World Series of Poker catch-up

I know the November Nine is underway as we speak but I'm doing my best to stay off Twitter and Poker News so I don't hear what happens. I don't have Foxtel which shows the World Series in Australia and have been so busy of late that I hadn't been watching online.

I had a poker weekend, without actually playing that much. I started watching the Main Event on youtube on Friday and pretty spent all weekend catching up on the action. I also had my first "poker wedding" on Saturday. No, not a poker themed wedding, but two poker friends that got married, so the only other people I knew at the wedding were also poker players/friends.

Anyway, as for the Main Event, I'm now half-way through Day 7 so I'm not far from the end. I'm not sure if I should be surprised but the first few days was so focussed on the big name live pros in the field. Despite being a chipleader on day 4, Tony "Bond18" Dunst only got a brief mention in the coverage and wasn't sighted until day 5. Nick "MI_Turtle" Rainey also came in to the coverage on day 5 sitting at one of the feature tables. I didn't realise Christian Harder was still in the tournament as I swear he was first sighted late in day 5 or early in day 6.

Its fair to say that Tony Dunst stole the show over the last few days. Not so much for his play, but for his trademark suit, cool demeanor and his working of the room (read: the ladies near his rail). Bond's charming style won over Norman Chad and Lon McEachern and after his performance on the coverage, it was no surprise that he was picked to be the new correspondent for the WPT. Unfortunately Dunst couldn't make it to the November Nine, but he'll be seeing plenty of face time on poker TV from now on.

I'm off to Longreach (outback Australia) on Wednesday so it could be possible to miss the Main Event winner, if so I can watch it without knowing the result when I get back on Saturday. Let's see how it goes.

Bond18 grinding online

PokerNews caught up with Tony "Bond18" Dunst to see how he grinds online. Bond is his usual calm, laid-back self in the interview. Nothing too revealing but he does give a few tips on getting yourself set-up to grind.

Main Event update

Work's not crazy busy at the moment so I have been following closely the World Series of Poker updates on Poker News and Twitter.

One of my friends who I play with in the APL actually won his way in to the main event but wasn't able to make it past day 2. Apparently he ran kings in to aces and pocket 2's ... yes, you guessed it, the 2's won the hand with quads.

Plenty of the big names have already fallen but for me its great to see so many of the guys I follow online doing so well. Nick Rainey (MI_turtle) is leading the way and was one of the top 3 stacks for much of day 3. Tony Dunst (Bond18), Alex Fitzgerald (Assassinato) and Jay Rosenkrantz (pr1nnyraid) are all still in the running and all have good stacks going in to day 4. My fingers are crossed for all of them and hopefully they can make it through to day 5.

Most of the "live" players that I'm a fan of have been knocked out already. Kenny Tran was the last man standing but got knocked out late on day 4 after flopping top set.

The story of the day tho was the run of two-time champ, Johnny Chan. It would be GREAT for poker if he can make it deep in this tournament. There's 1240 players left and we don't even reach the money until we're left with 747.

PokerStars update

I'm in a bit of a funk at the moment, nothing seems to be going my way which I mentioned in a previous post. Nothing happened with the dating situation, work hasn't been that busy lately and I haven't really been making any progress on PokerStars. I've been getting to the gym regularly which is the one positive but probably not eating as well/healthy as I would like or should be.

So for the last week, I've just been focussing on the $3.25 45 man games. I believe I'm playing well and making the right moves, they just don't seem to be paying off at the moment. My bankroll has been floating up and down around the $1000 mark.

I put in some longer sessions on Saturday and Sunday and things to be on the improve ... a little. Saturday was break-even'ish as I couldn't do any better than a 4th place finish. Sunday I played a few MTT's as well as the 45's and got deep in a couple, cashing 3 out of 4. My best finishes were a 39th out of 2132 and 53rd out of 2460 ... good to get deep but nothing spectacular as far as payouts go. I had my best chance in the first one, I got knocked out when I raised with 9's from early position and the big blind shoved over the top. It wasn't worth folding as I needed to double-up, he turned over ace queen and hit an ace on the flop and I didn't improve. If I win that hand I would have had a more playable stack and could make a run at the top 20 and the final table.

