MelowYellow: psssh
MelowYellow: we got hosed by this limey wanker

salabala: LOL
salabala: this site can fkk my ***
salabala: wta joke

slymm: do me favour pro if u got nothign fn fold
slymm: hate fn pros that delibrate when they knwo theyre folding 2min before
King Mort: its cuz he's playing many more tables
slymm: y WELL HES A FN WANKER THAT WHAT HE IS

Rovermeover: reward the brown noses
Rovermeover: up poker stars bums
sourlemur: keep whining, that often works
Rovermeover: i just laugh at the game of skill people keep spouting
sourlemur: and long as you keep laughing instead of thinking everything will be fine
Rovermeover: all these new canadians my arse
Rovermeover: all programed all rigged
sourlemur: can I ask seriously why you play here if you believe that??
Rovermeover: because it means i dont have to sit next to some smelly old bloke in a casino
sourlemur: why not spend it on hookers and blow instead?
sourlemur: i mean, this obviously isn't making you happy

alamoni: u have to admit your odds seem beeter causr of that little spade
Daleroxxu: sample size of 2 coinflips? quite the statistician

dutchpoker3: DLV´V
dutchpoker3: +´kvdfS+´
dutchpoker3: fwG´
dutchpoker3: P±VFDS
dutchpoker3: +f
dutchpoker3: fp
dutchpoker3: ´ffp
dutchpoker3: *few+
dutchpoker3: fv<
dutchpoker3: p´fewp´+
dutchpoker3: fewp´
dutchpoker3: kwfep´+
dutchpoker3: few´p+wfe+´mpfew+´KWe<*
Baedei: hes a donk
dutchpoker3: sick sick sick sick rigged cancer hooker sote
dutchpoker3: so cancer rigged as hellllllllll
dutchpoker3: kanker joden
Daleroxxu: first time ive seen a dutch guy go crazy in the chat without saying kanker to me
Daleroxxu: oh wait, he said it
dutchpoker3: lAL´MS´F+,F±f´Sd
dutchpoker3: ´fgDS+´,F´+a

Boateng: well played
GENGISKAN641: ty
Boateng: blubb blubb
GENGISKAN641: jajajajajaja

9MM4Y0U: lol
9MM4Y0U: fish xD
9MM4Y0U: seriously
9MM4Y0U: i dont understand how stars sponsors players like you
9MM4Y0U: so facking clueless lol
chess87: they just don't know better
chess87: most team pros have no clue
chess87: did u ever see donald play?
9MM4Y0U: lol nopew
9MM4Y0U: man its just too ridiculous
9MM4Y0U: i mean the guy is donking off on the 0,50/1
9MM4Y0U: pretending to be a 'pro'
9MM4Y0U: lmfao
9MM4Y0U: if he's a pro then im phil galfond

JoeIngram1: yesssss
benny1978: yessss
benny1978: better not to gloat no?
JoeIngram1: sorry u have never been excited in your life
JoeIngram1: takes alot of skill to get aces everytime i have a strong hand too, u r almost as good as daleroxxu
benny1978: a supernove elite getting excited by a 5o buck pot!
Daleroxxu: lol
JoeIngram1: i play for 28usd pot
JoeIngram1: 100usd make me **** hard
benny1978: fair enough
JoeIngram1: plus i hit ****ing quads lol
JoeIngram1: ur acting like i hit flush draw
benny1978: :)
JoeIngram1: when some girl suck your **** your probably like meh get off me, u dont get any job

DOOPAMAN: hey deleroxxu go play in heavy traffic
Daleroxxu: i live in bangkok, i do that every day
DOOPAMAN: geek
Daleroxxu: :) love you

faustballmax: arschloch
faustballmax: scheiss brite
Daleroxxu: sorry mate i don't speak german, no idea what youre saying'

WOOWELL: get some pubes dale

000_Aces_000: so hat ya spend ya fpps on?
Daleroxxu: whisky and girls
Pete Rose78: lol
000_Aces_000: gd idea

cabbageshark: ty
Daleroxxu: lol @ ty
cabbageshark: ez game
cabbageshark: any chance off a mention on twitter dale?
Daleroxxu: i already tweeted that some clown called cabbageshark beat me in a pot then typed ty
[OhotniK]ent: :D
Str8F!u$hBoy: hahaha
cabbageshark: lol

cemssen85.: who is Daleroxxu?
Tomfan666: he's a pokerstars pro i've never heard of ...
cemssen85.: Im a Millionare promoter in Germany
Daleroxxu: millionaires dont go round telling people they are millionaires

Dealer: A new game will start in 10 seconds
GotSteez?: LOL
GotSteez?: nice photo
GotSteez?: u still a virgin?

bOorg22: careful with daleroxxu
bOorg22: this is jokerstars

dhanesh192: ediot

Urrr Raise: u look bent

dinos622: daleeeee
dinos622: igneramis

Srganjova: mother****er daleroxxu
Srganjova: u think because ur from pstars u can bluff me?

smokerock247: zzzzzzzzzzz
Dealer: Regular time for player Daleroxxu has expired, TIME BANK has been activated
Drazhaar: 6 table^^
Daleroxxu: was taking a pee
smokerock247: in a piss bottle
Drazhaar: lol
Daleroxxu: no i went to the bathroom, im not an animal
smokerock247: i think u pissed urself cuz u saw me sit down
smokerock247: ;p

TheDieguinE: daleroxuu do you written a book of poker??
Daleroxxu: yes, daleroxxus guide to winning flips
TheDieguinE: you never lose in stars
TheDieguinE: you are a  pro

magicJoke656: lucky 9ay
magicJoke656: you really have a 9ay look

JoeIngram1: anohter excellent play by the champ
JoeIngram1: nh :)
Daleroxxu: thanks Joseph :)
00SKIP: lol
JoeIngram1: my mom asked me last night
JoeIngram1: who best plo50 guy u play with
JoeIngram1: i told him this guy dalerooxu
JoeIngram1: he kinda ugly but good player very advanced
Daleroxxu: my mum asked the same and I told her you
JoeIngram1: she google u
Daleroxxu: she said GTFO ss ratholers dont count
00SKIP: from uk not his fault on looks
JoeIngram1: said u ugly but probably good at poker

Sab-riveredu: what tourney did u luckbox to win

donttryit84: what means the heart?
Daleroxxu: i have the big heart
donttryit84: hehe

JD_AKAK: how did u get that spade on yr name daler
Daleroxxu: pwnin
JD_AKAK: what lol
douro200: i think he meant pownin
douro200: that spade is a poker star pro symbol
JD_AKAK: how do u get it tho
douro200: its like above supernova or whatever

rdmr: wp
rdmr: wonder how some people get red spades
rdmr: prob binking donkaments, what else


GotSteez?: you seriously gonna donk bet?
hhdr: hi my friend...
hhdr: I will play all your tables today...
GotSteez?: go ahead
GotSteez?: ill kill ur family
GotSteez?: tonight
GotSteez?: while u watch
hhdr: umad... oh yes
GotSteez?: not really
GotSteez?: u will be
GotSteez?: jsut wait

Smillie1: **** sake
Smillie1: oh u ****en piece of ****
Smillie1: ****en hell
chokkdee387: hahaha
Smillie1: wow
Smillie1: gross
win0815: puh,,,lucky
Smillie1: u reckon
Smillie1: **** sake
Smillie1: sticfk in ya ****
Smillie1: **** me
faustballmax: arschloch

JoeIngram1: dale u r so damn awkward bro
JoeIngram1: i meet u wsop next year and try to help you be more pro less noob
Daleroxxu: ty
JoeIngram1: i have bunch uk friends, they all pretty ugly and awk, prob std there
Daleroxxu: yes all bad teeth and weird accents
Daleroxxu: yet the american chicks love us
JoeIngram1: cool accent
JoeIngram1: yea american chicks love me to
JoeIngram1: keep tempting me i come there **** your girl
Daleroxxu: i live in thailand
JoeIngram1: i come **** your ladyboy there then
Daleroxxu: she is waiting
Daleroxxu: or he
Daleroxxu: dunno what is appropriate
Daleroxxu: heshe
JoeIngram1: i will **** him then he can **** me
Daleroxxu: ahaha

Mr_5LoW: pro bonus
Mr_5LoW: thats what i mean
Mr_5LoW: with pro bonus
Mr_5LoW: vry suspect

russ4u2001: d
russ4u2001: o
russ4u2001: n
russ4u2001: k
russ4u2001: pay
russ4u2001: the
russ4u2001: king
russ4u2001: donk
russ4u2001: not even english!
russ4u2001: u have air and fish it out
russ4u2001: *****
russ4u2001: breath
Daleroxxu: if you are going to be calling other people a donk then you need to buy in for more than 40 big blinds
russ4u2001: zzz
russ4u2001: a4
russ4u2001: fisher
russ4u2001: get ur rod out
russ4u2001: and go to the cananl
russ4u2001: canal
russ4u2001: call
russ4u2001:  call
russ4u2001: call
russ4u2001: get the pro
russ4u2001: there
russ4u2001: whats the point playing
russ4u2001: answer on post card
russ4u2001: not even cod
russ4u2001: FISH: a paraphyletic organism

JizzTrigger: Daleroxxu, t's your friend again
JizzTrigger: you kinda look like a teenager keanu reeves
JizzTrigger: enter the poker
JizzTrigger: starring dale

RaydeN08: dontsteal,ugly

Greekman21: fack jesus today
Greekman21: and ever y day
basje001: lol
basje001: nice call
basje001: :P
Greekman21: shut up or i fack you
Greekman21: your choice
basje001: oehh

RABBITO4LIFE: biggest low lives on the net
RABBITO4LIFE: that should be tought a hard lesson
RABBITO4LIFE: die
RABBITO4LIFE: filthy wog
RABBITO4LIFE: dieeeeeeeeeeeee
Daleroxxu: please keep chat respectful
RABBITO4LIFE: dieeeeeeeeeeeeeee
RABBITO4LIFE: filthy wog
Moderator40 [Moderator]: Please remember to keep all chat clean, friendly and respectful at the tables.
RABBITO4LIFE: fk you

Stirling38: gott limp to the red spad big blind
Daleroxxu: your limps are my antes
Stirling38: lol

Nacho737: nice flash draw
Nacho737: you idioy?
Nacho737: lucky GANDON
Daleroxxu: what is a GANDON?
Daleroxxu: is it the boss in Zelda?

piKAxpo: FAKING BING PLAYER
Daleroxxu: BINK

hbtank: thats why daleroxxy have become a successfull pstarspro he never plays a fkin hand
hbtank: thats the key i guess
*that very hand I stack him with quads vs his garbage*
Daleroxxu: hey looks like i played a hand

sep2puku: hey dude, how come you got a red spade logo?
Daleroxxu: by being awesome
sep2puku: i knew it
Razzorca1: heehee
sep2puku: that's a nice pic of your BF
Daleroxxu: yes he is very handsome

