I sneakily returned home today, leaving Sydney yesterday (or was that the day before?) and flying the 12000 odd miles back with a quick change at Hong Kong. Whatever the exact day I left, I got back at 5am this morning and I feel remarkably “with it” for having just done a 30 hour journey.

I’ve already unpacked my luggage and my stuff is spinning round in the washing machine. I’ve even done a load of shopping (marvelling at how much cheaper groceries are at home) and it looks like I’m even getting a blog done, although I’m afraid it’s just going to be a short update today. Productive or what?

Perhaps all this keenness to get things done stems from my pressing need to do some surgery to my bankroll.  So I suppose the sooner I start….

The expenses inevitably started to take their toll after 11 weeks in Australia so I’ve had to call time on my little adventure.  It is such a wonderful place, but it’s pricey, especially when you’re on the tourist trail all the time and not earning.

“Wages” wise, I hardly played any online because the clocks were the wrong way round and I don’t really like getting up at 6am to play if I can help it.  I also had mates coming over at different times so I wouldn’t play while they were in town and we’d do the tourist bit instead (then I’d repeat the cycle a month later!)

But the biggest shame is my live performances.  I don’t use the word lightly: for someone who writes articles about poker I really do feel ashamed that I failed to beat the game at both the Star Casino and Jupiter’s.  We’re not talking much of a loss – a grand total of $3700 Aussie dollars.  But how could I lose in those games?

I am still scratching my head as to how I’m down. Even with the bad beats, the standard was mediocre enough that they could be overcome.   Numerous times I saw people simply donating their entire stacks in hopeless situations – not even bluffing – yet never once to me. There’s no use moaning though and I’m sure I’ll get another crack at the Star one day.  Not forgetting  the Grand in Melbourne too – Jeez I can’t believe I didn’t get down there. Tut tut.

So it’s bitter sweet really. It really is great to be back – but had I been destroying the games out there as planned I wouldn’t actually be back. But here I am. And it’ll be a surprise for one or two people. I didn’t tell a soul I was coming home, I just did it on the hoof.

So I think I’ll go and knock at my Mum and Dad’s and give them a surprise. The surprise being that I failed to beat the game at the Star. Blimey, I’d better not – they might not let me in the house if I tell them that!

That’s what an exasperated Phill Hellmuth famously bellowed during one of his strops at the World Series of Poker.

It’s a bit of a generalisation though isn’t it? Inferring that half an entire continent are all idiots because they are from the North? You’d never catch me making some rash generalisations about entire countries like that……… for sure (?)

But this week I’ll be asking you to !

I was just wondering who the worst poker players really are. Well, not the real worst -  just who people think are the worst. I’ve played poker in Europe, North America, South America and now Australia and while I am still a loser at live poker since arriving in Australia, you will never convince me that this is because the standard is high. Ever. I’ve just run like a sick dog that’s all.  (I’m not suggesting anything about which way I’ll vote here by the way…..)

Please do leave a comment – I’m all ears for a bit of good old sterotyping ! There’s 13 countries to choose from and as I’m bound to have omitted some country or other which you might have a strong opinion about, feel free to point this out in the comments.

Answer this week’s poll and leave a comment with your Twitter username to be in with a chance of winning a token to my bounty game, where $100 is awarded for knocking me out.

Congratulations to Marcus O’Connor (@DromosEvkola on Twitter) for winning last week’s poll.

Not that it was hard to work out. I said I made quads on a board of 664. And I also said that the turn card was a 4 and that my opponent had 66. So it’s obvious I had 44. But the fact remains I didn’t tell you what my hole cards were. So this is my opportunity to apologise: sorry ‘bout that!  I shall return to this point later.

OK – now that’s out of the way, here’s my latest disaster while playing at the Star Casino.  I’m so disillusioned with live cash games right now that I was only playing $1/2 to pass the time on a rainy day.  Moreover I’d told myself I would play one $200 buy in and no more.

The session was a very enjoyable one because there was a funny bloke incessantly cracking jokes about “Sid” – Sid Vaikunta (great name) is the Star casino’s former CEO who was very publicly fired last week over allegations of sexual harassment. But I digress…

Luck wise the session was business as usual, ie terrible. For instance, I had, in this order:

1 – A9 on a 9-9-8 flop. My opponent had 96 and after slow playing each other, he rivered a six (but bless him, he was very apologetic and I like that sort of etiquette at the table)

2 – A8 on an 8-8-3 flop. The same player won with 76 when it ended up 8-8-3-9-5 – and he actually led out on the flop!

