So far I've ground out 9000 hands of 2/4 and won about $3000, but I've lost it back in less than 1000 hands at 5/10 thanks to the following gems today:

Dealt to shaihulud [Ah Ad]
cheiro: folds
w84no1jude: folds
UCIPitcher: folds
shaihulud: raises $15 to $25
tapatapa: folds
bfl4me: raises $65 to $90
shaihulud: raises $109 to $199
bfl4me: raises $801 to $1000 and is all-in
shaihulud: calls $801 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [Ks 2c 3h]
*** TURN *** [Ks 2c 3h] [Jc]
*** RIVER *** [Ks 2c 3h Jc] [6c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bfl4me: shows [Ac Kc] (a flush, Ace high)
shaihulud: mucks hand
bfl4me collected $2002 from pot

Dealt to shaihulud [Ah Ac]
matate: folds
Rubadubducky: folds
carnalil: raises $20 to $30
0Human0: raises $50 to $80
shaihulud: raises $110 to $190
OGURI: folds
carnalil: folds
0Human0: raises $952 to $1142 and is all-in
shaihulud: calls $833.50 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [Qc Td Jd]
*** TURN *** [Qc Td Jd] [9d]
*** RIVER *** [Qc Td Jd 9d] [2c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
shaihulud: shows [Ah Ac] (a pair of Aces)
0Human0: shows [Ad Kc] (a straight, Ten to Ace)
0Human0 collected $2084 from pot

Dealt to shaihulud [Kh As]
TheHoboKing: folds
Kaninschen: folds
0Human0: raises $20 to $30
shaihulud: raises $70 to $100
crapface82: folds
0Human0: raises $140 to $240
shaihulud: raises $795 to $1035 and is all-in
0Human0: calls $787 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [Jc 8c 7c]
*** TURN *** [Jc 8c 7c] [8d]
*** RIVER *** [Jc 8c 7c 8d] [3c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
shaihulud: shows [Kh As] (a pair of Eights)
0Human0: shows [Ah Kc] (a flush, King high)
0Human0 collected $2062 from pot

Obviously these are just standard hands from both ends and everything but man, can I catch a break sometime soon please

Well today I deleted my pocket fives profile and cashed out all my money on every site except for PokerStars, and am done grinding tournaments for as long as I can manage.

I have become way too moody and lazy and unhealthy, and I don't wanna let it go any further.

I have also spent way too much of my time immersed of the world of drooling retards that is P5/MTT Community, and I think the nature of being a ranked MTT player and checking on other peoples scores, anti-sweating your friends, feeling hard done by when players you consider worse than you run better than you and so on is a really terrible way to live.

I'm also really sick of the fanboy aspect of MTTs - way more than half the people that message me for tourney coaching don't even end up getting lessons, they just want to be friends and use asking about coaching as a way in to conversation...

And god it's just so sick and degenerate warping your sleeping patterns and thus, diet, playing 14 hour days, logging all nighters Sunday after Sunday all to get to one coinflip with a yearly salary in the middle...

It's too much.

I can't look at myself in the mirror anymore...

I know I've said all this before, but yeah.

I'm hoping deleting P5 will push me over the edge.

I'm a gamer at heart and as embarassing as it might be, I find ranking based goals more motivation to grind than money is :/

But yeah it has to stop.

It was a fun year, pretty degenerate - I got #1 in AU and held it nearly the whole year, which was really fun and something I was proud of even though I'm clearly not the best tournament player in Australia (AndyMcleod is).

I won a live donkament in a really satisfying way (without wanting to be too arrogant I pretty much steamrolled it), though I spent a lot of money getting to that score.

I never had any major scores online (biggest 31k but it was a $1K buyin and the score got me back to about breaking even in 1ks...), I definitely ran way below expectation in all forms of major tournament but I probably ran above expectation in random tourneys.

I feel like I got pretty much what I wanted, which was to prove to myself I could be good at them, to take down a live event, to win the respect of some drooling fanboys for a while, get my name in bluff magazine, etc.

And I learnt roughly where I stand in the tournament world, which is pretty similar to where I stood in the cashgame world and in the MTG world - I'm not one of the absolute best, never gonna be top 20 at any of those games, would be lucky to/probably wouldn't crack the top 100...

