JoeyDel

Joey Del On Stale Patches, Goal Setting And Dolphins!!!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:31:33 GMT

Hey!

How is everyone going? If you are reading this from the Southern Hemisphere I imagine all is going pretty well as it is now for the first time in months starting to get that little bit warmer! The warmer weather however brings with it all sorts of temptations of outdoor activities. Things like going to the beach, exercising (shudder) and late nights spent in beer gardens (now we’re talking!) which can keep you from the poker table. The question however, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I wanted to write some thoughts on this topic each week. I get a few newer players who ask me for advice in many different situations and something that I have seen coming up more and more of late is the fact that they are not putting anywhere near as much time playing poker as they had hoped.

This is a situation that you need to look at in a couple of different ways. First of all is it a bad thing?

If poker is not your sole source of income or you play as a hobby than I would suggest to you that this is not a problem. Poker is meant to be fun and not a chore. If the mere thought of sitting down on the computer to log in a few hours of play is tearing your will to live away from you then I would suggest that you are probably not going to play that well anyway so you could be doing yourself more harm than good by actually playing.

A great example of this is to make sure that you actually are able to play poker for the next five hours before you start a tournament on Party Poker or one of the other sites.. I see so many people who will see a tournament starting and quickly log on to start playing. They then realise that they need to leave the house in an hour and a half or that they just can’t be bothered playing. You are literally just throwing away the buy in money every time you do this!

So whilst it is relatively easy for social and hobby players to take time off some people are relying on poker for an income stream and in many cases it is their sole source of income. So in these situations it is not so simple.

It is still true that players in these positions will often do themselves more harm than good when they play when their mind is not interested if you need to play poker to make money you still need to play. I think it is this mental discipline that separates the good poker players from the professional poker players. I think many people are excellent at playing the actual game of poker but to play every single day without ever faltering (well at least only minimal faltering) takes the kind of mental stability which is basically unheard of for your average man.

So like I said this whole topic came up because a player who I talk to a bit was telling me that he was really struggling to stay motivated with his poker and was finding it difficult to put any real hours together. He would find that he would sit down, play for half an hour and then start to go on tilt for no apparent reason.

This is a very difficult situation to be in but one that we all go through from time to time. I offered him some advice that generally works for me. When I am in this kind of situation I feel I need to treat myself like a puppy dog or a dolphin or some other form of stupid animal that gets rewarded for completing little tasks. I use this to set myself goals. Let’s look at our current friend’s example where he can’t play for more than half an hour at a time. One of the main reasons I think this happens to people is because when they sit down to play poker they have no real end in sight. They just start playing when they feel like it and stop when they feel like it. I personally can’t work like that. When I start playing I need to know when I will finish, I need an end goal in sight.

So I said to my friend that if this is an ongoing problem you should try to set yourself an achievable goal and reach it. If you are finding you can’t play for more than 30 minutes without going on tilt then set yourself something close to that that you can reach and feel good about. For example try and play for 45 minutes, once you reach 45 minutes sit out of all the tables and take a break.

It may seem silly to only play for such a small period but the whole point of the exercise is to have a little personal win. Instead of constantly leaving the computer in a disappointed and frustrated state of mind you will be happy as you set yourself a task and achieved it.

This will make you want to play more sessions as you will think ‘oh well it is only 45 minutes’ and you will start to play more. After a few days of this you can up the sessions to one hour and by taking small steps you will find yourself playing more and more in no time what so ever!

This may work for you and it may not. If you find you need something else feel free to ask me or any of the other great poker players who frequent the PokerNetwork Forums!

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Joey Del On The Poker Star Contestants!!!

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:14:00 GMT

It had to happen eventually. Poker has hit the reality television circuit. Full Tilt is hosting their ‘Australian Poker Hero’ show in the near future but PokerStars has gotten the ball rolling with their Joe Hachem inspired reality series ‘The Poker Star’ which is currently airing on ONE HD. This has become the topic of choice in certain poker circles so I thought I would use this week’s edition to share some of my thoughts on the show.

I was sceptical about this show initially and had no desire to watch it however a good friend of mine, Donna, is on the show so I gave it a go, partly because I am a good friend and partly because she is hot and the more time one can spend watching her without being labelled a ‘stalker’ the better.

