Aussie Millions

Hello and Happy New Year. This is my first Blog for Cardplayer, and I am writing this on my way to Melbourne Australia for Aussie Millions. It took a few days to get these up so the initial data is a couple of days old. I'm pretty excited about my first trip to Australia, and the opportunity to play in the upcoming events and some of the cash games. I haven't play since the Bellagio 5 Diamond except for a few cash sessions at The Commerce in LA, where the action is always good and you can pretty much find any game at almost any hour.

As I sit here on Qantas, Qantas, never had a crash, I have had a lot of time to critically reflect on my game and hopefully improve it. My bust out of the 5 Diamond main event was pretty bad, and I'd like to say I put my money in good and got unlucky, but that would be wishful thinking. I played solid poker until the end of the third day when I lost my mind and had what could best be described as an out of body experience. I have talked to many good players who have described similar events. As you put your money in, what you are sure is bad; you still can't stop yourself even though you know it's bad. It goes something like this; you raise with somewhat of a marginal hand in perhaps poor position and miss the flop miserably. Next, you continue and of course get called. You say to yourself STOP! No more, but you continue on the bluff and of course get called all the way. When the hand is over you just plain feel stupid. This is the move I'm trying to eliminate from my game. I'm talking about the bad situation that you know all the way through is lame and unlikely to work, but for some unknown reason you just can't stop yourself.

The take home message is don't put yourself in that situation. I have had a fair amount of experience in aviation accident investigation and what it shares with poker is the critical event theory. What that means is it usually takes at least two and sometimes as many as four negative events to put you in trouble. One bad decision does not usually end up with a catastrophic outcome. That translates to "Eject Eject Eject" and throw the hand away.

Anyway, made it to Melbourne safe and sound. Ran into David Singer in the airport and we were on the same flight. We talked a little poker, but mostly other things. An interesting side note is that David and I were childhood friends, and we lost touch and then reconnected in the poker world.

The Crown Casino Is a modern beautiful hotel casino that sits in the middle of downtown Melbourne. The staff has been very helpful. I was met in the check in line be Hailey Breen, a casino poker host. She walked me through the registration process, assisted with getting a players card, and generally made the process painless. You can fill out one form to register for all the events and pay with a credit card.

I made it to the Crown Casino in time to play the first event which was a no limit $1,100 buy in. Over 500 people played and it was a well organized, well run event. 4000 in starting chips and a pretty standard structure. My table started 11 handed, which is not my favorite situation. It really slows the action and you will start to become short stacked even with average chips. I lasted to the second break and felt like I played well, but never got any good situations and lost two coin flips with AK, the first to J 10 to a short stack, the next to pocket 7's when I was pretty short. The event had mostly Australians with the only other Americans I knew Kenna James and Anna Wroblewski, also missing the money. I was pretty tired after the flight and travel and elected to have a nice dinner and go to bed.