3 – My inspired preflop limp with 52s looked like it had paid dividends when I flopped a double belly straight draw of 846 and the turn was a 3. But the 5 on the river was a bad card and I had to abandon ship on the river (two players had the 7 for a higher straight and one had been hanging around with A7, the doofus)

4 – most annoyingly of all, I had AQ on an A-10-3 flop. I put in a big check raise on the flop and got called by the station wagon, losing to his 10-9 when a 9 appeared on the turn and he twice bet a miniscule amount.

So basically I was doing extremely well to not lose all $200. I was as low as $50 at one point (remember no rebuying) but when this hand cropped up I had $110.

Before I continue I ought to say that we had a new dealer, who in his 15 minutes at the table had nagged various players on about half a dozen occasions for all manner of perceived rule infringements. I have to say that the quality of dealer at the Star is fantastic but this guy was such an irritating little ninny. He was pulling up everyone for borderline “string bets” and even telling players to pull their chip stacks right back against the table rail (a new one on me.)  It’s bad enough when the other players berate total novices who have no comprehension of what they are doing. But it’s even more annoying when you get a fussy dealer making inexperienced players uncomfortable.

But I’ll give him this – he did at least appear interested in the game.  And he was really curious. On one occasion where there was a preflop all in he said to both players

“You can show your cards.”

He was virtually imploring them to show, when of course there is no requirement to do until the cards are dealt (and even then you can muck). So there we were– with this annoying dealer administering his pointless rebukes for precious little reason when this hand came up.

Under the gun I got this pretty little hand that I really wanted to play. I hadn’t seen a flop in a while so I decided to raise to $5. This is a piss pot raise and is obviously worthy of no respect, $12 being the standard under the gun raise in this particular game. But the small raise can act as a “blocker” bet. People often just call behind when it’s raised, even by this small amount, but when you limp you’re just inviting some cowboy in late position to put in a really big raise to around $20 and then you have to fold.  Also, someone had raised to $5 the very hand before, so I thought I’d give it a go.

After making it $5 I was called in two places. Then this bloke (the same wally who called my check raise with 10-9 on the A-10-3 flop), reraised it to a mighty $10.

Now he had done exactly this same thing the hand before with A7. Reraising a pissy $5 raise to $10 with A7 is not great play when you’ve already got callers in front and there’s still action to come behind. But he clearly was a novice and I don’t really think he had a plan as such.

But I did! Knowing he likely had something of the order of A7 I decided to make one of legendary moves that never fails.

His $10 was called by the button and the small blind so there was a bit of a pot brewing here. It was back on me.

“Im all in!” I announced, certain they would all fold. There was $47 already in the pot and with my all in there was now $152. They would have to call a minimum of $100 more and I was happy that none of them had the goods to do that.

“Call” said the player next to act…immediately. Literally within one second.

Whoops!

Turns out he had AK. Impeccable timing as ever!

Station wagon novicey type – the one who makes min raises with A7 then started thinking. And I had a feeling the large pot would tempt him in.  It did. And he had…..wait for it

K-10 offsuit

Then there was a fourth caller too!  He had QJs and justifiably felt the pot was too big by now.

So basically my plan that they would all fold didn’t work

Not only did they not all fold but three of the four actually called. Oh deary me

The dealer spread out a board of A-10-3-7-J. The pot eventually went to the chap with Ace King who won the four way all in with top pair.

The other betting in the hand? Well they all checked the flop. And then AK man bet a goliath $20 on the turn (lol, into a $450 pot!), which they both called. (I was all in of course). They all checked the river.

“Take it mate. Ace King is good” I said to the winner.

At this point everyone’s cards were face up – except mine! And it was me who had started all this nonsense.  Now the reason I hadn’t shown was because I was a little embarrassed about the strength of my hand. I said I had a “pretty hand”, but it wasn’t so pretty you go flashing it about after re-re-raising all in from under the gun.

