adelaide a few days after APPT Sydney.

There's a $2500 tournament here in Perth this weekend too, I even went down to play the $550 teams event with a friend for fun today but they inexplicably wouldn't let us register 20 minutes before the tournament was due to start, even though there were plenty of seats left (lol).