NOOOOOOOOWAY: mmmmmmmmmmm
NOOOOOOOOWAY: how and why did u keep calling there u moron
mondo nutz: sorry about unrandom bs oooooo
NOOOOOOOOWAY: u had nothing all the way
mondo nutz: yah....y i called
mondo nutz: please complain to ps...cause site isn't random
mondo nutz: they won't take my emails anymore
NOOOOOOOOWAY: u are a shocking player are u sure u should be playing these limits
mondo nutz: im 4 for 4 in pretyping gut shot predictions while on the turn
mondo nutz: im still exploring for patterns
Daleroxxu: lol
mondo nutz: got a lot of the nlhe patterns down
NOOOOOOOOWAY: ur a idiot full stop
mondo nutz: if u think so....results talke though
NOOOOOOOOWAY: and i always lose to bad players like u
mondo nutz: yah....me 2
mondo nutz: y i changed
mondo nutz: cause they reward bad play to average winnings
mondo nutz: to double their profits....
NOOOOOOOOWAY: lol u still think that was the right call dont
NOOOOOOOOWAY: u
mondo nutz: causing good players to play more often, and bad players to stick around
mondo nutz: i know it was absolutely the wrong call
mondo nutz: if the site was random
mondo nutz: or are u to dense to understand the words that i speak to you?
NOOOOOOOOWAY: lol u mug i dont know how ur playing at these stakes u should of lost ur cash along time ago playing like that
mondo nutz: no offense intended
mondo nutz: i started this site with 40$
NOOOOOOOOWAY: idiot
mondo nutz: im over 35k
mondo nutz: however u want to enterpret that...
NOOOOOOOOWAY: lol thanks to the lucky middle pin rivers not even the pros get lucky as u
12cp: daleroxxu, where in UK are you?
NOOOOOOOOWAY: dorset ur up in the highlands right
NOOOOOOOOWAY: daleroxxu could u ask me that question please ive played u a few times on here
Daleroxxu: ive to ask you a question? :S
Daleroxxu: favorite colour?
NOOOOOOOOWAY: sorry im from dorset i did say

mondo nutz: bs site
orfenz: not really mate, i just out flopped you
mondo nutz: u where actually a poker stars favorite
mondo nutz: preflop
orfenz: just UL mate
mondo nutz: no just unrandom site
orfenz: ive been UL aswell. my stack has been up and down constantly
mondo nutz: im 4 for 4 in pretyping gut shotp predictions while on the turn
mondo nutz: they double their profits by averaging winnings
mondo nutz: im trying to learn the plo patterns
mondo nutz: i can spot the nlhe patterns easier
orfenz: ask daleroxx. he's a pro. if theres something wrong with the site i think he would know
mondo nutz: won a trny last night overcalling 2 all in's late game w ten hi
orfenz: wow. thats just really lucky i guess
mondo nutz: because i spotted it a non random
orfenz: dont believe you
Daleroxxu: if u have questions about fairnes please write to gamesecurity@pokerstars.com
mondo nutz: they won't take my emails anymore...so i did my part
orfenz: are you sure mondo or hav you just been having a bad run? it happens to everybody
mondo nutz: bad run for 3 years
mondo nutz: in trnys 2
orfenz: lol stop joking mate
mondo nutz: im actually serious
Daleroxxu: do you think the moon landings didnt happen?
mondo nutz: not a conspiracy nut
mondo nutz: our country was founded on conspiracy agaoinst the crown though
orfenz: stop dude!! totally off topic
mondo nutz: but people don't think conspiracies for money and power happen though
mondo nutz: on topic of conspiracy
mondo nutz: of pokerstars
orfenz: thats what you think poker stars is...?
orfenz: a conspriacy?
mondo nutz: yah to double their profits
orfenz: yeah ok. i tired of hearing your pessimistic thoughts. Have a change of attitude. Might help with your so called 3 year bad run =]
mondo nutz: im a huge winning player...but not as much as should be
orfenz: me 2. i should be winning every hand im in regardless lol
mondo nutz: u should see my stats for non random situations
mondo nutz: non fixed i mean
mondo nutz: another horrible play rewarded
orfenz: just wasnt the flop you were looking for
orfenz: UL
mondo nutz: nothing to do with luck people
orfenz: should've checked.
orfenz: must of been obv that he had a flush draw
mondo nutz: just like the americans....blind
mondo nutz: we commit the worst crimes on the planet
orfenz: brb
mondo nutz: if people only knew
mondo nutz: i didn't vote for obama cause his brother is in the drug trade
orfenz: oh shu t it mate
mondo nutz: and he accepted kickbacks on his house that was investigated
orfenz: getting a bit o.t.t
mondo nutz: his campaign manager was convicted of fraud
mondo nutz: was just all in w/ At vs kt and i cringed
mondo nutz: knew i was doomed

orfenz: what did you have to do to become a pro?
FincaResalso: depends )))
orfenz: if have 10k bankroll do you become a pro?
orfenz: hey dale. are there certain conditions you have to meet?
Daleroxxu: marry the owners daughter
FincaResalso: bravo )))
FincaResalso: I'm too old (((
orfenz: =]

godie707: biitch}}poker satrs help you baastard

Speck ftw: ACE OF CLUBS
SzurtosPeti: áááááááááááááááááááááááááááááááááááááá
den hurtige: lo
Speck ftw: flash with clubs
Speck ftw: I HAD ONCE A ROYAL FLASH

T2011090057 No Limit Omaha H-L $200 + $15.txt
tiaaago: daleroxxu can you help me ?
Daleroxxu: what's wrong?
tiaaago: i acidentaly registered into this tournament !
Daleroxxu: sigh
Daleroxxu: the moderators are only for chat issues
tiaaago: what can i do daleroxxu help me please
Daleroxxu: contact support with URGENT in the title

climafreak: Daleroxxu all the game you are on is ONE BIG CRIMEGAMES
Daleroxxu: thanks for letting me know
climafreak: strange very strange I NEVER GET CARDS TO USE, ARE YOU A HACKER FROM POKERSTARS
climafreak: BUT NO MATTER THIS DOWNLOAD IS ONE BIG CRIMESITE OF POKERSTARS
climafreak: 6 HOURS NOW LOST HUNDRED OF DOLLARS ON THIS ****ING CRIME
climafreak: WILL RAPPORT THIS TO FBI
climafreak: BOTSGAME
climafreak: REALY UNDERSTAND WHY NORTON SECURITY TELLS ME, THERE IS ONLY FEW WHO HAVE DOWNLOADED THIS POKERSTARS PROGRAM
climafreak: SURE MY FLUSHHAND AGAIN IS NOTHING
climafreak: AND AGAIN NOTHING
climafreak: WOW 80 DOLLARS PLAY AND GET NOTHING
climafreak: ONLY CRIME IN HERE
climafreak: NO NOT 80 DOLLARS, BUT 130 DOLLARS DEPOSIT WITH ONLY CRIMEGAME
climafreak: AND YOU ALSO PLACE HOW MUCH I CAN RAISE
climafreak: SMART
climafreak: ALL IS CRIME
climafreak: AND LOOSE MY MONEY IN ALL GAMES TO BOTS CRIME PLAYERS WHO POKERSTARS GET TO THE TABLES
climafreak: such a crime
climafreak: my god
climafreak: such rigged table
climafreak: Daleroxxu such a bull.**** to show here
climafreak: THIS IS ONE BIG CRIME DOWNLOAD POKERSTARS HAVE DONE TO MY COMPUTER
climafreak: YOU ARE SOME ****ING CRIMERS
climafreak: AHHH AGAIN MY AT BLACK FLUSHCARDS IS NOTHING
climafreak: SMART
climafreak: REALY SMART
climafreak: NOW THIS HAVE BEEN GOING FOR 6 HOURS
climafreak: ON MANY TABLES
climafreak: REALY SMART
climafreak: WAY TO STEAL MY MONEY
climafreak: FINE THANKS
climafreak: I WANT TO PLACE AN AUTOPILOT
climafreak: AS YOU DO, BECAUSE THIS IS TOOOOOO MUCH ****ING CRIME
climafreak: SMART FOLD BEFORE RIVER
climafreak: SO WE CANT SEE THE RIVER
climafreak: THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE TO PLAY FREE POKER GAMES AND POKERSTARS USING 100 OF DOLLARS, FANTASTIC SO ****ING FANTASTIC CRIME WHO THE SITE ALLOW

MaltedMilk11 [observer]: Dale, how come you dont play MTTs?
Daleroxxu: coz i have a life
MaltedMilk11 [observer]: haha good lad

Chenaab: nice blog oxxu

somesoul: pwned red pro JAJAJAAA

viejasandra1: nooooooooooooooooooo
viejasandra1: what happend fuc.k site
viejasandra1: daleroxxuu beautifull you site

marcusjj4: pokerstars donk noob
Daleroxxu: nice insult, you're very smart
marcusjj4: thay call u a staar go play bingo
Daleroxxu: ok i will go play bingo
Daleroxxu: with your mama
Daleroxxu: :)
marcusjj4: i gonna report u bicous u talk aubout mij mom
Daleroxxu: ok tell them i said hi
marcusjj4: ugly ****

$weetN$a$$y: hey Date philip they should call u donk philip

Fishtripp: u pro??? riiight in my fkin ***
Fishtripp: just one fkin pathetic fatty who win one tournament
Daleroxxu: thats right
Daleroxxu: :) so good
Fishtripp: not a suprise rly
Fishtripp: 18 years old fatty *** who win one tournament and thinks he is the best in the wordl :D
Fishtripp: **** ur pathetic
Fishtripp: back to kindergaren fatty boy
Daleroxxu: do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

Emil Anton: fcking call from pro
Emil Anton: idiot
Daleroxxu: thanks for the feedback
Emil Anton: gay

-Elric Aro-: haha...so fff****ing ba
-Elric Aro-: bluffing against 2 players in omaha
Daleroxxu: wasnt a bluff DUCY?
-Elric Aro-: then what was it fff face? flushdraw and straightdraw on the board and you bet
-Elric Aro-: note made
Daleroxxu: keep making notes
-Elric Aro-: ugly is one of them

I am back in Bangkok and back to running like a 3 legged dog at poker and life.

On Saturday night the Thais decided to poison me once again through their absolutely atrocious food hygiene. I ate somewhere just before they closed and now I am pretty sure that they reheated some shrimp that was already contaminated with super bacteria. The dirty, evil, bastards.

After 10 hours of what I will only describe as "hell" (trust me, you don't want a more accurate description) I called out a doctor who jabbed me in the ass with some needles and then sent me to hospital as I was extremely dehydrated and had a dangerously high body temperature.


It was scary for the first couple of days as despite all the fluids, antibiotics and fever reducing drugs constantly being fed into me intravenously I still felt like I was dying. They were constantly doing tests on me saying that they were worried about kidney failure as I hadn't pissed at all, until the fourth day when I was pissing like a race horse, 7 god damn litres. Thanks to that I was discharged on the fifth day.

I'm now back in my condo, feeling really weak and just not myself. My appetite hasn't returned at all. I used to get so much pleasure out of delicious food. Now any time I even think about food I wanna puke.

After being crippled by the medical bill I have to use my one time and hope my travel insurance pays out, which is far from a given. I've been reading through all the small print and there's lots of stuff in there they probably use to screw people out of money. The most worrying to me is that only the first 17 days of any trip is covered. I can't figure out if the fact that I visited Malaysia a couple of weeks ago and then came back to Bangkok makes this a "new trip" according to them.

Insurance is such a terrible -EV bet and even when you "win" they try to screw you out of it. It's like playing poker as the only fish at a table of sharks, who not only have a massive edge over you but scam and angle-shoot the crap out of you into the bargain.

It was probably a mistake to jump right back into playing poker but after losing so many days, and needing to hit my milestone before the year ends, I decided I couldn't waste any more time. I lost 9 buyins at PLO and 16 buyins at CAP NLHE. Basically just fuck my whole, entire, life.

I've started playing CAP recently and have lost 0.85BB/100 over 16,000 hands. The games seem to be completely filled with regulars with not many soft spots. I think because CAP is so simple to play that any competent reg can play a large number of tables, while the fish still only really play 1 or 2 tables at a time.

I'm not sure that the games are beatable before VIP club bonuses (although certainly beatable with VIP club) around the 0.50/1 - 1/2 level because of the toughness of the games and how much is raked. I'd guess they are beatable straight-up at lower stakes because of easier games and beatable at higher stakes (2/4 - 3/6 +) by a great player because less is raked proportionally.

Team PokerStars Online have released a short firm about Talonchick. If you haven't watched it yet then do it right now:



It's great to see someone being very successful though poker and still living a "normal" and healthy life. Apparently you CAN have your cake and eat it - Talonchick proves it!

The 10th Anniversary Promotion at PokerStars just keeps getting better and better. The latest promotion is 10 days of Ring Game VPP leaderboards, with a new leaderboard every day you can win up to an extra $3000 if you have with it takes to grind harder than anyone else. That's exactly what ultimate grinder, Team Online's WizardOfAhhs did a couple of days ago when he won the high leaderboard.

I'm looking forward to playing my part in breaking a world record on December 4th when the PokerStars World Record tournament takes place. With a buyin of only $1 and a guarantee of $250,000 it looks like the target has been set for 250,000 players. I still can't get my head around the thought of a quarter of a million people playing one poker tournament, it seems impossible. First prize is $50,000 and whoever manages to best such a massive field can more than say they deserve it. My money is on Bommel222.

I am now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I'm not here by choice, but because the Thai immigration system is a huge pain in my white Scottish arse. I'm here to apply for a double entry tourist visa at the Royal Thai Embassy that will allow me to stay in Thailand through to next year.

When I got to the embassy first thing this morning there was a big sign that warned that they were now refusing tourist visas to people who continuously leave and re-enter Thailand via it's neighbouring countries, as people are abusing it in order to work illegally in Thailand.

