By SirWatts on January 8th, 2008 (more posts by author)

Hey, we're 4 events into the Aussie Millions now and I'm still having a blast. I haven't had too much success myself so far, but friends have already put up some good finishes. timex got 2nd in the opening $1K NL event after chopping for $90K. For some reason he thought it was a good idea to trade 10% with me for the entire series so that has me in good shape thus far. Also, Jimmy "gobboboy" Fricke won Event 3, the mixed stud tournament, for $17K. gobbo finished 2nd in the main event here last year for $1 million AUD, so he was definitely very pleased to come back and win an event this year. I had my first cash in the $1K limit holdem event today. I was min-betting along pretty well, but then I got caught making a move on the bubble which cut into my stack. After that I went card dead, and finally made a stand with ATo in my BB. Unfortunately I ran into the CO raiser's 93s, and that was that. I finished 15th for $1230. So once the $1100 buy-in is accounted for and the $123 I owe timex for our 10% swap, I finished ahead $7 on the day. Then I drank a $9 Crown Lager from the mini-bar in our hotel room. Sigh.

Outside of poker Melbourne has been a lot of fun. I've been hanging out with all the other online players that are already here a lot. We usually just end up going for dinner, having some drinks, and then end up back at Tony's place for Wii, chinese poker, more drinks, etc.... Tomorrow is the $1K rebuy, which should be a great tournament. It's the biggest effective buy-in preliminary event that I plan to play. Playing rebuy tournaments live is always a lot of fun because you get to do crazy stuff and laugh at the silly live nits who don't even rebuy off the start. Also, I'm 2/2 lifetime in cashing $1K rebuys, so I have a record to maintain. I haven't really given any tournament reports yet, but I'll get around to doing more of those at some point. The last thing anyone wants is to listen to me try to give limit holdem strategy, considering I was a losing 5/10 player on Party before I switched to mostly tournaments. It doesn't really matter though, because everywhere you go people are just awful at limit holdem. Keep in mind that limit holdem was the main game played in most casinos before the poker boom, so you'd think at least some of the old time players might be decent. Again, you would be wrong. Almost everyone has so many glaring fundamental leaks that it's ridiculous. Anyways, going to get some rest and hopefully put in a good showing in the rebuy tomorrow. Peace,

Mike