But I'm very high second tier, better than all but the best.

Anyway I've been getting so moody, so egotistical, so over-competitive, so unhealthy...

Been running bad at real life too, I'm in a bad place right now.

So I'm starting again, at 400NL on Stars, grinding my way back up.

If I reactivate P5 again please mock me openly.

Love,

January: I started the year determined to prove myself at higher stakes, and to travel the world.

I played exclusively $1000NL and higher for the first time, and had a very strong winning month.

I also broke up with Annette for the first time, and then decided, partly to help get over it, partly because I no longer had as many ties to Perth, that it was finally time to head out into the world and do some travelling.

February: Again played exclusively $1000NL and higher, had my first six-figure downswing but still won money for the month.

Won a satellite to a tournament in Vienna in late March, which was very momentous as it ensured I couldn't reasonably wimp out of heading overseas, and now had a date and destination to tie myself to.

March: Had a very strong winning month leading up to going overseas, eroded my downswing completely and headed off to Europe extremely robusto.

Flew to Vienna right at the end of March.

My main memory of leaving is sitting in the airport with my dad, feeling nervous but ok, confident, brave... until the time came to say goodbye, where after remaining stoic right up until this moment, as soon as I turned away and he couldn't see me anymore, as I walked off by myself tears started silently streaming down my face as I realised I was completely alone with no idea what the **** I was doing, and it was going to be that way for the next two months.

Vienna will always mean a lot to me as the first place I ever went all by myself, and as the place where I became completely addicted to tournament poker.

The night before the main event I decided I should have a bit of a bash at some online MTTs to get some practice in - I'd played a month of SNGs in the past when I was on life tilt and needed a break from cash, and I had strong results in random freerolls and bored late night goofing around in tourneys, plus I'd read Harrington on Holdem and lurked the 2+2 MTT forum since the old days, so I certainly wasn't totally clueless.

But still, essentially I was just another cash donk. I had a look at the lobbies to see what was running, played all the biggest stuff, and wound up coming first in the $65K Guaranteed on Full Tilt for $20,000.

The tournament finished at dawn Euro time, and I dragged myself down to the casino for the live tourney still buzzing at lunchtime after a couple hours sleep.

During the course of the event I played with some cool guys and good players, one in particular who I later learned was Mats Iremark... oh man. He schooled me so bad. So, so, so, so bad.

I have still never seen someone as in control of a table as he was during that tournament, and it was so inspiring.

The combination of tasting a $20K score and seeing someone exert so much skill in what most people would naively think of as just being a luckbased looooool donkament was enough to get me hooked, and there it was... the rest of the Europe trip I took advantage of the great schedule available and my poker during the rest of the trip was 90% MTT 10% running hot at $5000NL.

April: After Vienna I travelled to Oslo to go and meet my friend Jurg, a very strong Party reg I'd been chatting to for a while.

He and his friend/roommate Daniel were totally awesome, and I had an amazing trip.

Poker wise we had sorta planned to sweat each other a bunch and try and learn as much as we could, but I was probably a huge letdown as I was a) addicted to donkaments and b) on a huge heater... so I couldn't really be bothered grinding most of the time.

But man it was great fun, we went to some pretty ballin clubs and I got my first taste of VIP treatment/bottle service (doesn't really exist in Australia).

After Oslo I had planned to split the following week between Stockholm and Copenhagen, but after a huge sendoff night I was so hungover that I somehow left my passport behind in Oslo airport and got stuck in Stockholm until the Australian Embassy could replace it for me.

Not exactly a tragedy as if you have money and can deal with the weather, Stockholm is surely one of the best cities in the whole world.

After Stockholm and then one night in Copenhagen I headed off to Milano, hoping to head to the EPT in San Remo...

However after getting to Milano and finally bothering to look into San Remo details I found out the tournament was sold out, so now I was in Italy for no reason.

Milano was probably the only place in Europe I didn't like, everything just felt really wrong, like it was presenting itself as the epicentre of classiness and fashion, but in reality half the city was falling apart, there were bums and lepers and **** everywhere, the juxtaposition was really disgusting and I felt uncomfortable the whole time I was there.

From Milano I went to Amsterdam and then headed off to Monte Carlo, again to check out the EPT.