Given that, and the fact that I have 7 entry stamps into Thailand this year I'm not super confident that my visa application will get approved. In my favour I have visited 12 other countries this year, some more than once, and made my application with a note saying that I am travelling around Asia for a year and using Thailand as my base.

Fingers crossed, I will find out if I get the visa tomorrow. If not I will try to fly back into Bangkok and hopefully they let me through with another 30 day stamp. Enough time for the floods to clear up and I can take the agency run visa bus trip to Cambodia where the agents grease the officials palms enough that nobody gets refused a visa.


Right now I'm staying in a nice hotel next to Low Yat Plaza on the top floor with a sick view. I have set up a grind station using the hotel TV as a monitor in-front of the window looking towards the Petronas Towers. A nice view is very un-tilting indeed, and preventing tilt is very important when you are playing poker on a hotel internet connection that is for damn sure.

Today was fun. A guy who looked like a Malaysian Snoop Dogg let me play with his snake (ooo err missus) for the bargain price of 10 RM (2 GBP).


I then went to a Shipwreck Treasures exhibition. They had tons of the stuff from 13 different wrecks recovered from Malaysian waters. One of them being a Chinese ship from the Song Dynasty (1000 years ago). It was a good way to spend half an hour for the bargain price of 8 RM (1.60 GBP).


I then visited the National Museum, for the also bargainous price of 5 RM (1 GBP). A lot of museums I've been to have been pretty boring, the main exceptions being the national museum in Cairo and the war museum in Saigon. The Malaysian National museum is quite small compared to other museums but this is a good thing, as there is no "filler". Everything is worth seeing and I was overall impressed by it.


I especially liked the weapons and armour. I'd stand there in-front of them daydreaming, imagining myself wearing the armour and using the swords in battle.


After I spent 45 minutes in the museum I was about to leave when it just absolutely lashed down with rain as hard as you can possibly imagine. Thunder, lightning, the full shebang. I decided to walk around the museum again and 45 minutes later it was STILL hammering it down cat's and dogs. I then saw everything in the museum for a THIRD time, making me now one of the world's foremost experts on Malaysian history, before the rain turned into just a drizzle and I could leave.

I decided to spend the rest of the day doing a Segway tour around Lake Gardens Park which is a 230 acre, awesome, lush, impeccably maintained park in the city. I have taken a Segway tour before, in Prague (see Prague trip report), and it was a great way to cover a lot of distance in a short amount of time without getting tired.


This Segway tour also turned out to be a winner. The gardens are amazing. Fresh air and relaxation, what a great way to spend an afternoon.


Tomorrow I am going for dinner with Jeremy McDonald and his friends who are pro poker players that live here in KL. And if all goes to plan and I get my visa tomorrow afternoon I will fly back to Thailand on the last flight back tomorrow night, fingers crossed!

One Time!

In case you haven't heard, Thailand is experiencing it's worst floods in over 50 years. For the past two months central Bangkok has been under threat of severe flooding. The water level just outside of the city is as high as 3 meters and is being held back mostly by newly installed or newly reinforced flood defence barriers.

Outside of Bangkok over 400 people have died so far, and whole communities have been evacuated.

For weeks we've been told there's a 50/50 chance of central Bangkok being flooded and everyone has been in panic mode turning their buildings into sandbag fortresses. People have even going as far as to build cement barrier in-front of their doors and windows.


At the weekend everyone was put on high alert as it was to be the peak of the water level and the flood defences were starting to crumble. A five day national holiday was called for people to evacuate from the outskirts of the city and areas along the river that runs through Bangkok.

Well, it's now Thursday morning and it looks like for one time in my entire life I didn't get owned by a river bad beat. It's still dry where I am, and the likelihood now is that it will stay dry.

Angry residents of the areas just outside of the city centre have tried to destroy the flood barriers as they are preventing the water from escaping their flooded villages. Fortunately the army have been deployed to protect the barriers so it doesn't look like that is going to be a threat.

So now I'm just hoping that things get back to normal soon. There's a lot of stuff in Thailand that I want to see and do but have been unable to due to the floods.

I also miss paying virtually nothing for bottled mineral water. There has been none for sale since September as most of the bottled water plants that supply the city have been closed, and there's supply problems in getting anything in to Bangkok via road. So, I've been paying a massive premium to drink Fiji and Evian water that's been imported by air. Lots of shop shelves remain empty. Restaurants give you the menu and tell you that half the items are unavailable. It's a huge pain in the ass but I just have to remind myself of how slight these inconveniences are compared to people dying or having the homes and belongings ruined.

The Pokers

As the year end approaches it's always worth checking how close you are to the next Milestone Cash Credit and making a plan to hit it. It would really suck to end the year say 20,000 VPPs away from hitting a milestone because you are losing out on so much value.

I have 60,000 VPPs to hit the next milestone and I'm planning to grind out 1000 VPPs every day for the rest of the year. If I want to take a day off I'm going to have to earn it by grinding harder, such as putting in 4x 1250 VPP days in a row.

I'm playing a bit of everything right now, 6 Max PLO, Heads Up PLO, HUSNG PLO, Hyper 6 Max NLHE SNGS and Hyper NLHE HUSNGS. I'm still pretty much trying to find my feet again and figure out what games I can beat and feel most comfortable with. I've never really been in a comfort zone since I was destroying the Double or Nothing SNGs and had to stop due to the games being ruined by colluders.

I started this year playing only 2/4 CAP PLO and planning to play it for the whole of 2011, but those games were just a trial and PokerStars took them away at the start of March. Since then I've found it hard to adjust to playing 100BB PLO and have been on way the bad side of variance pretty much constantly. Hopefully I will find my feet again by the end of the year and be able to make some solid goals for the year of 2012.

The games have been pretty tough recently. The 6-max PLO tables have been very much filled with multi-tabling regulars. I think it's mostly due to the 70 Billion Hand promotion that's running now, where if you are dealt into a milestone hand you get a huge cash reward. Grinders are playing longer and on more tables. The promotion is pretty sweet for those that are lucky enough to be dealt into a hand, and especially for the winner of the 70 Billionth hand who will win a minimum of $70,000. It's looking like it is going to hit within the next 48 hours so let's gogogoogogo!

I have been jumping in to congratulate people when milestone hands are hit and have been lucky enough to witness some epic hands such as PLO 6-way preflop all-in that resulted in someone flopping a set, with everyone else having some kind of draw. The set turned into quads on the turn but unfortunately for him the river completed a gutshot straight flush. I wish more of the milestone hands were at PLO but they rarely are as hands take longer on average and there are way more NLHE tables running.

I was also there to witness a hand with 7 winners at a micro-stakes table when 7 of the 9 players got it all in preflop and the board ran out a straight. Simply epic.


People are generally playing more tables than they normally do during this promotion and are playing nittier as a result. So VPPs earned per hand seems to be way down right now. Looking on the bright side, people are playing worse and more exploitable as they play more tables than they are comfortable with in an effort to bink a milestone hand.

The promotions never seem to end from PokerStars. The 10th Anniversary promotion is already running and will run up til December 18th when there will be a special $10,000,000 GTD Sunday Million. There will need to be a minimum of 50,000 players or there will be an overlay, and the first prize is guaranteed to be at least $2,000,000. Just insane, that is going to be the ultimate Xmas present for someone.


Poker Community

I want to plug some of my friends who are putting in a lot of hard work to do awesome things in the poker community.

Poker Fuse

PokerFuse.com is a new poker news site that is completely independent of any online poker site affiliation. The Poker Fuse guys have been doing a great job to bring people news from a completely unbiased perspective, and that is really the only kind of news that I like read.

The are also doing well to bring all the poker-related podcasts from across the internet together on one page. Check out their Latest Poker Podcasts page.


EVhero

The best poker video blogs right now are coming from EVhero who plays on PokerStars and has a goal to earn $100,000 in 2011. He's recently been switching from cash games to multi-table tournaments and this is interesting to follow. In addition to his vlogs he also does a podcast called Derping and a poker news show called On The Rail.



The production quality of his videos are very professional, he releases them super regularly and they are always entertaining.

So be sure to check out his website at EVhero.com and subscribe to his YouTube Channel. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Jesse 'OnTheMac' McKenzie

Jesse is an Australian online poker pro who won the PokerStars Sunday Million this year. He's stepping up his blogging and it should make interesting reading as he writes about his online tournament grind, his lifestyle in Australia and his travels to play in live events.

His talents go further than just poker as he was a professional lawn bowler and he can also play the piano, as he demonstrated when I went quad biking with him in Queenstown, New Zealand in September and we found an old piano in the middle of nowhere.



He's running a couple of competitions at the moment. Inspired by my epic Poker Avatar Tells - 9 Easy Ways to Spot The Fish blog he is giving away a free seat in the PokerStars Sunday Million to the person who can supply an image of what would be the most fishy poker avatar ever. He will even use the avatar on his PokerStars account for as long as it takes him to make a single $5K+ score! Details of the competition are here and please vote for my entry by clicking 'Like'.

Check out his blog at tryonthemac.blogspot.com and you can also follow Jesse on Facebook and Twitter.

PokerStars has recently introduced a new type of tournament called Time Tourneys. These are tournaments that last for a set period of time (between 15 and 180 minutes). After they end the prizepool is chopped up based on the remaining players chip count.

I asked my twitter followers who had played these tournaments for their feedback. Opinions were mixed but I was surprised at the amount of just plain wrong opinions. These tournaments aren't crapshoots and your strategy shouldn't be to try to double up and then fold into the money.

[  ] ICM. [X] cEV

When playing the new Time Tourneys there are no ICM implications at all. In a normal tournament payout structure, if you pay $10 to enter, getting 1000 chips and then double up to 2000 chips, the equity of your 2000 chips is less than $20. The most extreme way to think of this is that the winner at the end of a standard tournament will have 100% of the chips in play but only be awarded say 15% of the prizepool.

In Time Tourneys the value of one chip stays constant at all times. If you buy in for $10 and double up then your stack is worth $20. Double up again, your stack is worth $40.

Time Tourneys are like playing a cash game where you and your opponents are committed to playing for a certain period of time, with no option to reload. Of course they play much shallower than a cash game, with large blinds and antes forcing a lot of action.

[  ] Flop / Turn / River. [X] Push / Fold / Call 

In Time Tourneys you generally begin with a stack of 15-25BBs and there is a 1/10BB ante. There is some room to make some 2.25x raises to call or fold to a shove in the first level or 2 but it soon becomes a game of push or fold. Even if you run up a big stack, half the table will have stacks shorter than 10BB so it still effectively makes it a push/fold game.

This doesn't make Time Tourneys crapshoots, it makes them highly profitable if you study push/fold math and are able to put your opponents on accurate shoving and calling ranges. As this is just a cEV game you can easily study these situations using an ICM calculator that is set to cEV mode or you can even do it manually with the help of a calculator and PokerStove.

[  ] Bubble

There is no bubble. The time left until the tournament ends should theoretically make no difference to your play. There is no need to play tighter as the end time approaches as it's not like trying to fold into the money in a satellite. You don't gain any equity by folding into the money. It's more like a cash game where everyone is forced to leave the table at a certain time.

Imagine such a scenario at your local cardroom, where they close at 6am and the table has a bunch of people who are up a lot and a bunch of people that are stuck and sitting with short stacks. It wouldn't be uncommon for the winners to start nitting it up as closing time approaches, trying to book a win, and the smaller stacks to start playing very loose to try to get unstuck.

The fact that the game is about to end shouldn't affect how people play, as the next hand is the next hand, whether it's in one minute, one day or one week's time. But it does affect how people play and therefore you should adjust your own play by looking out for these situations where big stacks are nitting it up and you can start stealing their blinds more liberally, or by calling with a wider range than normal when you believe a short stack is shoving looser in an attempt at a last minute double-up.

The only time it would be worth stalling is if you think it's going to be close whether or not you will be forced to pay the big blind on the last hand. In cash games the sensible thing to do when you quit a session is click "sit out next big blind". It's much more important to avoid paying the BB on your last hand in Time Tourneys as the blinds are much bigger. If the BB is 600 in the last level and you started with 2500 chips then you would be forfeiting a value of 1/4 a buyin to post the BB.