And then the dealer did something that really annoyed me. He beckoned me to actually turn my cards over!  He motioned with his hands, turning his palms face upwards, telling me to turn my twatting cards over! It was as if he was ordering me to do it. I couldn’t believe it.

Screw you, you nosy prick (I didn’t actually say this to him). I slid them right into the muck. You’ll never know pal, those cards are my little secret.

See, this is why I mentioned the hand from the other week where I failed to tell you what my hole cards were.

Ooops, I just did it again.

happyday

Onto today’s caption then and, keeping it on topic with the Epic poker League and Annie Duke, I really can’t believe I found this pic:

These two hate each other a ridiculous amount and it’s well documented that they’ve hated each other since at least 2002, so quite when this photo was taken I have no idea. Suffice to say the chances of seeing such a picture being taken right now are touching zero. So what could these two happy bunnies be saying do you think?

Please submit your entry to @paddypowerpoker on Twitter

The winner of this week’s competition will as usual receive a token to my Bounty tournament and the chance to take down the $100 on my head as well as the $50 on the head of the guy who knocked me out last week.

Congratulations to @19DCB73 who won last week with ‘Joseph’s trike found, Lloyd Webber to rewrite musical!’

Just 12% of you said that he should only get his $1500 refunded, the general consensus being that he should get to keep the whole $20k because he won it fair and square.  And I agree 100%.

As I mentioned yesterday, this was no hypothetical situation.  Last September Michael DiVita was one of nine qualifiers who won their $20,000 entry through a $1500 satellite. The event was being run by the Epic poker League.

But just before the event started he was taken to one side by the Epic poker League “Standards and Ethics Committee” chairman Stephen Martin and told he would not be taking part. The reason?

Well this is the tiny detail I omitted because it might have changed your opinion on the matter: not to put too fine a point on it, Michael DiVita is a nonce.  (Perhaps I should say “was” a nonce, as his conviction dates back 20 years. Who knows, perhaps he still is, but that’s not the point.)

It got a little heated and when an unhappy DiVita said he wasn’t prepared to accept the $1500 he was allegedly told that “We will stop you…It will get very public, and probably be very embarrassing for you…We will say that you withdrew.” According to DiVita, the security from the Palms Casino, where the event was being held, intimidated him to withdraw and he was left with little choice but to walk.

But he took it further. He complained to the Nevada Gaming Control Board and at the end of January they actually found in his favour. The Palms Casino were told to pay up the outstanding $18,500 to DiVita.

Divita has since done a radio interview where he apparently showed his true colours and did himself no favours at all. But the fact he is an utterly reprehensible character is really not the issue.  The man won his seat and the value of that seat was 20 grand.

I think the Epic Poker League League’s Standards and ethics Committee has really ballsed this one up.

So they discovered he had this record, probably late in the day – fine.  So boot him out, absolutely no problems with that.  It’s their party and the host reserves the right to refuse admission.  And to be honest I probably wouldn’t relish having my blind stolen by some dirty old nonce either.

I can understand that they don’t want him winning the thing and then getting bad publicity. Well just shoo him out the back door quietly with his $20k. That is after all a fair amount.  They must be able to realise this, plus they add $400k in prize money to these events for goodness sakes.

But they decided to take this holier than though approach.

They’ve made such an effort to say “look at us, we’re so dammed ethical.  We’ve got the right to deny this bloke $18,500 because he committed a crime 20 years ago”. I think that after the Chino Rheem incident they felt the need to do something to raise their profile.  But they’ve just shot themselves in the foot.

And who exactly are these jokers anyway?

The Epic Poker League’s Commissioner is none other than the self important Annie Duke. This is a woman who took sponsorship money from Ultimate Bet for years after becoming aware that Director Russ Hamilton had been stealing money from its players. She didn’t think to cut ties with the company or distance herself.

How ethical is that?

So I can’t say I blame Michael DiVita for taking his case to the Board.  No-one can be too happy being chastened by Duke and co about their ethics. It comes to something when they try to take the moral high ground against a convicted sex offender and end up the losers.

Take a bow Annie. And your less than “epic” ethics and standards committee.

A satellite is taking place for a $20,000 tournament. It’s a $1500 satellite and seats will be awarded for every $20k worth of buy ins taking part.