The 45's went a little better yesterday too, despite bubbling at least 4 times. I got one win, a third and a fourth. The win came against a competent player who stacked off with middle pair, mid kicker on a low board when I limped kings from the small blind. I was surprised he couldn't fold when I showed strength on the flop by re-raising and it essentially cost him the game.

The bankroll is currently at $1063 which is a little higher than it has been for the last 2 weeks. Hopefully I can get back over $1100 soon and keep heading upwards from there.

As work hasn't been that busy I've also been railing some of my favourite online players in PokerStars SCOOP. My boys Assassinato and Bond18 have been doing ok without breaking through for a major result but the comeback-kid Shaun Deeb took down a PLO event last night for $63K.

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

Bond18 runs good

There are a few online players that I rail/follow on PokerStars when I'm not actually playing. Most of them are because I read their blogs or they're well known on the Two Plus Two poker forums. The main ones are Alex Fitzgerald (Assassinato), Tony Dunst (Bond 18), Nick Rainey (MI_turtle) and Shaun Deeb (shaundeeb).

Its been a relatively quiet last few weeks as Alex has been back visiting his family in Seattle and Shaun Deeb is on hiatus from poker for a while.

Most of the focus has been on Nick as he has been grinding like a madman over the last few months in his quest for TLB points and the chance to be the first player ever to win consecutive monthly leaderboards on PokerStars. He's currently sitting in second place behind Simonator who came out of nowhere after coming 3rd in the Turbo Takedown.

Today tho was all about Tony Dunst. He hasn't had the best year on PokerStars being down around 15% according to OPR. Since I'm not on any other sites I don't bother tracking how players do on anything else but Stars. Bond18 has a reputation for running good, whether it be with the ladies, in life itself or at the tables. Today, he ran particularly well taking down one big field MTT and coming second in another.

I was following both Nick and Tony's progress as I watched the NFL and the cricket on TV. Tony tho was on fire final-tabling the 2 MTT's and cashing a few others. The two top results was a 2nd (out of 1250 players) in an $11 rebuy which earned him over $3.5K and then he outlasted 500 players in a $22 rebuy tournament to win almost $6K. The win was no doubt more sweet for him as at one stage during the heads-up battle he faced a 5:1 chip deficit but managed to fight back and take it down.

A spectacular return on the buy-ins paid and even better when you consider I think he played just 9 tournaments on PokerStars and cashed 6 of them. Congrats Bond on a MASSIVE day!

Poker blogs

Drugs are bad ... mmmm k??

I'm not sure why, but poker and smoking pot seems to go hand in hand. When I first started playing APL a few years back, I almost felt left out because I didn't smoke (cigarettes) like so many seemed to. Now, reading the forums and a few poker blogs, it seems so many players smoke pot. Considering poker is a mental game that requires focus and concentration, I'm not sure if it makes sense ... but I've never touched the stuff, so what would I know?

Anyway, one of my favourite bloggers, Assassinato had an unexpected 2am wake up call on his way to Italy. As always, a very entertaining read so click on the title to hear the whole story.

Random Thoughts From A Seattle Poker Pro

A drug sniffing dog came into my room along with two guys in vests, reminding me of what FBI agents look like in movies. I was pretty sure they weren't as powerful here but I was still scared shitless waking up to that. The dog started going through our room and not finding anything.

“Do you have marijuana?!” The guy yelled at me. I said no. Then, almost on cue, the dog started scratching my backpack, and looking back at the agent. Fuck.

“If you have something you better tell me right now.” I could tell by the way he asked it he already knew the answer. It was just a matter of if I handed it to them now or if they went through everything. I got up and opened my bag and handed him a small brown bag.


After the WSOP wrapped up, it had been a very quiet time in terms of poker blogging. After a run in with the Devilfish, Tony "Bond 18" Dunst is finally back online again. Full credit to Bond for pulling the original Devilfish story and being man enough to say he made a mistake by writing the story in the first place. Now that he's in Africa being socially responsible, blog updates will likely be few and far between but thankfully he's still writing. Reading this latest blog, all I could think of was, "Hello muddah, hello faddah. Here I am at Camp Granada" which I actually heard on Qantas when I was flying back from Melbourne recently.