Tourney Length

Time Tourneys vary in length. 15, 30, 60, 90, 120 and 180 minutes. The longer the tournament, the higher the variance but the higher the winrate a good player can expect, since you are just playing the same push/fold game but for longer. In theory, in the long run you should make the same amount of total profit playing x 60 minute tournaments as you would playing x*4 15 minute tournaments, assuming the skill level of your opponents remains constant. However there are several factors to consider.

The tournament fee is constant regardless of the tournament length. So you pay 1/12th of the vig to play x 180 minute tournaments as you would to play x*12 15 minute tournaments. In a $10+1 180 minute tourney you are paying a $1 vig to run up a $10 stack for 3 hours, but to run up a $10 stack for 3 hours playing twelve of the 15 minute tourneys you will pay a $12 vig. This is a huge factor that will affect your winrate greatly.

Weaker players tend to bust out earlier, as the cream rises to the top. You are likely to be playing against overall weaker players when you are playing the shorter (15 / 30 minute) tournaments as you are when playing the longer (120 / 180 minute) tournaments.

So you can think of it like playing in a cardroom where they charge each player an hourly fee instead of raking the pots. If you have a choice of cardrooms and one is charging $x per 3 hours and another is charging $x per 15 minutes, you will want to play at the room with the $x per 3 hours fee. But then you look at the $x per 15 minutes room and see that there are many more bad players in that game. So you have to decide on balance which is best for you to play.

Of course, the shorter tournaments come with a lot less variance, and to some people that may be worth paying extra for. In a 15 minute tournament you may only get it all-in and called once, but in a 180 minute tournament it will happen many many times as the blinds rise.

Let's Gogogo

I encourage everyone to give Time Tourneys a try. They are kicking off every 15 minutes in the PokerStars client and you can find them by filtering for Time (new) under Format in the Tourney Filter option.

Right now the buyins vary from $1 to $11. I'm sure that we will see some bigger buyins if this format becomes popular. But for now try them out and send all your feedback to support@pokerstars.com

This Saturday will see the introduction of the Saturday Countdown into PokerStars' Saturday Line-Up. A special $22 Time Tourney at 13:00 ET (19:00 CET). Let's gogogo!

Day 1 - Poker and Partying

As I was going to Macau for 8 nights, and my beloved high resolution 1920x1200 17" laptop bit the dust a month ago, I needed a replacement so that I could continue to grind the online pokers during my trip. Unfortunately it's impossible to buy a laptop with that kind of monitor spec in Thailand. Believe me, I tried in every shop in Pantip Plaza - the huge IT mall, and there was nothing even close. I think the Asian's like their technology to be super small rather than practical, So, when in Rome....

I decided to buy a very small and lightweight, but powerful 11" laptop/netbook. When I booked the hotel online I chose a deluxe room because of the free broadband and HD LCD TV. I figured that with this small laptop, all I needed to do was bring a mouse and a VGA or HDMI cable to hook up to the LCD TV, then I'd be able to have all the benefits of a semi-decent setup (1920x1080) but without the hassle that comes with travelling with a behemoth super-laptop. What a genius I am.

At Bangkok Airport I collected my "VAT Refund For Tourists", getting all the sales tax I paid on everything I bought during the last month shipped back to me. Little do they know that I would be bringing those new clothes and laptop back into the country with me in little over a week.

I took the 2.5hr AirAsia flight direct from Bangkok to Macau. Nice and easy. A good tip for flying AirAsia is to always chose your seat online and pay a little extra for the Red Zone seats at the front or emergency exit rows. The rest of the seats are no place for a grown western man to be sitting. Pre-ordering your inflight meal will also get you served way before the masses and you can chose stuff that's not on the in-flight menu.

I checked in to The Metropole, a hotel a few minutes walk away from the Grand Lisboa where the PokerStars Macau poker room is. I had real trouble trying to find somewhere decent to stay when I was booking my trip because most of the major hotels were fully booked with it being a big national holiday in China. A standard room anywhere decent that still had availability was going for USD$300+ per night. The Metropole looked semi-decent and was $100 per night, so I took that option.

The first thing that I did when I checked in was have a look at the TV so that I could hook my laptop up. Unfortunately the bastards had screwed it into the wall, about 2 meters above the ground. I was pissed off because that meant that I couldn't sit at a desk and use the TV as a computer monitor. I couldn't even access the VGA or HDMI ports, I could see them, but because the TV was firmly screwed into the wall there wasn't enough space to access them, even with my small skinny hands. I was really tempted to go out, buy a screwdriver, and take the bastard TV down from the wall, but decided just to just settle down and play some poker on my tiny laptop screen instead.

That is when I realised that I had left my Pokerstars RSA Security Token back at my condo in Bangkok. Oh dear, could my life get any worse? It would be a complete disaster if I coudn't log into my PokerStars account for 8 days so I started frantically contacting people I know at PokerStars to help me, but was told that I'd have to go through the proper channels like everyone else. ([  ] Thanks Josem).

After a visit to the supermarket to stock up on snacks and drinks (it takes a real sucker to pay the mini-bar prices), I sat feasting and watching movies until the evening when I was playing Day 1B of the Macau Poker Cup Championship - Event 1 HKD$8800 NLHE.

My table was very loose passive as I'd expect in Macau. There were only 2 decent aggressive players at the table, a young Asian guy and a young white guy. In the fourth level I took a heavy blow, losing a big portion of my stack after getting JJ in against the table idiot's 88 preflop. After the 8 binked on the river I had to listen to his cheers and then had to sit and watch him donk around, like opening for 5x and shoving 6x pot on the flop, with MY bloody chips. Very annoying.

A hand came up where the young aggressive Asian guy opened from MP, the young white guy 3-bet from the button, and I was in the BB with A6s. I decided that it was a good spot to cold 4-bet. MP folded quickly but the button shipped his stack in instantly and I had to fold. About 5 hands later the young aggressive Asian guy was in the BB, I was in MP and opened with QJs, the button called and the BB 3-bet. I decided that there was a pretty good chance that he was squeezing light and shipped my 40BB stack in. He had QQ, so that didn't work out. They even ran the board out with two J's and a Q just to torment me.

The night was still early and my friends Bryan Huang and Daren Yoon had also busted the event so we decided to go out partying. We got a group together and went to Cubic, a sick, sick club at City of Dreams where we got a table.

We were all having a ton of fun, then late into the night someone was buying multiple bottles of expensive champagne for every table in the club.

It turns out that it was Stanley Ho's (basically owns Macau) granddaughter's birthday. They must have opened about 200 bottles over the next hour. The staff were running around like crazy with 2 bottles in each hand, each bottle with a sparkler attached to it. It was an insane thing to witness.


At the table section next to us were a few tall Arab guys. Excited at being handed free champagne, one of them decided to shake up the bottle as if he was an F1 driver that just shipped a Grand Prix and a bunch of us got sprayed with champagne. Everyone was shocked and stepped back. I ran up to the barrier between our areas and screamed at them and told them what a bunch of inconsiderate assholes they were to do such a thing.

Five minutes later, I was standing talking to Daren when all of a sudden, WOOSH, I got absolutely soaked by the Michael Schumacher wannabe bastard who again decided that champagne was for spraying on people rather than drinking. Again everyone backed off but I was raging. I kicked a chair out of my way then kicked down the barrier between our areas and went nuts at the guy with the bottle. At that stage the guys were apologising to me profusely, but I think that was only because the bouncers were there and ready to kick those guys out. I didn't see them again after that. Good riddance.

I just find it amazing how little respect and thought for other people it takes to do such a douchebag act. To do it twice is just plain taking the piss. It was still a good night though. We stayed til around 4:30am when we were all extremely wasted.

Day 2 - Hangover, Burgers and Video Games

I only slept for about 4-5 hours that night and woke up feeling absolutely awful. I hadn't eaten a meal in 24 hours so figured that would be the best place to start in trying to feel normal again. Since I didn't even have the energy to get out of bed I would have to order room service. The only problem being that just reading the menu made me feel sick.

So I tweeted out the menu to my twitter followers asking for advice.


I opted for the 'safe' options on the menu and ordered D2 - Sweet and Sour Pork with Pineapple and D3 - Sautéed Diced Chicken with Cashew Nuts. Strangely there was 3 phone numbers for room service, and I had to call all of them and speak to five different people before I got someone who could speak English.

When the food arrived it looked decent. The lack of knife and fork annoyed me though, as the only thing I can eat with chopsticks is noodles. I got stuck in to the food but it was completely inedible.

The pork was like 80% bone and gristle. Judging by the shape of it I was pretty sure I was eating pigs feet. The chicken in the other dish, when I could find any of it, was just plain horrible.

I almost felt like turning vegetarian just because of this meal. Yuck!

Eventually I was able to drag myself out of bed and over to The Venetian where I know that they have a Fatburger.

I omnomnomed on a deep fried chicken burger with bacon and cheese and a fatburger with bacon and cheese and felt all the better for it.

I then shipped it over to The Underground, a video game arcade at Macau Fisherman's Wharf.

I spent a good few hours there playing the sick setups they had of Outrun 2 SP, House of the Dead 4 Special Edition, Initial D in the sick Sega Cycraft motion-simulator and The Bishibashi - and addictive button bashing game.


Burgers and video games. What an awesome day.

Day 3 - Pizza, Poker and Breaking Bad

The next day was also filled with games and great food. I got access to my PokerStars account ([X] thanks Steve) and visited Pizza Hut where I had an extremely delicious Lobster Soup in Puff Pastry and a Super Hawaiian Pizza (beef, peperoni, ham, pineapple).

That prepared me for playing Event 2 of the MPCC - $5000 Knockout Bounty. The runbad was instant, as I found myself drawn in the 8-seat. I hate sitting right at the end of those tables because there is absolutely nowhere to put your legs. Very annoying.

The table was very soft though with 4-5 players limping and calling raises and seeing every flop. I had a guy on my right with what could only be described as a 'pointy wizard beard'. I think he got lost on his way to audition for the part of the headmaster in the Asian remake of the Harry Potter movies. I was desperate to pick up a hand and take one of these clowns down to valuetown, and was patiently folding most of the time but making some chips back by raising the limptards in position and they were check-folding the flops they didn't hit.

At BB200 I had slightly over the starting stack of 7500 and a fool with 5000 chips open limped the HJ. I was on the button with pocket 8s and raised to 750. Everyone folded and he called. The flop came 754r, he checked, I bet 1000, he called. So there was 3800 in the pot and he had slightly less than that behind. Turn was a 9 and the guy tanked then checked, then turned round to me and started grinning. He picked up his bounty plaque and started waving it around and rubbing it on his forehead and all sorts of weird stuff. I was planning on just putting him all in on the turn but all his jumping around convinced me that he was super strong so I checked back. River was a 2, he checked, more weird jumping around, I checked back and he showed me 98s for a turned pair of 9s. Sigh.

A couple of rounds later, I was on the button again when the same guy limped. I raised it from 200 to 725 with pocket 10s. This time the young kid in the BB cold 3-bet it to 1600 and the limper folded. It seemed like such a good spot for him to be 3-betting me light because he probably knows I am isolating the donk limper in position with a wide range. I give a lot more credit to young guys for being capable of making this play than the older guys at the table. Anyway, I shoved for around 6600 and he snapped me of with KK and made quads. mbn.

The only thing keeping me off tilt was the fact that I had downloaded an HD TV-Rip of the season finale of Breaking Bad while I was away. I really didn't want to watch it on a stupid little laptop screen so I decided that I was going to take the TV down from the wall so that I could hook my laptop up to it. For this I needed a screwdriver. It was very late at night and my only chance at getting one would be at the small supermarket. I arrived just before they closed and amazingly they did sell screwdrivers.


So I settled down with a bunch of snacks and watched the Breaking Bad season finale in glorious HD. And what an episode it was. It blew my mind. I sat and watched it over again straight after.


Day 4 - The Lost Day

For the next 36 hours all I did was sleep, snack and play online poker. I was still feeling super rough from the partying on the Saturday night. I don't think I've ever drank champagne without it leaving me feeling ill for days later.

Day 5 - Haute Cuisine, Pandas and The Mad Swede

I decided that I needed to get some proper food inside of me and my twitter friend Phil Lau aka @Plau31 suggested that I try the high-end Don Alfonso 1890 restaurant at Grand Lisboa. It's the Macau branch of highest michelin rated restaurant in southern Italy.