Now imagine that a player enters the $1500 tourney and wins his $20,000 seat. He wins it fair and square but the organisers subsequently wish to disqualify him for reasons completely unrelated to poker.  It is their tournament and their prerogative, so they do so.

The player wants to play the $20k tourney but he is told he must not take part. He insists he should get his money back. The organisers refund him $1500.  The player is not happy with this arrangement.

(You might have realised this isn’t a hypothetical situation at all. I’ll explain more tomorrow if you’re not already aware of the story, but please bear with me if you aren’t)

So this week’s question is simple: should the player be refunded $1500 or $20,000 (or some other amount?)

Answer this week’s poll and leave a comment with your Twitter username to be in with a chance of winning a token to my bounty game.

Congratulations to Chris Harding (@cjharding1wolf on Twitter) for winning last week’s poll.

This is Andrea Dato.  He’s been in form of late.

Last week he came third in the Venice Grand Prix Main Event for a $95,003 payday, hot on the heels of another final table at a WPT event.  Congrats.  This week’s Hand of the Week is about him and it tells you a lot about the man.

When the hand arose the bubble had burst and they were nearing the final table.  According to Poker News Daily:

James Akenhead raised to 8,500 pre-flop and was called by Andrea Dato, Marcel Bjerkmann, and one other player. Upon the Qc-8h-7s flop, the players check to Dato, who bet 15,000. Bjerkmann decided to go with a check-raise to 44,000, forcing the other two players to fold before Dato called. The dealer laid out the 8d on the turn, prompting a 64,000 chip bet from Bjerkmann and another call by Dato. Bjerkmann again led out on the river for 82,000 when the 4h was dealt. Dato proceeded to ponder his move for two full minutes before calling.

So what could Dato have here? To take two minutes you’d be pretty sure that it was a marginal decision.

And what could Bjerkmann have? He’s check-raised the flop in a four-way pot and bet both the turn and the river. The third-of-the-pot river bet seems like he wants to be called.  Could it be something really strong like a flopped set, or two pair that turned into a full house?

Well no. When Dato called Bjerkmann was forced to turn over his stone bluff – the 9c 5c. Unlucky!

And as for Dato….?  Well he had pocket sevens for a full house.

A full house ! Literally only three hands were beating him here and he was getting 4-1 odds on the river for the 82k call.  Pocket queens or pocket 8s, or a less likely Q8. That is all that he can lose to.

Bjerkmann was predictably furious and let it be known. “That is the sickest slow roll I have ever had in my life. Do not talk to me dude. If you see me in the street do not talk to me.”

Can you blame him?

So take another look at Andrea Dato and remember the face. It is the face of a twisted sadist. Your grannie might have told you never to trust a man with a beard and she’d be right when the man with the beard had a name like Andrea Dato.  Wrongun.

In this picture he is probably plotting how to seduce your missus the minute you go to the bog after telling you what a great bloke you are. Or guessing how much ransom you would pay when he kidnaps your pet cat after asking what date you go on your holiday.  Something like that for sure.

I wouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised if he collected his $95,003 winnings and announced to the floor staff he was leaving a big tip, before counting out each note of his $95,003 and leaving the spare three dollars, cackling loudly to himself as it dawned on the staff that he was not joking. And after that he’d probably get a taxi home, take a sly piss all over the back seat and do a runner. Because that’s his style.

redknapp

Asked what he thought about being linked with the England manager’s job Harry answered ‘I haven’t thought about the England job’ – truthfully no doubt, although he was speaking to a journalist at the time so we can’t be certain. Rumours that SKY plan to dress their journalists as policemen before asking Harry questions in future have not been confirmed.

And who would have believed that Capello, no stranger to tax “issues” himself, would also walk on the same day! Sacrificing himself for John Terry, no less (whose ego will be probably EVEN BIGGER as a result, if that is possible). But the piss poor curly English “speaker” is clearly not as stupid as he looks. He could either:

a) stay and get pilloried when his shower of overpaid deadbeats fail miserably in the Euros, or

b) piss off now and let someone else get pilloried when his shower of deadbeats fail miserably in the Euros, forfeiting four months pay at worst.

So I reckon Capello wins here and if I hear David Bernstein pompously banging on about “leadership” one more time I shall kill everyone in the whole world, leaving him with nobody to “lead”. Let’s see how much leadership he shows when Harry and England bomb out in the first round shall we?