I didn't wanna put up $25K to play the main event, and I didn't really know anyone in the tourney scene to ask for backing or anything, so I spent the first couple of days in Monte Carlo walking around enjoying the sun, taking photos, relaxing.

Then on the Saturday there was a 1K euro tourney on that I decided to play, I headed down an hour early and found out that it was already full.

I got an alternate ticket, but after waiting around for two hours I ended up being second on the list when they closed the alternate period.

This tilted me severely, so I went back to my hotel room and played a long session online all Saturday night, winning a WSOP seat and some other moneys... then when it hit dawn I was like, well, it's only a few hours until the Sundays start, meh...

So I stayed up, killed time until everything started, and wound up playing for close to 30 hours straight!

Then in my 40th hour of being awake I came 2nd in the Sunday Mulligan for $28,100 - which to this day is still my best ever Sunday score

It's fun thinking back on how naive I was when I first started playing tourneys. I ran soooo hot!

I do think there were some other factors that helped, like the fact that noone knew who I was but I was playing EXTREMELY laggy - and getting away with a lot more than I ever could now.

If you're playing like DJK but people just see you as a random name... you're going to do pretty well.

But yeah, I didn't even know about the pocket fives rankings until I'd been grinding MTTs for a solid month or so in Europe, I signed up on the last day of April, and as soon as I saw there were 'by country' rankings I was completely hooked and obsessed with the idea of becoming #1 in Australia.

May - During my trip I'd begun talking to Annette again a lot, I guess because I was really lonely on the road.

After a long flirtation with the idea of her flying out to hang out in Europe at the last minute she decided she couldn't do it on her own.

At the same time I was noticing that things just weren't having the same effect on me as they were at the start of the trip...

I was in Switzerland,...

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.

This afternoon I went and stocked up on Sunday supplies.

I got: 6 bananas, 4 red bulls, container of blackberries, container of blueberries, small potato salad, large athena yoghurt...

Plus I had twelve hours sleep last night, so I'm primed for my first all-nighter in a while.

I want to crush tonight, really badly.

It's absurd that I don't always make sure to have snacks around for my all-nighters but I'm a pretty disorganised person and I often don't.

I have considered paying someone $100 to bring me breakfast every Monday morning at 7am but it's one of those things that even though it would be worth it for both parties, it just feels too weird to go around asking about.

Tonight my new band "Drowning Horse" played its first show.

Went pretty well I thought!

My friend said "man that was totally negative"... definitely the desired effect.

Really, really, really, really slow.

Guitars tuned down to A... so really, really, really, really heavy.

Lots of feedback and repetition... you get the drift.

My other new band, "Hospital Beds", played its first show with me in the band last night as well (they played a couple of shows previously with a different drummer while I was at WSOP).

That went kind of poorly but I was on a huge high afterwards anyway just because I made it through the show - it was my first time playing drums in front of a crowd.

I don't get nervous really at all even playing to 500 people on guitar because I've done it so much... but a new instrument or a new band is different so... we played to 30 people and I was nervous as hell.

Really fun weekend and I'm psyched to win some money tonight

So today was my second winning day since October.

Got 3rd in the Stars 100r for 6K, 2nd in the FT 6max 30K Gtd for $5K, and made a couple of other random final tables before fizzling out in 8th/9th.

I really needed it as my confidence has been shot lately and I've been sweating cards a bit too hard - my heart couldn't take it anymore.

I have started running alright at PLO too, plus I think my game is improving a lot as well.

There are a lot of parallels with tournaments really - in both it seems initially like there's a lot of splashing around and gambooling to be done, but in reality once you're comfortable with the fact that there is going to be a lot of variance that you are powerless towards, once you knuckle down and start respecting each game, you realise that the very small mathematical edges (through things like making optimal bet sizes) are what drive your profit.

Well, that plus very few people are exceptionally good at either, because both games turn you a little bit insane.

I think that far more than in NLHE, at least traditionally, you need to be good at math to excel at both PLO and MTT...

In NLHE feel is very important as stacks are deep and no-one ever has anything... it's ok to make small mistakes if you outplay your opponents into making big ones (obviously this is becoming less and less true, but is still comparatively true).

PLO and MTTs are all about small mistakes, capitalising on small mistakes over and over.