It was the middle of the afternoon and I was the only customer there, so a very comfortable and relaxing experience. The service was world class.

I ordered a 5-course lunch, which I live tweeted to my twitter followers as I nommed my way through it.


I got things started with the Canadian Bison "Carpaccio" with aged Parmigiano and revised Italian green sauce and got stuck right in to the delicious basket of breads. That was followed up with the Pumpkin soup, fresh burrata cheese from Puglia and sautéed blue-foot mushrooms with fresh thyme. The soup was out of this world. What a great idea to have a soft creamy cheese in the middle of the soup, it works really well.

I had a middle of course of Home-made ravioli stuffed with wild pheasant ragout in "Genovese" style andcoulis of pistachio from "Bronte" followed by a main of Lavender encrusted sole fish served with wild spinach. What can I say? It was a huge step up from all the crap I'd been eating for the previous week.

And nice and simple to round it all off, a few scoops of Home-made Italian Ice Cream (hazelnut and vanilla). So good!

How could my day get better from there? With a trip to the Macau Giant Panda Pavilion of course. It took some getting to, as I got into 2 different taxis and couldn't get them to understand where I wanted to go. I just kept saying "Panda, Panda", but taxi-drivers speak next to no English in Macau. I then remembered that I had seen a big poster advert for the Panda Pavilion so I went there and took a photo of the poster. The next taxi I got in, again he didn't know what a Panda was, then I showed him the photo I just took and he was like "öhhhhhhhhhhh" and took me straight there.

The two Pandas are called Kai Kai and Xin Xin. They were given to Macau by China in December 2009 to mark the 10 year anniversary of Macau's return to China. It was awesome just to stand watching them playing and eating. Check out the little video I made of them.



From watching pandas to playing with donkeys. That evening I played my third event of the MPCC series. Event 5 - HKD$2500 Knockout Bounty. By far the smallest buyin event that I would be playing.

I got off to a great start when I skilfully got JJ in versus AK on a KJx flop for an early double-up. Giving me a nice 10K stack to play with.

At my first table I was in the 2-seat and the guy in the 1-seat just shook his leg up and down rapidly and constantly. Because we were all squashed together around the table my leg was touching his and it was just really uncomfortable and weird. He was shaking even when he was not in a hand, and when he was in a hand shaking even more vigorously. Then he stopped shaking during one hand. He had picked up KK, got it in and doubled up. So I guess super premium hands are the the antidote to shaky leg syndrome.

In the third level at BB200 there were 2 idiot limpers and the shaky leg guy in the SB raised to 850, with leg still shaking. I cold 3-bet from the BB to 1975. He 4-bet me to 3850, leg still shaking. I 5-bet shoved for 8500 and he instantly turned over 75o and pushed his cards towards the muck.

I didn't play any other big pots until BB400. With a 9K stack I opened to 1000 with pocket 5's and both blinds called. The flop came down 884 flop and the SB who had the same stack size as me lead for 1100. The guy in the BB instantly shoved for 3500. I reshoved for 8000. SB folded instantly and BB turned over 43o. *BINK* a nasty 4 on the turn. The guy went ballistic jumping up and down cheering. I don't particularly like someone over-celebrating when they suck out on me but that seems to be the norm in Macau so I wasn't to bothered. That was, until he sat back down and started looking at me and laughing, picking up his chips and waving them at me and cheering. Pointing his finger at me, saying stuff in Chinese and laughing his ass off.

Really? REALLY? Are you serious? I absolutely couldn't believe what was happening. That guy has to be the most classless piece of shit ever to play poker. How does a grown man, who has sat silently the whole time, turn into a little brat of a child laughing and gloating over the turn of a card? I stood up and gave him a piece of my mind but people told me that he doesn't speak English at all. Unreal, I couldn't even let the guy know what a classless dickhead he was.

Of course, I took a photo of the guy. I will soon have enough photos of people I've played with in Macau displaying atrocious poker etiquette to add a Wall of Shame to my blog. He's the guy in the blue jacket (foreground is shaky-leg guy).

My stack had decreased to only 3.5K before I could find a good spot to shove. At BB400 I jammed from the SB with 98s. BB woke up with AQ and somehow I sucked out on the river. I followed that up by winning 2 all-ins versus shorter stacks (TT > AJo and 77 > 66) to give me a nice 17K stack and a couple of bounties. Easy game.

Not long after that I was able to stick it to the gloater. Still at BB400 (with 50 ante) I was in the BB and a weak player in MP opened just for just 900 (he had been limping or 3x-ing previously). The loose-passive gloating bastard called from the button. I had K9s in the BB and 3-bet to 2950 with K9s, feeling like this would take down the pot most of the time. Initial raises folded quickly and the gloater tanked then called. The flop came down Q76 and I lead for 4500. He called pretty fast. Turn was a 6, there was about 16K in the pot and I only had about 9K behind. I decided to give up, because there wasn't much that he called the flop with that he would fold the turn with. I checked and he checked behind. River was an Ace. I figured that was the perfect card for me to bluff and shoved my stack in. The guy tanked a full five minutes, maybe more, before turning over a 7 and throwing his hand in the muck.

I was delighted to slam down my King-High face up and scoop the pot. The guy freaked out slamming the table, but then he was acting like my best friend. He came over and shaked my hand and he was telling the new dealer and his friends about the hand and shaking his head and smiling. I guess I won his respect by bluffing him? I dunno, it seems weird.

We got down to 30 players, with 16 being paid when a sick, sick hand came up. It was BB1000 (100 ante I think) and I raised to 2250 from the HJ with 63o. The European in the CO though for a while before calling. This guy was playing fairly straight-up. I expected him to be folding all of his garbage hands, re-raising me with premiums and flatting with a bunch of medium aces, broadway cards and suited connectors.

The BB also called and we seen a flop of 953 all hearts (I have 6 of hearts, 3 of spade). BB checked, I checked, CO bet 2000 and BB folded. I thought that he'd be betting when checked to here with pretty much his whole range on this board. I was going to check-shove but his bet was so small and I had 18k behind. I thought it would be better to try to check-shove most turn cards, so I called. The turn was an offsuit 4, I checked, planning to shove over his bet, but he instantly announced "all in". There was about 12K in the pot and I had 16K behind, with him having me well covered.

He sat there like a statue while I tried to figure out what to make of his shove. Well, he didn't have a hand that wanted to get value out of so I definitely wasn't drawing dead for starters. He shoved the turn so damn fast. I tried to joke with him telling him that I had a little angel on one shoulder telling me to fold and a little devil on the other to call this maniac with bottom pair. The whole table and the rail were laughing but my opponent was absolutely stoic.

After a very long time I made the call. He tapped the table and said "good call". I was expecting to see something like QJ with a heart or Ax with the ace of hearts for the nut flush draw and a gutshot, something like that. He turned over KdTd and was drawing to only 4 outs. Thankfully I faded and shipped a huge pot.

It wasn't long before we were hand for hand on the bubble with 17 players left and 16 being paid. I was one of the chip-leaders and was raping the bubble for all it was worth. There were guys openly talking about how they were planning to fold into the money. I just min-raised every hand that was folded to me and build a very nice stack never seen a flop. That was until some punk kid got fed up of me and shoved his average sized stack over me with the T9s. Pretty bad timing for him considering that I had AK and snap called. This pot was for a huge chiplead. The flop ran out T93 and the turn was another T, so I got screwed hard. From there the bubble went on for another hour of hand-for-hand play but I was still able to run my stack up from 12BB to 20BB during that time.

The first hand after the bubble burst the guy on my right open shoved for 14BBs from EP. I had AK and re-shoved for 20BB. The guy in the BB then insta called his for 15BB stack. EP guy had Q8o and the BB had AA, siiiiiigh. The flop ran out K96 all clubs and I had the Ace of clubs so I got a good sweat out of it, but brick, brick. I got my last 5BB in the next hand with KT and lost to AQ, so that was that. I finished 13th for $4400HKD and 4 bounties worth $500HKD each. Pretty disappointing.

While I was playing that tourney there was a PokerStars welcome party which I missed in it's entirety. It was very late into the night. I was, however, invited to a small after-party at a music club with about 20 people who were mostly PokerStars staff or partners. I had some fish and chips on order with the Grand Lisboa cafe but was told it would be fine to take it with me because we had a private room at the club.

So I was the first one in the room, and was sitting eating my fish and chips at one of the tables. A short time later everyone arrives to the room and I am still stuffing my face. This one big tall Swedish guy who looked completely wasted stood over me and offered me a hand shake. I smiled and politely told him that I couldn't shake hands right now because I was eating. He just shook his head at me and walked away. I thought that was very rude. I mean, I was clearly eating with my hands, and was very nice and polite about it. Did he really think I wanted to transfer the bacteria from his hands into my mouth?

Every time I use the toilet in a public place I see guys taking a piss and leaving without washing their hands. I'd say its about 50/50 on whether a random guy will wash. Where people are drunk the odds get much worse. I've even seen guys use the crapper and not wash their hands. Absolutely disgusting. So at best it's a coin-flip that if I shook that guys hand that I'd fade germs being transmitted from his dick to his hand, to my hand, to my food and into my mouth. He might as well be asking me to suck his cock, the rotter.

The party was a lot of fun, in a nice big room with 2 tables, leather sofas and 2 big TVs with Karaoke. People were playing drinking games and having a blast. I was the only one that was stone cold sober as I was busy min-cashing that stupid donkament while everyone else was getting drunk. The big drunk Swedish guy shouted across the table at me "HEY, what is your screen name?". So I told him "It's Daleroxxu". He said "WHAT?". I said louder and clearer "It's Daleroxxu". Again, he shakes his head and shouts "WHAT IS YOUR SCREEN NAME?" and again I tell him "It's Daleroxxu".

It was so loud, with music and people shouting and having a good time. It was hard enough to communicate with someone who wasn't even next to me. But he kept asking and I kept telling him. After the 7th or 8th attempt I gave up and told him "It doesn't matter, but my name is Dale". He just snapped and went crazy at me. I could barely understand what he was saying because of his thick accent and slurred speech from being wasted. The guy that was sitting between us sensed trouble and disappeared pretty fast. The Swede moved towards me and started ranting "I could be a billionaire, I could be a businessman for all you know". I'm like "huh"? just completely perplexed about what is going on and what he is saying to me. He screams "I AM A BUSINESS MAN. I AM A RICH BUSINESS MAN". I'm just like "ooooook, why are you telling me this?" and he points to my PokerStars patches and shouts "SO WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU THEN?".

By that stage everyone had moved to the other side of the room leaving this nutcase with me. He just gave me an absolute torrent of abuse. He went on a rant "You think that I am a bad poker player because I am a business man? I am winning player so FUCK YOU. You think you are a superstar in poker well FUCK YOU, you think you are better than me. You are not better than me, *laughs*, in-fact it is the other way around." The whole time I hadn't even said a single word. He's got it into his head that I think he's a bad poker player because he's a businessman but I haven't event spoken since he told me, so rudely, that he was a business man. I was in complete shock about what was happening but at that stage I knew I was dealing with a real mental case.

I have been in situations before where I've been sober and around completely obnoxious drunk people and it's not much fun, but there I was, at a PokerStars party, representing PokerStars, not knowing how to deal with this mad man that was verbally abusing me. I tried to calm him down and ask him why he was saying all this stuff, but every time I opened my mouth he would get madder and louder and telling me to shut up while he is talking. He just kept repeating the same stuff over and over along the lines of "I am very rich", "I am business man", "you think you superstar", "I AM BETTER THAN YOU". I felt like a young Charlie Murphy getting bitch-slapped by the crack-head Rick James as he screams "I'm riiiiich biiiiiiiatch".

I walked away from the cretin and told some of the PokerStars staff about what had happened and pointed to the guy. I asked who he was and was told that he was just a guy called Roger Spets, one of the players. Whew, I thought he was likely to be some parter or affiliate with PokerStars, because that was who almost everyone else in the room was, and was glad to hear that he wasn't. He seen me pointing over to him and stormed over to me and screamed "FUCK YOU" in my face, spitting heavily as he did it. He walked away and came right back and did it again "FUCK YOU", right in my face, covering me with spit. I believe that will go down in history as the only time someone has done such a thing to a Scotsman without receiving a beer bottle to the face in return.