I can’t believe I am saying this but I love it! Some poker aficionados dislike it as some of the players are average at best. However I think this is what makes it great. This is more a reality TV show than it is a poker show. It is targeted at the general public not the poker tragic. Till this point I think it has been done really well. I just finished episode two in which the task was for the contestants to remain focussed and follow a set of instructions whilst swimming through shark infested waters. One of the girls (Amanda, there will be comments later) was petrified of water and was effected by the whole ordeal. They made her go last so they could maintain maximum viewing time on her distress and when the time came for her to actually complete the task it became pretty emotional. All in all I would say it was great television.

Below are my thoughts on the contestants of the show. It is only episode two and these can and probably will change as the season continues. I just thought they could be interesting discussion points.

Tom
Tom was evicted first so there isn’t much to say. He runs a bar in St.Kilda and seemed like a nice, funny guy. He has an awesome beard and all I could think of was the guy from ‘The Hangover’ movie. This probably added to his comedic value. As he is evicted he obviously has no chance of winning.

Shane
Wow... From his sad little ear ring to his belt buckle that says ‘all in’ this guy was born to put everyone on tilt starting from the doctor that delivered him at birth to the coroner that will finally put an end to it all. The guy has to either be the biggest moron in the history of the earth or he is the smartest guy ever. Is he a loser or is he tricking everyone? Time will tell but for now I am suggesting that it is legit and that he has zero chance of winning this thing.

Sally
Sally falls into a grey area for me as I am biased. I have played against Sally before and I have lost numerous pay cheques to the bookmaking business she is associated with. I regard Sally as a solid poker player but she has shown nothing in the first two episodes to suggest that. However she is cute as all hell and this is television. Besides that Joe seems to hold a soft spot for her. This should buy her enough time to get her game back on track and play the type of poker I think she is able too. If she can do that I think she could make a deep run in this tournament.

Ron
This guy is a deadest champion! He is sixty years old and beat cancer last year. I know another poker player who went on to beat cancer. His name was Paren “Puzz” Arzoomanian and he went on to win the Sydney ANZPT event shortly afterwards. Maybe Ron holds the same fate. He has a pretty decent game for an old guy who hasn’t been playing for that long. He isn’t afraid to be aggressive. I hope he goes well and when he is eventually eliminated I hope he tells me which one is his local RSL because he seems like the kind of guy that you would like to sit down and have a drink with.

Martin
The second evicted. A fire fighter by day and a loving father by night is the impression that we were given of Martin. He seemed like a decent bloke although we didn’t see a lot of him. He made one ridiculous call when play was 9 handed. After a raise and then a re-raise all in over the top he called with . This was more than enough for Hachem who sent Martin home.

Katie
She apparently plays full time however we haven’t seen anything to suggest that is possible at the moment. The few plays we have seen her make have been marginal at best. However life isn’t all about poker and she seems to be a very lovely, caring, kind girl. She is also cute but does have one of those annoying overly Australian accents. I am quite happy to stand corrected when I see more of her play but I am afraid that her eviction may be imminent.

Josh
Josh is a young lawyer type of guy and looks about as slimy as you would expect him to look. His long hair may have finally been what I needed to encourage me to get a haircut as it is vomit inducing. He seems to understand how to play poker at a decent level but I don’t think he has the personality or the poster boy looks to make it all the way to being ‘The Poker Star’. He should go far though.

Donna

As I have already mentioned Donna is a good friend of mine so it is impossible not to hold bias. I have played a bit with Donna and she can play tournament poker. She is not the best ever player but she is the kind of girl who will sit down and listen to advice that is given to her. So with the tutelage of poker stalwarts such as Joe Hachem and Lee Nelson there to help this will help her game regardless of where she finishes. She is beautiful, well spoken and a polite person so she could go all the way. I wouldn’t say she is my number one pick but I am still cheering for her!

Chris

This is my number one pick. I don’t know much about him as a poker player but as a marketing tool he is great for the show. He is young, good looking, well spoken and seems like a genuinely nice guy. For the reality television tragic out there he is reminiscent of ‘Ben’ who won the first series of Big Brother. He sat in the back, you heard nothing of him and then BANG! Winner! I just see this guy on all the posters for season two of this show so I am picking him.