A Week in Africa | PokerSavvy Plus

The headmaster however, is Idi Amin Jr. During a parent-teacher assembly he announced to the crowd that 'The Americans have promised to bring us 10 computers next year!' which was something nobody promised or even mentioned in any form during conversation. Two of the teachers that Katie (the other volunteer at the school who is a nice girl from New York) and I are friendly with have told us he shorts their pay and pockets the money. He told some other volunteers that for 5,000 shillings he would organize a brand new bus and great trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro. They paid him and rocked up to find an old, piece of shit bus that broke down on the way. He attempted to convince them to keep going to the mountain in the middle of the night, as pointless as it is dangerous, knowing if he got them there they couldn't demand a refund. The volunteers refused and demanded to go back home. When they got there they naturally wanted their money back and he refused saying that it had already all been spent. One of the girls, Shrea, flipped out on him and he eventually refunded them each 4000. Already been spent indeed. Shrea has not been back to the school to volunteer since and is now working in an orphanage.

Corruption like this is everywhere, and as far as I can tell, is the largest problem a country like Kenya will have in moving forward. The stories of this kind of angle shooting are absolutely endless and while years in the poker world have made me well prepared for picking up on bullshit many of the other volunteers are not as paranoid or suspicious of people’s motivations. The corruption is on all levels of government and daily life, and while picking up a newspaper in the US normally depresses me, picking up one here makes me suicidal. Many other volunteers have questioned the volunteer company's validity itself; as they have spent weeks of time and considerable money attempting to get placement in programs only to have the people organizing them not show up or horrendous delays in communication make their efforts pointless and infuriating.

World Series of Poker update

Its been a week or so since I've updated this blog but seeing as tho only a few people read it at the moment, I don't feel quite so bad. Like my poker game, this blog is a work in progress so its early days.

As mentioned in a previous update, I've really taken an interest in the early events of this year's World Series of Poker. As I have only played no-limit and limit hold'em, I don't fully understand what's going on in games like omaha and razz but I'm getting an idea.

Since I've been playing more online poker recently and checking out blogs and forums, I'm tracking other players not just your big names (Negreanu, Ivey, Hellmuth, etc). Not that any of the bloggers I follow (Bond 18, Assassinato, etc) have had any great results as yet but there's still time and of course the main event yet to come.

Over the last week, the main stories have been about the double-bracelet wins by Brock Parker, Phil Ivey and then (Aussie) Jeff Lisandro. Here's the current Player of the Year Standings:

Player of the Year Standings

View All-Time WSOP Player Stats

Name	WSOP POY Points	Bracelets	Cashed	2009 WSOP Earnings
Jeffrey Lisandro	255 pts	2	5	$619,131
Ville Wahlbeck	255 pts	1	4	$849,785
Phil Ivey	225 pts	2	4	$340,255
John Brock Parker	220 pts	2	5	$802,514
James Van Alstyne	220 pts	1	3	$519,080
Roland De Wolfe	195 pts	1	5	$410,063
Angel Guillen	180 pts	1	3	$846,238
Pete Vilandos	175 pts	1	2	$1,080,538
Daniel Negreanu	165 pts	0	5	$316,190
Daniel Alaei	165 pts	1	3	$587,102

As we speak, I'm following the live updates on Poker News as Phil Ivey goes for his 3rd bracelet of the series in event 41, the $5000 no-limit hold'em shootout. I didn't know what a shootout event was before this series and for those who don't, you have to win your table to make it through to the next round where you have to do the same thing again. When it gets down to the final few in the tournament they play 6-handed.

Phil Ivey has just been knocked out in 8th place so he will have to wait a while longer for another bracelet. The points will certainly help in the Player of the Year race tho.

Tony "Bond 18" Dunst

Wow, its Saturday and I just realised I haven't posted since last Sunday night! Time to catch up then.

I'm not sure quite how I got there, but I stumbled across online poker phenom Tony "Bond 18" Dunst's blog. If you want to read all about life as a mid 20's pro poker player goes, he'll give you complete backstage access. Poker, sex, drugs and fine tailored suits ... its got it all.

I can't do any of his stories justice so I'd recommend you check it out for yourself here. Funny stuff!!