Roger Spets

I said to the PokerStars guys that I can't take this level of abuse, if it was any other setting I'd have killed the guy by now. They need to kick him out right now or I'm leaving. At that stage he came over again and told me to fuck off, flicking his hand about a centimetre from my face. A couple of guys then got a hold him him and talked to him. They brought him over to me and he shook my hand and said that he was sorry. I tried to ask him what he was upset about because I hadn't even said anything bad to him but he wouldn't let me speak. Any time I spoke he would get mad, "I am TALKING, can I FINISH?". I had to stand there for 15 minutes while he constantly shook my hand and spoke a load of nonsense that I could barely understand. He was saying stuff like "You need to know that even when I lose at poker, I win, because my businesses make so much money. I can retire now if I want and I am rich for my whole life."

I know a lot of wealthy people and I don't know one single one of them that goes around telling people how rich they are, bragging about their wealth. Its completely repulsive. It kind of reminds me of that kid in high school that goes around bragging about how many girls he has slept with, when the true number is ZERO. Get the fuck out mate. I couldn't shake the guy off as obviously nobody else wanted to talk to the psychotic bastard, so I decided to just leave. I mean, I am used to crazy Scandies making my life miserable at the table, but I can't allow it happen away from the table. On the way out I found a bunch of people I knew playing on electronic darts machines in a main area of the club so stayed for another hour or so and actually had some fun. So glad the mad Swede didn't completely ruin my night.

Day 6 - The Main Event

The next afternoon I played Day 1B of the $20,000HKD Macau Poker Cup Championship Main Event. There was an excellent structure with the 20K starting stack and long levels.

I lost a lot of chips in the second level when a 40-ish yr old Asian man opened from early position, two players called in late position and I completed from the BB with 8d6d. The flop came 7d5d5h, so flopped a straight flush draw on a paired board. I led out, feeling like I could easily rep a 5 with my BB calling range and leading out looks strong. The initial raiser tanked then called and the other 2 players folded. I figured that he was likely calling me with pocket pairs, overcards with a flush draw, maybe getting stubborn with bare AK or a 98s. He raised from early position so I wasn't expecting a whole lot of 5's to be in his range.

The turn was an offsuit Ace and I fired out a decent sized bet. I thought the Ace would make him more likely to fold any pocket pairs he called with on the flop, as a big part of my range for taking this line that doesn't include me having a 5 would be a nut flush draw with AdXd. He tanked again and then called. I thought it likely that he himself had the nuts flushdraw with AdXd at that point. He could be slow playing something huge like 7's and his tank-call is a big act, but at that stage it felt genuine. The river was a 9 and I lead big again, for just over half his stack, representing that I have at least trip 5's or a missed draw. Since I thought the most likely hand for him to have at that stage was AdXd that would obviously make it seem less likely that I was on a draw and it should be easy for him to fold top pair.

Anyway, he tanked again and then popped his head up and said "OK, I don't think you have a five, so I'm going to go all in". Hahaha, oh shit. It was like a line straight out of the movie rounders. If I actually had something like A5 or 75 in that spot I would be hating my life because it's such a big tell that he has an absolute monster hand. Probably 77 or AA.

Oh well, that sucked. At least I brought back a nice healthy snack from the break :P


I ended up bluffing most of my chips off at BB300 when a young Asian guy opened to 700 from MP, I called out of the BB with AhJd and the flop came Kd8d7h. I checked flop, he bet 1000, I raise to 2700 and he made an uneasy call. I had 11K behind and he had 7K. I though it was most likely that he had a weak top pair. Turn was Qh and I shoved. He called pretty quickly with KJ and I didn't get there. In hindsight it wasn't the best board to bluff at because it was so draw heavy. It seemed like a good idea at the time though, given that it was the main event and people weren't really getting it in for stacks early with top pair.

I was rocking the 12 BB stack for a couple of levels. I then had 10BB and it was folded to me in the SB with 8d6d (same hand I flopped the straight flush draw with earlier). Second time lucky? I moved all in but the BB instantly called with Kh5h and again I didn't get there. GG, sigh.

I think it always feels better to lose a big tournament on a bad beat or cooler rather than a failed bluff, because at least then you can just curse your bad luck rather than beating yourself up about what happened. I tried to cheer myself up with some food at shopping at the Venetian.

The Grand Canal Shoppes has 330 stores and as it's Macau there is no sales tax, perfect. The only problem I had was finding stuff to fit me. In Asia even an XL top is quite a tight squeeze. A bunch of times I would find something I like and then ask for it in a bigger size and they would laugh and say that is the biggest size. Ridiculous.

Day 7 - Sleep and Six Max

I stayed up the whole night playing online and slept during the day until evening, when I played the $10,000HKD 6-Max Event. I was sat with my back directly to the rail which was about a chair's length behind me. There were always a bunch people there and I could hear them talk and practically feel them breathing on the back of my neck. Every single hand I had to duck down and look at my cards very, very carefully and that got extremely tiresome.

The table was very soft except for the one aggressive guy on my left. In the 5th level he 3-bet my opens 3 times in a row and I folded. In level 6 (BB400/25a) I was hovering around the starting stack of 10K and it was folded to me in the SB. I decided that I was going to fold garbage hands and raise with anything semi-decent, planning to shove over him when the aggro guy in the BB 3-bets me. So I looked down at 8h5h and decided that would do. I raised and as I expected he instantly 3-bet me. I shoved and he snapped me off with TT. gg and another big SIGH.

I just spent the rest of the night relaxing at a nearby spa, trying to lose the huge amount of tilt and frustration that had built up inside me over the week.

Day 8 - Poker, Pigeon and Pizza

On my 8th and final day I played Event 9 of the MPCC - $6000HKD NLHE. This table was annoying because I had 2 different guys wearing big headphones and sunglasses taking ages over ever stupid decision like open-folding preflop. Every time I was in a hand they would stare me down. It was hard to keep a straight face because I just wanted to laugh so hard at these clowns.

A funny hand occured in the second level when one of these guys raised, 3 people called and I called from the BB with 8c7c. I check-called a sick JcTc9h flop. The turn was an 8, I checked, the guy stared me down for a minute and made a massive bet. I sighed and mucked. He slammed down KcQc and like he was the freakin man and shouted "I thought you had Queen, I hoped you had a Queen".

I busted at BB200 when I got AhJd in on a JcTc3c flop versus TT versus the other clown that was staring me down every hand. When the cards flipped over he stood up and shouted "NO CLUBS PLEASE". Hahahahaha it must be nice to have to fade runner-runner clubs for a chop, fuck my life. Just as I was putting my jacket on an Ace hit the turn and the whole table started laughing. I would have been some nice justice to go runner-runner boat on his ass after his pleading to the dealer for no clubs, but it didn't happen.

Since it was my last day in Macau I thought I should try some of the local delicacies so found a small cafe and ordered what I think was roasted pigeon. I say "Ï think", because it was one of the few items that didn't have an English description, just a picture. I guess there probably isn't too much demand for it from westerners. So I sat eating a pigeon, complete with head, along with further Chinese delicacies such as coke zero and a club sandwich.


I spent the rest of the evening playing video games at Underground. Because video games are 100x more fun and 1000x less expensive than playing poker. I wanted to round off the night with a trip to Pizza Hut but that hand closed already. So I went to Ristorante il Teatro, the Italian restaurant at the Wynn, which was superb. I was given a table looking out over the Wynn Fountain Show and the food and service was amazing. Unfortunately I ate so much that by the time my main course of pizza arrived I could only eat half of it. It's very rare that I don't finish a meal.

Day 9 - Zài Jiàn (Goodbye)

When I was getting my stuff together to check out of the hotel the next day I had to re-attached the TV to the wall. In trying to do so I accidentally ripped apart one of the cables and couldn't get it back together again.

So the TV basically didn't work.

Time for a sharp exit. I got my deposit refunded at the front-desk and sped off in a taxi towards the airport.


Zài jiàn!

In just one weeks time I will be paying my third visit to Macau this year to play a bunch of events at the Macau Poker Cup Championship.

It is held between October 7th - 16th at the PokerStars Macau cardroom in the Grand Lisboa casino and includes 10 events.

I'm planning to play 6 events, including the Main Event. But hopefully less, because that will mean I've went deep in some of them :-)


To get myself in the Chinese mood I decided to pay a visit this afternoon to Ping's Shark's Fin in Bangkok, which is a famous upmarket Chinese seafood restaurant. It's normally frequented by Thai celebrities or families celebrating a very special occasion, or me, wandering in wearing shorts and T-Shirt and slurping on a juice box.

I went there specifically to try a highly extravagant soup that I'd read about called "Buddha Jumps Over The Wall". It is a very rich shark's fin soup that takes 2 full days to prepare and is normally only eaten at special occasions. It contains 20-30 different ingredients, mostly non-vegetarian, such as sharks fin, abalone, pork, dried scallops, sea cucumber, Jinhua ham and chicken. The soup is so named because it's so delicious and aromatic that it could entice the vegetarian monks to jump over the walls of their temple to get some :-)

The soup was super delicious but at a cost of 2100 Baht ($68USD) for the soup, a fruit platter and a Pepsi Max it was easily the most expensive lunch I've had in Thailand. I think that most Thai people could eat for a whole month off 2100 Baht. And, as amazingly delicious as the soup was, I left the restaurant still feeling hungry. 15 minutes after I left, I found myself sitting in Burger King nomming on a Triple Outlaw and a X-tra Long Chicken Club with Bacon burger. Omnomnomnomnom.

After my trip to Macau I look forward to enrolling in a Thai language school to improve my language skills. It's an insanely tough language to learn, but I am insanely smart, so it's no problem. Mai bpen rai.

At least when I am able to speak Thai fluently I won't feel guilty about laughing at Thai people who butcher the English language.

I found a site recently called French-Fried which is a blog for sharing funny Tinglish (Thai English). I'm sure I will be making contributions to it soon.


Even funnier than that site is a YouTube video I found of some English deviant in the filth ridden resort of Pattaya, in his cheap-and-nasty hotel room trying to teach the cheap-and-nasty toothless bar-girl he picked up some English.



For any of the Daleroxxu fanboys that live in London or are in town for the EPT, if you are free tomorrow (Sunday 2nd of October) then you may well want to take part in a little treasure hunt that PokerStars has set up. To win the EPT Quest, which will award one person with a free seat in the £300 + £30 ‘Win the Button’ side-event, you will first need to follow the clues given out by the @PokerStars Twitter account. Look out for tweets with the hashtag #EPTQuest to crack the code and turn up at the secret location.

My WCOOP went:

[ ] great
[ ] swimmingly
[ ] average
[ ] bellow par
[X] FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU


The runbad curse started on the first day of WCOOP when my laptop died and stayed with me for the duration. For the past 3 weeks I've been sitting here at stupid times of the night, surrounded by pizza boxes, using a shit PC with Windows XP connected to a 32" TV, taking atrocious beats for equity greater than my net worth to button-clicking donktards from countries that I've never heard of in my life.

I'm now trying to recover from the experience and get my life back to normal, starting with trying to get back onto a healthy sleep schedule. Since I can't stay awake for longer than 10 hours at a time it is proving mighty difficult. I have to leave Thailand in the next few days because I just got the 30-day visa exemption stamp when I returned from New Zealand. What a huge pain in the ass. In the near future I will be enrolling into a school for a full year and that has the benefit of allowing me to apply for a 1-year ED (education) Visa.

At least there was some awesome and exciting news recently. It came in the form of a forum post from PokerStars software guru Stefan:

"PokerStars is developing a fast moving ring games product. We expect it to be available for public beta testing in a few months."

Yes please! It's nice to have something to look forward to. Can I please have it in time for Christmas please Santa Stefan please?

If any of my blog-followers still aren't tweeting on twitter then you twats are missing out on a lot. Twitter brings the poker community together like no other medium can. A very funny trend that was started on twitter by @TheMicros recently was #WorstPokerNicknames

Highlights include:

Allen "Butter Knife" Kessler (by @reillygolfpro)
Barry "The Hood Rat of Poker" Greenstein (by @TheMicros)
Chris "Judas" Ferguson (by @jparellano27)
Daniel "Man Poker" Negreanu (by @eponymouspoker)
Gus "The Mun-Dane" Hansen (by @TheWiseLemur)
Layne 'High-Five Me Back' Flack (by @Daleroxxu)
Men The Masturbator (by @TheMicros)
Michelle "FTP Doug" Claiborne (by @Kevmath)
Mike 'The Moobs' Matusow (by @Daleroxxu)
Paul 'Inuit' Clark (by @Daleroxxu)
"Pensacola" John Cernuto (by @Kevmath)
Thomas 'Armadillo Skin' Preston (by @Daleroxxu)
Todd 'Worst Poker Nickname EVER' Brunson (by @Daleroxxu)
Vanessa 'dyslexicfuck' Selbst (by @Daleroxxu)

It can be quite a depressing experience to read the NVG section of TwoPlusTwo in recent times. It seems like every thread on the front page is about some shady site or scumbag player that has screwed people over. Somehow I was able to find some entertaining stuff in there, such as the epic photoshop lolz in the thread Ilari is a shark (prove inside).