Ben

Uggh...I am shuddering as I think of this guy. I pride myself on being a sexist sleaze. But this guy is a joke. He is downright creepy and disgusting. You know the old guy who buys a sports car and cruises around thinking that he is still 18? That’s Ben. When he talks to the girls on the show he makes me feel like I am a piece of meat! He seems to know how to play poker though and I think he will hang around until the last couple of weeks.

Amanda
I know Amanda, not well. But I have played against her at Crown and I recognise her. However I have never known anything about her. By watching the show I have found out that she is a single mum and has two kids. This was news to me and it certainly helps to paint a picture of the poker room. Everyone at the table seems the same but everyone has their own lives and their own things that are driving them to want to be the best. The thing in episode two with her and being afraid of water brought me very close to tears (This isn’t massive I cry in about every second movie I watch). It has been nice to see the whole picture of who Amanda is and I hope she goes far.

So there you have it. My look at The Poker Star and the contestants, I am usually wrong with most things in life so I imagine the opposite of what I predicted for everyone to be true. I guess we will wait and see...

Have a great week and best of luck in whatever it is you do!

Joey Del

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Joey Del On Poker Majors, Chinese Idol And Domestic Violence!!!

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:13:32 GMT

It seemed like any normal Sunday.

I had the plan all mapped out perfectly. I was going to get a good night's sleep and get up early on Monday morning for my assault on the Sunday Majors. The PokerStars Sunday Million, the Full Tilt 750k guarantee and any other majors I could click on in time. I was going to play them all. Maybe this would be my day. Maybe I would break through and be the one that everyone sweated on the forums.

I went to bed early trying to get the rest required for a 15-hour poker session and then it started. The girl next door started singing. Now we have spoken in the past in these articles about the neighbours on one side of me. Trev, the champion kiwi guy who alerted me to the fact that my first ever tenant in my housing career had turned my apartment into a brothel. But we have never had the opportunity to discuss the people on the other side.

They seem normal enough, a young Asian couple who pretty much keep to themselves. I very rarely see them as they don’t seem to use their balcony at all and it is not like I leave my apartment often enough to see anyone out the front. One thing I will say, is that the girl is an absolute freak of nature. I thought that I kept long hours but it doesn’t matter what time, day or night, I go out onto my balcony she is sitting there inside on the computer (yes ok I am a peeping tom, sue me, but it isn’t my fault, she is kinda cute). Her other love of life apart from being on the computer is singing. It is not unusual for her at any hour of the day to start singing some Chinese song at the top of her lungs along to some loud thumping music. This is exactly what she decided to start doing as I was going to sleep which was a little bit tilting, but she does have a nice voice so it wasn’t the end of the world. I just treated it as if I was going to sleep with the radio on for some background music and I left it at that. I mean it is a little annoying but what can you do?

Well, apparently I wasn’t the only person who thought it was annoying. At that moment her partner must have just gotten home and apparently he thinks the late night singing training is about as enjoyable as sitting on a spiky grenade because he then started screaming louder than anyone I have ever heard in my life in Chinese. Now my knowledge of the Chinese language is minimal at best but I can only assume that what he said translated to, “Why are you always doing this, you didn’t make Chinese Idol, you tried and you failed, you just don’t have what it takes, you are useless, you are nothing, you are less than nothing, in fact, you are less than the crap that nothing scrapes off its shoe!” She then replied with an equally aggressive response which again I am only guessing but would have been something like, “What do you know? I have what it takes, I have a beautiful voice, I am going to be a star! You just wait and see! I know you are only jealous of me because you never made it to the Chinese ping pong team. You are the loser in this relationship, I don’t know why I am even talking to you, I should be off getting all cosy with that chubby white guy from next door who always peers through the window”.

Now this went on and on for a while and the whole situation was too loud as well as too exciting for me to get to sleep. I remained lying in my bed, half trying to sleep and half trying to follow the conversation (which was obviously impossible). They kept yelling at each other for what must have been a good hour. There were tears and it was fantastic! Then things started to escalate a little.