Anyway, onto this week’s caption competition, and it’s a case of “now for something completely different”. I saw the most random thing in a high street in Adelaide the other day, in thirty degree heat. This!

Anyone who can come up with a caption for this deserves a magnificent prize. But you can have a token to my Bounty competition tournament instead. Good luck!

Please submit your entry to @paddypowerpoker on Twitter

Congratulations to @theblackrose84 on winning last week’s competition with ‘harry as polite to the press as his dog is rich in an offshore account’.

So I thought I’d put the feelers out to see if anyone agreed with me. Confidence in numbers and all that. (Once we take the three points off Chelsea you’ll see I was right!)

This week’s question is simply: “which team will be playing Champions League football next year?” (betting odds for each contender in brackets).  Answer this week’s poll and leave a comment with your Twitter username to be in with a chance of winning a token to my bounty game.

Congratulations to @pauldoc9 for winning last week’s poll.

Anyway, onto the hand where I busted!

I’d been pretty quiet at the table and there was a raise and call in front of me. I think I was in the cut off and three-bet to 2,200 (I had 26k-ish and starting was 30k). A young American from the blinds four-bet to around 5,600.

He was extremely active at the table and had more or less doubled his starting stack in the early levels only to see himself back to nearly at starting stack again at the start of this fourth level.

The older American pro on my right told me he’d bust by level three or double up.  I kind of felt pretty comfortable he wasn’t that strong and I moved in eventually after 25 seconds. He immediately says something like, “ “God knew this was going to happen etc… etc…”

He eventually finds the call with A-Q and has me crushed and holds. Kind of felt pretty I’ll for a little bit goin’ out with K-Q pretty early in the 10k main event but I didn’t think I did much wrong.

I didn’t think he was strong and went with the hand. I also thought he’d fold a huge amount of hands here. I’d been playing pretty tight. But did i miss something??

I never really thought about how he was feeling emotionally. You could tell he was on high tilt if you looked at him. I didn’t really factor that in very much until my chips were all the middle and I was looking over at him thinking how light is he going to call me? ughhhh maybe pretty light !!!

Still though I think I might play the same way if the exact situation happened again if I don’t feel he has a very big hand.

Hi/Lo hoo-haa
Hi/lo pot-limit Omaha isn’t a game I play a huge amount of but I kind of like it. I hopped onto two tables of what I thought was PLO on a site I hadn’t played in years. After 15 minutes I found out it was actually hi/lo when having to chop a pot up with another opponent who had a low and I had the high.

I had played a pretty marginal PLO hand but it was a horrendous hi/lo hand and I got my stack happily to the centre when I should have been folding at all points in the hand. I made a worse decision after the hand though.

I wrote in chat “lol were playing hi/lo. I thought it was plo”. I noticed that few of the players topped up there stacks to the maximum amount possible. They must of been thinking Christmas is back already!!

My plo game is pretty tight but my Hi/lo game is disgustingly tighter so they deffo weren’t getting any good action off me. Imagine I hadn’t said anything in chat? I would have got some action for the next hour. I dropped that table eventually and stayed on the other one where there was one player playing pretty bad.

He wasn’t in my other game when he suddenly pops up on chat after 40 mins since I’d been at the table and says “WTF THIS HI/LO”.

I was laughing pretty hard and told him I had just said the same thing 30 minutes before that on the other table. Not sure how much he was in good humour as I think he might have lost a few grand.

I walked away being a 500 loser which was OK considering everything. There hasn’t been any hi/lo since that night (what a surprise!) but i think this site and maybe a few others need to make a bigger effort at distinguishing hi/lo tables when you’re mixing them with the Omaha high tables. I have seen this situation happen quite a lot over the years.

Ruling – Sit out
I wanted to write about an interesting ruling that happened in the Melbourne but I think I’ve written enough for one blog so I’ll bring it up next time.

Back to Ireland on Saturday night. I’ve had an enjoyable trip. It’s always great to get away from Ireland for a while during the winter and I’ve come home a small winner from the trip due to running OK in the cash games.

I lost something small on the tennis. Went heavy on Murray in the semi’s after feeling Djokovic wasnt fully 100%. Murray has definitely cost me money overall but I wont give up on him yet!