Also, photoshop legend Eponymous has created a new poker comic strip called Mucking Aces featuring a superhero resembling Phil Ivey who has a weakness to Craptonite :)

And EmceeWhiteNoise is back with Da Pokerz! Rebuy a sequel to his hit poker rap song Da Pokerz!.

There are some sick lines such as "Listen Kathy Liebert is Arousing To Me, Girl show me your 'moneymaker' like 2003" and "Always trading girls like this here's the NASDAQ, So when I dump you, don't cry like Matt Affleck".

Here we go again.. Same old shit dog, just a different day. Here we go again.. You know how playaz do, when we play, how we play Here we go again..

WCOOP

I got back from New Zealand almost two weeks ago. Every day, or rather night, since then has been the same old shit. Wake up at Stupid O'Clock, play WCOOP tourneys the whole night, bust WCOOP tourneys before the bubble, go to sleep.

I was running 0 for 25 or so in SCOOP/WCOOP events this year but then finally got a cash in the WCOOP-13 PLO8 6-Max 1r1a which payed 72 players. Yes, I finished 72nd. But at least I broke my duck.

Unfortunately I haven't managed to cash in anything since then but have still been playing well. I've been running up some big stacks only to get clowned by some donkey-monkey-clown mutant hybrid of a being each time.

I'm just off the back of playing WCOOP-29 Knockout No-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo 6-Max (with antes), the tourney that I was most looking forward to playing, so I guess I will blog rant about how bad I ran in that. I was amongst the chip leaders most of the way through and had a super soft table full of weak-passive idiots and one Ukranian lagtard super-donk.

The super-donk took a huge chunk of my stack when he open raised 4x, a short stack shoved for 20x, I reshoved to isolate for 90x and super-donk called with A532ss. An atrocious call.

Hand History: http://www.pokerhand.org/?6207574

This is how his hand fares against mine:

Omaha Hi/Low 8-or-better: 500000 sampled boards

cards	scoop	HIwin	HIlos	HItie	LOwin	LOlos	LOtie	EV
Ac 2c Kh Th	187951	302152	175658	22190	0	39431	143591	0.575
5c 2d Ah 3h	93691	175658	302152	22190	130042	0	143591	0.425

He's calling a huge shove where he has very little invested and my range is super strong, to get it in with 42% equity against my hand.

2 hands later I busted after UTG raised 2.25x, super-donk 3-bet to 6x and I 4-bet shoved for 38x with AK33ss. Super-donk called with the ATJ4ds and won. Sigh.

Hand History: http://www.pokerhand.org/?6207587

Omaha Hi/Low 8-or-better: 500000 sampled boards

cards	scoop	HIwin	HIlos	HItie	LOwin	LOlos	LOtie	EV
Kc 3d Ah 3h	194819	242860	254842	2298	173734	15300	12064	0.544
Jc 4c Ad Td	154643	254842	242860	2298	51372	117349	12064	0.456

Each time I shove over him with what should be plenty of fold-equity AND the best hand, but he calls AND wins. Must be fucking nice.

I didn't even pick up a single bounty in the tournament. Several times I had them drawing dead to half the pot and on life support for the rest but the river gave them the medicine that they needed.

I'm planning on playing another 7-10 WCOOP events. I need to ship it crucial or I'm in a pretty bad spot. I haven't really been playing anything else other than bricking WCOOPs for the last 2 weeks and for the 2 weeks before that I was in New Zealand.

New Table Theme

There has been a very cool update to the PokerStars software recently as the new Nova table theme has been made available (although it's still considered to be in beta). This new theme has been created with the purpose of making multi-tabling easier.

Comparision:






As you can see, where it really makes a difference is on the very small tables. In the traditional themes the font is barely readable, you can hardly see the stack sizes or bet amounts. In the new Nova theme the font is large and readable no matter how small you size your tables

Unfortunately the new theme does not work with TableNinja.

The TableNinja support rep on twoplustwo, '8=~Fool~=8', said:

Each theme basically requires a new version of TableNinja. Its the most complicated and time consuming type of feature to add. We may add support for other themes in the future but we haven't currently announced any plans to do so.

It's likely very poorly designed software if it truly needs to be rewritten to support a new theme. TableNinja is all about making multi-tabling easier, the new Nova theme is all about making multi-tabling easier. It sucks that we can use both of them at the same time :(

(tl;dr. cliff notes at bottom)

As soon as I heard about the PokerStars APPT / ANZPT Queenstown Snowfest poker festival, to be held at the end of August, I was already planning my trip.

After spending most of this year living in sweltering heat, I welcomed the chance to visit the beautiful country of New Zealand during it's winter.

I was flying in to Auckland but had a connection at Changi (Singapore Airport) with 3 hours to kill. Fortunately Changi is easily the best airport in the world, and it isn't even close.The fast sky trains take you between the terminals which are all very clean, well organised and have relaxing music playing at all times.

Awesome stuff to pass the time include the free movie theatres, gym, swimming pool, singapore's tallest slide, a nature trail, a butterfly park, overnight hotels and day-rooms, free wifi, 200 free internet terminals, free foot and calf massage chairs, entertainment deck with free PC LAN gaming and XBox 360 / Playstation 3 terminals, indoor and outdoor gardens, hundreds of shops (tax free), gourmet restaurants, rest areas with snooze-chairs where you can sleep, and probably a whole bunch of other cool stuff that I missed in the few hours that I was there.


I played some video games, visited the butterfly park, then bought some Burger King and took it into the theatre to chill, eat and watch the movie Rango. I usually hate airports but Changi just blows me away. I was actually dissapointed when it came time for me to catch my connecting flight to Auckland :(

I booked all my flights for my trip with JetStar (Quantas' budget airline) because they have very reasonable priced Business Class seats for their long haul flights. It's not the type of business class you'd get on a major airline, in fact it's more comparable to what you'd get from a long haul Premium Economy seat with British Airways or Qantas. Big wide pitched leather seats (in a 2-3-2 arrangement) with tons of legroom and leg rests, with the chair reclining enough to be able to sleep. I was also smart enough to chose my seat number ahead of time, to get in the front row, so that I didn't have to deal with someone in front of me fully reclinging their chair into my space.

They gave me a Video on Demand tablet with movies, tv shows and music, 2 hot meals, unlimited snacks and drinks, a blanket and a bag with socks, blindfold, earplugs, toothbrush, etc. Each way, the business class seats were only about $350 USD extra on top of the economy fare, so completely worth it for an 11 hour flight. I took some Xanax and slept for the last 7 hours of the flight, something I'd never be able to do in an economy seat. Sleeping on the plane was essential as it was an overnight flight with a 5 hour jump in time, landing in Auckland at 11am local time.

I heard that a taxi from the airport to the city was $100+ so I decided to take the Airbus Express which is only $26 return and leaves every 15 minutes. It also stops/picks up right outside the serviced apartments that I was staying at on Queen Street, which is the main street in the city. The bus service was very fast, clean and had plenty of space.



When I checked in to the Quest on Queen serviced apartments I planned to take a quick shower and then go out and do stuff. Well instead, I took a long shower, then lay on the bed for a little nap. When I woke up and it was dark outside. Damn, I wasted the whole day sleeping.

By the time that I got something to eat it was about 7:45pm and I remembered from when I was researching things to do in Auckland that there was an indoor snow slope with real snow called Snowplanet, and I remembered that it was open until 10pm. So that seemed like a day saver, to take a trip to Snowplanet and spend a couple of hours practising snowboarding and giving my barely used leg muscles a work out, in preperation for hitting the real snow slopes when I got to Queenstown.

I put on the clothes that I would snowboard in, threw a bunch of stuff in a bag in dashed out of the door. There was a taxi at the traffic lights and I jumped in and asked him to take me to Snowplanet. He had never heard of it but handed me his GPS. I typed in 'Snowplanet' and it found it right away, so off we went.

We seemed to have been driving for absolutely ages, which I thought was strange, because I remember seeing it on google maps and it looked like it was just outside the edge of the city. I leaned over and looked at the meter and it read $90. WTF!!!! Daaaamn, I thought this would be a $40 trip and that I'd be there already. I asked the driver to look at the GPS and tell me if we were nearly there. He said that we were half way there. Fuck my life. I had underestimated how ludicrously overpriced taxis are in Auckland AND how far away this fucking place was, an absolutely lethal combination of fail!

At that stage the smart thing to do would have been to ask him to turn around and take me back. But I usually make the completely wrong decision, so I just sat there until we eventually got to Snowplanet at around 8:30pm and I handed over $180. OUCH! The place was in the absolute desolate middle of nowhere, and I had no idea how I was going to get back, but wasn't wasting much time thinking about it as there was only 1 and a half hours before they closed.

I bought a night pass and snowboard/boot rental for a toal of $70. I paid another $5 for the locker. By the time that I got my boots laced up and headed onto the slope I realised that I had no gloves on. I went back into my locker and DAMNIT, I didn't bring my gloves. At that stage it was getting real late so I just thought "fuck it" and went snowboarding without gloves. I figured that as long as I didn't fall down much it would be ok.

I approached the T-bar to go to the top of the slope and failed hard at trying to mount the thing. I fell over into the icey cold snow. This "snow" felt like acid burning through my hands, absolute agony. Then, once I had sucessfully made it to the top of the slope, I just stood there trying to remember how to snowboard. I've only ever been snowboarding, at a similar venue in Scotland, about 6 times, and haven't been since a year ago. Of course I fell straight away, my hands completely red and frostbitten. Then, halfway down the slope, for some reason I was leaning back at the time that I needed to turn and couldn't shift my weight fast enough to prevent me from crashing straight into the side wall :(

When I made it to the bottom of the slope my hands were bright red, swollen and shivering. To hell with that. I walked back out and through to the reception area. I asked the girl if I could borrow or rent a pair of gloves and she said no, that gloves are only available for sale, except they had already closed the SnowShop so I couldn't get any gloves. I showed her my hands and she was shocked. She went looking around and eventually found a pair of gloves to give me. "That'll be $25".

So back out I went, up to the top of the slope, this time with gloves on, only to have another great fall like my name was Humpty fucking Dumpty. For my 3rd - 6th runs I was pretty much able to stay on my feet and shred up the slope nicely, but by then it was very close to closing time, 10pm.

I asked the reception if they had a phone number for a local taxi company, which they did. Sadly, with my Thai SIM card, I wasn't getting any reception, but they let me use their land line to call. They said that it was no problem, they have a car nearby and he will be there in 5 minutes.

I sat outside waiting in the freezing cold for ages. I remember checking the time, 10:15pm, as I sat there watching the staff from Snowplanet leave and walk one by one to their cars. I got more and more worried as each minute went by. By 10:30pm the last few staff had left the building. I sat there as the lights went off and the last 3 cars drove away. Oh fuck.

I just didn't know what the hell to do. There I was, my first day in a new country, stuck in some random remote location late at night. I was sure that the taxi had stood me up at that point, half an hour late! I only had $120 left in my pocket, and had withdrawn the max from the ATM that day, so even if the taxi had got there I didn't even think I'd have enough for the fare back.

I figured that I would just have to walk and try to find the nearest town (with no map / GPS / anything) to see if I could get a taxi from there, and failing that would have to hitchhike for the first time in my life. I started walking down the only route that leads to Snowplanet, a narrow country road, in the absolute pitch dark. I was using the Flashlight app on my phone to barely light the way. Every time I heard a noise, I would turn in that direction and shine the light. It was like a scene from the Blair Witch Project.

I have since looked up this road on Google Maps. Here is what it looks like:



One on side was a big road / motorway, inaccessible due to a huge ditch filled with trees and bushes. On the other side a whole load of nothing. The hilariously named "small road" was 2km long.