I wasn’t 100% sure when I heard the first one, but the next six or seven confirmed for me that there were glasses and plates being smashed. Now I am pretty sure the Greeks are the only people bizarre enough to celebrate a marriage by smashing fine China so I could only assume that these breakages next door were not happening out of love. It got pretty intense with breakage after breakage getting louder and louder. Keep in mind these people never leave their house and I have never seen them have any guests over, so it got to the point when the shock and awe left my system and I became amazed at how many different things they had to break. I looked in my cupboard the next day and I noticed I have two plates, two bowls, two glasses and two mugs. If my girlfriend and I were to have the same kind of fight it would last all of about three minutes and then we would have run out of stuff to break. I must admit that I was impressed by their collection.

This kept going, the screaming continued and the fighting got worse. I could hear frantic footsteps running around the apartment - another amazing point. Our apartments are identical (I am a peeping tom remember) and I just measured whilst writing this and I can get about five steps in either direction before I hit a wall. The agility that they showed to be able to scream, break plates, dodge incoming plates and run around the room without being hit I think was truly remarkable.

Anyway this died down at around 4am. Just a couple of hours before I was set to get up for my assault on the Sunday Majors. I sighed, turned off my alarm and finally went to sleep. My shot at the big time would have to wait until next week.

Have a great week and good luck in whatever it is you do.

- Joey Del

*No Asian neighbours were harmed in the making of this article

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Joey Del On Exercise, Pilates And Poker Clarity!!!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:45:04 GMT

You may remember how a few months ago I mentioned in these articles that I was going to start exercising in a desperate attempt to be one of those healthy, fit, well toned, glamorous people that I often see frolicking around in the sun, playing in the sand, having the time of their life as I fire hate at them from the safe dark shady spot on the other side of the beach.

As you may or may not have guessed this exercise regime lasted for about 13 minutes. I started off on a half an hour walk (you need to ease yourself into these things) and walked past a McDonalds. I noticed that I was lucky enough to be there as the breakfast menu was still in full flight. This is not something that I am often lucky enough to experience so I dove in and started to feast. Two Sausage and Egg Mc Muffins, three coffees, four hash browns and about eighty six cigarettes later my exercise regime was nothing but a distant memory.

That was a few months ago but I actually received some news a few days ago that has made me get back on the exercise bandwagon (surely this statement makes no sense, if you were exercising why would you need a bandwagon, you would just run?). I am not at liberty to share the news with you at the moment but as soon as I can I will make it known to all.

This time I am four days into my fitness plan and I haven’t died yet which makes me feel pretty confident that I may actually be able to do stick with the health kick this time. I have to tell you though. There has been one specific difference that I have noticed which was not expected but is very welcome and that is the benefit this is giving me with my poker play.

Back when I was a fat, lazy sloth (last week). I would basically stay up until I fell asleep, roll out of bed and start playing poker. Now I am going to sleep at a (relatively) civilised time, getting a good night’s sleep and on some occasions even exercising in the morning before I play! I have always heard people say things like ‘Healthy mind Healthy body’ and other such nonsense which I always assumed was just a trick to make us get fit, but it is actually true. The mental clarity I have felt this week whilst playing poker has been something I have not really ever experienced. I feel like I am playing better and am making more correct decisions than I ever thought was possible.

This has been greeted with a fantastic 12 buy in upswing this week on the poker tables. I am sure that this is more credited to run good than it is to being more alert but I am sure the fact that my blood is moving around my body can’t be hurting. We will see what happens.

My secret with exercising has been trying to make it a lot more fun. I am not fit or buffed, so my strategy has been to do entertaining workouts. So when my girlfriend suggested that we take a Pilates class...she was surprised when I eagerly said yes as she has known me for long enough to know that Pilates probably isn’t my thing. She of course was right, Pilates isn’t my thing. It sounds about as stupid and relevant as Yoga I just thought it would be kind of fun to be one of those hippie kind of guys who was really in touch with their spiritual core and besides I assumed that there would be like a billion hot chicks in the group and me, so it seemed to make more sense than doing weights with all the really big tough musclier guys!

Well as I said I did Pilates as I assumed it would be a total joke and hilarious and let me tell you it took me about 4 minutes to realise that wasn’t going to be the case. It started as plan, the class consisted of my and about 18 hot girls that were all size 8’s at best but when we actually started getting down to it... It was not fun. I don’t know if you have ever done Pilates or know anything about it. Maybe you are like me and have just been mocking it your whole life and if you have been STOP!!! This is seriously a lot harder than it looks! Before I knew it I was crying like a little school girl in all sorts or pain. I have a new found respect for people out there who do Pilates, Yoga or any of the other ‘hippie’ exercises.