I always seem to do well at tournaments on "off days"... days where the prize pools are smaller but most of the regulars are not around.

I think it has always been a constant for me in poker - it's not like I can't hold my own against other regulars or anything, but...

I am definitely exceptionally good at raping fish and have always been... and I think I tend to play a style which optimises value from bad players at the expense of sometimes donating to thinking players if I am unaware that they are thinking.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying poker at the moment, and looking forward to next year.

Things have been pretty tough lately

I severed ties once and for all with drama girl.

Turned out she was lying both to me and her ex about each other, she led me on in a way people usually don't get to do because I'm pretty intuitive/usually a good judge of character and don't tend to align myself with people who can't be trusted.

I have never really been lied to or betrayed to that extent before.

I was absolutely devastated at first and then I realised that throughout this entire messy ordeal I carried myself with the utmost dignity, was honest and open every step of the way, and now that all is said and done I'm proud of myself and glad I got away...

My time is far too precious to spend with someone who can look you right in the eye and lie, even when fully aware of what is at stake.

I just can't even fathom being able to do that.

Whatever flaws I have (and there are many), if you ask me something straight up I will ALWAYS tell you the truth no matter how ****ed up or painful it is.

I was brought up that the truth is all there is, and life is about learning, communicating, connecting...

I don't even understand how someone could be so duplicitous. I really can't fathom it.

I have caused a lot of pain in my time but it was always direct and I have never shied away from it, I always take responsibility and I always stay loyal to anyone that cares about me.

In other news I broke my ex-girlfriend/best friend's ankle in two places.

It was an accident, obviously (involving alcohol and a bicycle), but it was my fault.

She is only in my city to visit her family, and has been having a terrible time... now she is stuck in hospital waiting to get surgery, and has to stay here in a city she hates and gladly moved away from for 6 weeks recuperating

I feel so bad about it.

The last couple of days were really hard, I felt so guilty and so stupid, didn't get any sleep, was just in traumatised zombie mode.

Then last night my band supported Gorilla Biscuits (classic late 80s hardcore band from NY) and that was a lot of fun - their message is all about positivity and taking all you can from life (start today!) so it was good timing for that show.

Seeing a couple of my now-jaded mid 20s friends going absolutely crazy stagediving and singing every word was so awesome too, cheered me up a lot.

Then I went home and slept through the Sundays, another victory for sure.

Woke up this morning, sun was shining, coffee still existed, and now I'm taking a deck of uno cards and a bag of books and magazines in to see my wounded friend and cheer her up.

I am going into serious degenerate mode too.

I ****ing hate xmas, Australian summer is pretty brutal as well, so I think a few weeks of sitting next to an air conditioner playing poker all day and grinding up some travel money will be just what the doctor ordered.

I am thinking about moving to New York for a couple of months before WSOP.

If I can run good the next few weeks somehow and get some serious cash together I might even just stay there after the tour, and not come home until July...

At the moment I am shamefully busto though and couldn't do it even if I decided to.

Good motivation for those 4am wakeups...

I feel like I'm grinding out of the ghetto again.

It's a bit different this time because I own a house and am theoretically doing well, but still... my expendable money is very low at the moment, and I think it's time to get out the Jay-Z/Nas/Biggie albums, start pulling some all nighters, and get to work

31st in the opening event, 30 paid.

Busto in the second event during the second hour.

16th in the Sunday ECOOP ($100K for first) after having 1 hours sleep in a 30 hour span.

Never once above starting stack in the APPT Main Event until the 6th hour, at which point I busted from the tournament the VERY NEXT hand after finally grinding my way up to above starting stack.

Fought with my room-mate the whole time we were here.

Coming home 5 days early because I hate this city.

****

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

Today I shipped the final amount owing on my apartment and am officially debt free!

It has been an absolutely sick month and I'm very happy about getting that weight off my shoulders.

I came 4th on Monday in the Full Tilt $1K for another $31K, to cap the month off nicely.

I have actually been super unlucky deep in a couple of other big tourneys this week too, ATs < T8o in 45bb pot with 11 left in a big 100R, and AQo < AQo in a 90bb pot on the bubble of today's 6max 100R...

Not gonna complain though!

Two more days to go and I will do a proper recap of the month and my plans for the future.

Weeeeeeeee!