After 20 minutes of walking, with my legs sore and tired from snowboarding, I was close to the end of the road when I saw a car's headlights shining up the road. The car drove right past me. I though that had to be my damn taxi because that road is a dead end and there's bugger all up there, except for Snowplanet and a race track, both of which are closed. I stood there waiting, because I knew that they would have to come back down the same road.

Eventually I saw the headlights and I stood in the middle of the road with my arms waving. The car stopped in-front of me, I saw a taxi sign, "TAXI FOR DALE?", yes! After getting in and telling him how pissed off I was he agreed to take me for a flat $100 instead of using the meter.

So for a total cost of $380 I got 6 runs of a stupid indoor snow slope, bruised legs, frostbitten hands that I had to put a steroid cream on for the next 4 days and a long, freezing, dark walk on a country road in the middle of buttfuck nowhere New Zealand. Fuck my fucking life.

The next day I took it easy, wandered around the city then visited the Voyager (Auckland Maritime Museum). The museum was interesting enough, lots of exhibitions that celebrate New Zealand's seafaring history and the centrepiece being the yacht Black Magic that won the America's Cup in 1995.

After I got bored of looking at boats, I took a trip on a boat, for a few hours cruising around the Auckland Harbour with a stop-off at Rangitoto Island.



That was a nice relaxing way to spend the day. The weather was glorious, 15 degrees C, calm, blue skies.

I then took a long walk along the coast, until I reached a place called Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World and Antarctic Encounter. There were tons of penguins and sharks there so I was very happy :)



The next day I had a flight to Queenstown. I checked in to the 5* Sofitel hotel which was part of the APPT Queenstown Snowfest package.

The hotel was outstanding. I was a huge fan of the jacuzzi bath tub with TV. I am very picky when it comes to hotels and usually can find a lot of fault with them. With the Sofitel Queenstown, I would have had absolutely zero to complain about, if it wasn't for the fact that they are a bunch of robbing bastards for charging a "special discount rate" of $150 for 6 days internet with capped download usage. Seriously, wtf, $150 for internet, kiss my ass. Fortunately it wasn't a problem as I was able to hook onto a WiFi signal coming from a nearby hostel, so they didn't get their $150 from me.



The first thing I did after getting checked in was to go shopping and buy a belt. Every time I stay in a hotel I always manage to leave something behind. This time I had left my belt behind in Auckland and now my trousers were hanging low like some kind of hiphop gangsta from da hood. I had to pay $23 for some cheap crap belt that I could easily get for $2 in Thailand, while the shop owner made fun of me and my low hanging trousers.

In evening I went for dinner with Calvin 'cal42688' Anderson who is a sick MTT and SNG player on PokerStars and has just moved from the states to Mexico to continue playing. People kept telling me that when I'm in New Zealand I have to eat the lamb. So I ate some lamb, and it was delicious.

The next day I headed over to the Sky City Casino to play day 1 of the APPT Queenstown Snowfest Main Event. The field for the tournament was small and tough. I had a maniac Dutch guy to my left. To his left was Jonathan 'xMONSTERxDONGx' Karamalikis and to his left was Grant Levy. Across the table was recent PokerStars Sunday Million winner Jesse 'OnTheMac' McKenzie.

When I tried to outplay these guys I soon found that I had only just over half of the 20K starting stack after 90 minutes. Fortunately I then picked up KK utg and got it in on a KJX flop versus JJ. Even a blind squirrel can play the nuts :)

Shortly after that I stacked up to 46K, and close to the chiplead, after skillfully picking up the KK again. I 3-bet pretty big from the sb after lady called Leanne Haas raised the button. She called and I led the Th4h4d flop and jammed the 7c turn for 1.5x pot effective. I had been playing very loose so far and played a line that looks most like a flush draw and overs. She tanked and called me with 55.

By the last hour of the day I was up to 75k with the chiplead. Then I spewed off 1/3 of my stack, most of it to Andrew Hinrichsen who I tried to bluff 3 streets when he had the second nut flush. Oopsy. Still, I ended the day with a very healthy 48k but was quite annoyed with myself.

On the way back to the hotel I visited the famous Fergburger, a gourmet burger restaurant that is so popular in Queenstown that it's even boldly printed on the map. I got myself a 'Tropical Swine' burger with prime beef, streaky bacon, edam cheese, pineapple slice, lettuce, tomato, red onion, aioli and tomato relish.


I took it back to my hotel and munched it. It was absolutely delishhh, omnomnomnomnomnom. I was eating at Fergburger ever day of my stay in Queenstown, it's just too good!

That same evening there was a PokerStars Welcome Party at the casino with free food and drink. I LOVE free food and drink, so that was great :) After getting completely wasted, I late registered for the nightly side event 'Double Chance PLO'. I was playing the tournament with the same people I was getting drunk with at the party, Joel Feldman, Luke Edwards, Octavian Voegele and Ryan McKay.

As this tourney was being played while the PokerStars party was still going on we were flipping coins to decided who would go over to get some free drinks and bring them back. I lost a couple of times and blinded off pretty badly because of it. There was a huge rush as the bar tab limit came close to being hit and I ended up with 3 vodka-cokes sitting in-front of me on the table. Happy days.

Despite being drunk I played a solid game. Everyone was going nuts and I was basically just playing a tight solid full ring PLO game. By the time we got 3 handed and in the money it was just me and the only 2 non-drunk people at the table who were left. I skilfully got it in preflop with double suited aces against KKxx and had a 2.5-1 chiplead heads up against a guy called Gareth. Our heads up battle lasted over an hour until I was sitting with all the chips in front of me.


Binking an event at Snowfest is made even better by the fact that event winners are given a PokerStars.net snowboard. Very nice indeed!

Talking of cool PokerStars merchandise, I made a little video to show you guys what is inside the APPT Players Bag.



I had the next day free as there was another Day 1 of the main event. I took a trip up the Queenstown Skyline Gondola which had some sick, breathtaking views.



While I was up there I also did the street luge 5 times. It was decent fun but could have been faster and more dangerous. I think with these types of things, in developed countries, they are too safety conscious. If this was in Thailand the luge would have no breaks and be down a main road with traffic.



I played another side event that night, a NLHE tourney. I lost a fair chunk early on when some punk limped UTG with pocket 5s. I raised with AK, he called and the flop came A5X. Fortunately I checked back the flop and he only got 2 streets of value out of me. As it happens, turn was a 5, so he made quads. Must beeeee nice.

I ended up busting when I 3-bet shoved AQs for 13BB against the guy I played HU with in the PLO the previous night. He snapped me off with the AKo and I didn't win. It was almost worth the $550 buyin though just to be at the same table as Dennis Huntley, who I gave the nickname "The Ron Jeremy of Australia". Dennis is somewhat of an underground figure, having made Australia's first porn movie and having owned a chain of adult shops. His table banter is hilarious, he never shuts up whether it's before, during or after a hand, he'll always have something to say, mostly good natured ribbing. Most of it during that tourney was at "the frog", a French guy at the table.

The next day it was on to Day 2 of the main event and I had an absolute roller coaster of a time. My table was very, very tough with basically every seat being a young MTT pro.

I ended up spewing most of my chips off after 4 bet shoving on a young Euro guy that 3-bet me from the BB. I had T6 of spades and he of course had AK. The flop came down 887 with two spades. Oh hai. The turn was a Ten. BOOM. Just have to fade 4 outs on the river. Which, of course, was an offsuit ace. Unfortunately my masterful play wasn't rewarded this time.

I was then moved to new tables twice. I was the only person during the whole tournament to ever win a coinflip against eventual tournament winner Marcel Schreiner when I jammed 76s for 17BBs over his open raise and he called me with 55. "A classic race!" said Tom 'Tollgate' Grigg who was to my left. I don't mind my shove there, there's antes and he's opening wide with the big stack.

Eventually I was busted by Jackson Zheng when I shoved 13BB from the BB over his CO raise with K2s and he called me with Q8s and won. I finished 30th, which wasn't quite good enough to be in the money unfortunately.

That night I went for dinner at Barmuda with Jesse Mackenzie and his friends Brett and Jacky, where we sat on comfy sofas in front of a log fire eating delicious food and scotch. Happy days.

The next day I was up bright and early to do something scary, but fun. The Shotover Canyon Swing. This involves jumping from a platform on the edge of a cliff 109m/360ft above the Shotover River, where you free-fall and then swing out before you hit the sharp rocks at the bottom.

I was pretty confident about doing it, until I got to the point where I was standing at the edge and looking down. DAMN that was a long way down.



I enjoyed my jump so much that I went for a second jump. This time strapped to a chair, just for the hell of it :)



Afterwards I was in need of more adrenalin so I look a jet boat ride on the Kawarau river.



A bunch of people got sick and had to be dropped off, haha, pussies.

I then met up with Jesse, Brett and Jacky again and we went to do some ATV / Quad Biking. I took some video clips but couldn't get any of the best bits because there was mud flying everywhere.



On my final day in Queenstown I went snowboarding at Coronet Peak. This was my first ever time snowboarding outdoors. I decided to take a private lesson and we started off on the beginners course working on my turning.



On one of the runs I got absolutely T-boned by a 4 year old girl who was bombing it down on skis and took me flat out. Totally her fault. My snowboard instructor told her off and she looked like she was about to cry. I myself was about to cry after taking the brunt of the force with my foot. I took off my boot and socks and my big toe was bleeding but wasn't broken. Damn.

I thought it would be funny when I'm back home and telling people that I got injured snowboarding in the New Zealand mountains, and they'd be all like "Oh man, what happened? Did you fall going for a sick jump or something?" and I'd have to be like "errm no, a tiny little girl knocked me over and made my toe bleed!".

After recovering I was able to do some of the intermediate runs at Coronet Peak and had a lot of fun there. The snow was mostly soft and the weather was glorious and warm.

Unfortunately, as I was getting changed at the end of the day in the locker area, some bastard STOLE my belt. What the absolute fuck! Whoever was sitting beside me just picked it up and left. When I got back to town I had to go into the same shop as before, pay another $23 for another cheap crap belt and have the same dickhead shopkeeper laugh at me once again.

That final night there was yet another free drinks affair at the PokerStars Wrap-Up Party. I talked to five people who wanted to tell me about how terrible I played a hand in the main event, and each time I would say "oh I think I know which hand it was", and it would be a totally different hand each time, haha fml.

I was sad to leave Queenstown, there was so much cool stuff that I didn't have the chance to do. Hopefully I will be back some day. I flew out the next day to Christchurch. Annoyingly my flight was delayed but I met Simon Watt (the guy who beat Durrrr heads up for a WSOP bracelet last year) who bizarrely checked in for his flight 3 hours before take-off, and sat drinking with him in the bar.

When I got to Christchurch I stayed at the airport hotel because the whole of the city centre of Christchurch is taped off due to some brutal earthquake damage. On my second day in Christchurch I was taken on a full day tour by a former pilot who used to have a business taking 100 people on tour buses every day but had to lay off his staff and sell his vehicles and is now lucky if he is able to take 1 or 2 people out in his SUV. The tourism industry in Christchurch basically came to a complete halt after the serious earthquakes and many such businesses have been ruined.

The tour started with some scenic site-seeing, a visit to a small local chocolate factory, then a tour round the city to see the effects that the earthquakes have had.



On my last day in New Zealand I was spent the whole day a couple of hours away at Mount Hutt to do some more snowboarding. Again I got a private lesson which helped a lot.


I'm disappointed that after starting to get good at snowboarding that I won't be able to do it again any time soon. Who knows, maybe I will go to Korea or Japan early next year and do it there. It's a long wait though.

When flying back to Bangkok I missed my connection in Singapore. Fortunately JetStar put me up in the $340/night Crown Plaza and a free dinner voucher for the restaurant. It worked out pretty well because I was able to have a relaxing bath, a slap up dinner and a long sleep, then take the 2 hour flight to Bangkok in the morning, getting there nice and refreshed. Easy game!

When I got to Bangkok I got a lot of funny looks as I wheeled my trolley through with a huge PokerStars.net snowboard on it. I think there's a fair chance that this is the only snowboard in Thailand :-)

Cliffs:
Singapore Airport is awesome.
Spent $380 to do 6 runs of a stupid indoor snow slope.
Won a PLOament.
Didn't win a NLHEament.
Jumped off a cliff, twice.
Snowboarded for reals.