Aussie Millions visit

I didn't end up getting to Crown for the start of the Aussie Millions Main Event as planned. We had a big night out the night before and spent Sunday drinking at the Riverland Cafe. After a game of buzz at my friend's place we had dinner and figured a quiet night in was the way to go.

So Monday I dropped in to check out the action. As I was heading down to the poker room I passed by Lee Nelson and Jeff Lisandro. I then ran in to some friends in the poker room and they gave me the lay of the land and told me stories about the players they had met and the games they had been in. Cat had her shirt by virtually every big name player at the event, I was just happy to see a few of them.

After wandering around in the main room for a little while I headed up to Studio 3 which was where the final table of the high rollers event was taking place as well as some feature tables from the Main Event. On the final table was of course the great Phil Ivey as well as Tony G and a few other name pros. On the outer tables were Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Annette Obrestad and the rather hot Leo Margets. Apparently I didn't notice Shane Warne, Dani Stern and Lucky Chewy on the outer tables.

Downstairs I eventually found Tony "Bond18" Dunst, Jay Rosenkrantz (2M2MM) as well as Jeff Fenech and Amanda De Cesare, winner of The Poker Star.

Here are some of the photos I took (excuse the quality, they are off my iphone and I didn't want to make it too obvious I was taking players pics):

Jay Rosenkrantz in the middle, Jeff Fenech front right corner

Tony "Bond18" Dunst in the jacket of course, surprisingly no tie

Lee Nelson

Jeff Lisandro and his trademark hat

2010 off to a positive start

Happy new year!!

The last week or so has been a solid one for me at the tables. Nothing spectacular to report, just good positive days, regular final table action. Not sure of exactly the number of tournaments played and conversion rate etc as OPR is a bit behind from today but the bankroll is steadily climbing in the right direction again (over US$420).

I smashed up the Sunday Quarter Million satellites today, cashing I believe in all but one of the games I played. I like playing them on the weekend because they run every 30 minutes or so during the day (Aus time) rather than hourly which they do midweek.

Other than those, I've been sticking to the $3.25 45 man games with the occasional $2.20 90 man non-turbo thrown in. Annoyingly today the one tournament of the latter I played today I bubbled, coming 13th with 12 places being paid. I was short-stacked, shoved on the button with king queen and the small blind looked me up with pocket 3's and I failed to improve.

I caught up on Daniel Negreanu's blog the other day and he had a video blog where he recapped 2009 and talked about his goals and plans for 2010.

Watch Daniel Negreanu's 2009 Recap on RawVegas.tv

I'm a fan of Daniel's ... but all I could think of while watching this video is that he's playing online while lying on the couch, doing a video blog, texting and worrying about his dog running around. Not the best way to concentrate. It reminds me of a scene from the show 2M2MM, I think it was maybe the lockdown episode where Brian gives Dani a hard time for slouching while he's playing. Brian's an advocate of all-out focus and concentration and believes your posture reflects that. I know Daniel one-tables online but not surprisingly by the time he finishes with the blog he questions why his position is so bad and where his chips went. Something to think about ...

2M2MM

I read a while back on one of the blogs I sometimes look at about an upcoming poker show called Two Months Two Million or 2M2MM. Its essentially a reality show about 4 young top online poker players and their challenge to win two million dollars in two months basing themselves in Vegas.

While on the Two Plus Two forums the other day I read that the show had started and there were a couple of threads of people discussing and reviewing the show. When I first read the comments the links to the show on YouTube had been disabled but I found some today that work.

Some of the negative comments about the show is that airs in 30 minute episodes including ads so its too short. Watching them on YouTube without episodes and back to back episodes took that complaint out of the equation for me. Check them out below and see what you think.