Well that is it for now, will this exercise kick keep going or will it die out and allow me to go back to my once loved cheeseburger and kebab lifestyle? One thing is certain that I will cop a cavalcade of abuse on the PokerNetwork Forums as soon as word of me doing Pilates becomes public knowledge!
Have a great week and best of luck in whatever it is you do!

Joey Del.

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Joey Del On The Sydney Championships, Toothpicks And Three Outers!!

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:56:00 GMT

Well today is Friday, the Sydney Poker Championships at Star City Casino are about to get down to the business end of proceedings and unfortunately all of my tournament play is done for the week.

I played in three tournaments, the “Toothpick Tony Deep Stack Event”, the “Grant Levy Bounty Event” and the Sydney Championships Main Event. For this article I am going to run through these three tournaments and offer my thoughts on them.

I thought it was quite a good marketing incentive by Star City to name these events after prominent Sydney poker players. It certainly did add an element of fun to the whole thing. The first event was named after Toothpick Tony. No, this is not his real name, but he is Greek so I am not even going to bother having a go at spelling his real name. Toothpick has been playing poker around Sydney long before cards were even invented. He has had some decent tournament results but this has nothing to do with his fame. Nobody in the history of the world has ever seen Tony without a toothpick in his mouth it is always there, all the time. He is your classical older European gentleman. He walks around all the time with a nonchalant air of authority. He is a man of few words and the few words that he speaks are not in English, nor are they in Greek, more a merger of the two languages that he has put together, let’s call it Engleek? Whenever you go to a poker tournament regardless of what part of Australia it is in Tony is the first person that you see. In my opinion a man who certainly deserves to have a poker tournament named after him.

With the above being said I thought it was quite a nice surprise to see a toothpick sitting on top of everyone’s starting stack at the commencement of play. This gave us mere everyday folk the opportunity to see what it was like to be the great man as we all sat there chewing on our toothpicks during play. I have to tell you that it worked! I played close to the best I have ever played for about 7 hours of this tournament and had built up quite a nice stack. I would eventually lose half of my stack in a race and then the rest of it by making probably the stupidest call I have ever made in all of my poker playing days. The call was in hindsight so embarrassing I am not even going to write about it out of fear of being banished from all poker mediums for the history of my pathetic existence. This is by far one of the cruellest things of tournament poker, how you can play so well for so long and do one stupid thing and it is all over. I was not too concerned though, I thought I had played well and if I could carry this form over to the next two tournaments I was playing in then this could be a good week.

The next event I played was the “Grant Levy Bounty Event” and it seems I was unable to carry on the above mentioned form. I would say I was card dead but I only lasted in the tournament for 2 hours which is probably not long enough to comment either way. Firstly for those of you who don’t know Grant Levy or ‘grunter’ is a well know Aussie Poker Player, he came to fame when he won the final of the PokerStars.net 2007 APPT picking up a cool million dollars for his effort. This was no fluke win though; Levy has been tearing up both the live and online circuits ever since then. He is a regular in the PokerNetwork Forums and is always reliable for some sound hand advice or a quick joke whenever you need it.

Like I said this tournament was not a good one for me. It all came to an end when in a 4 way limped pot I happily checked my option from the big blind with and saw an flop. So far so good right? The action is on me and how do I approach? It was limped preflop so I don’t think I want to check and risk it being checked around on such a draw heavy board. I want money from people drawing and I want it now. I led out for 425 chips (600 in the pot) and it folded around to the gentleman on the button. He re raised to 1200. Yes he can have hands that beat me but there are so many things in his range there that limp from the button and then raise a flop bet that I am a long way in front off so I wasted very little time in moving my approximately 3500 chips left in the middle. He called and tabled and I started shaking the other players hands. I had played on the same table as the guy that busted me out only a month before hand at the Victorian Poker Championships and he seems like a nice, genuine guy so if my $200 bounty had to go to someone I am glad it was him.

This leaves us only with the main event as my final chance of redemption. The tournament had a great structure and I was ready to sink my teeth into it. Well yeah this went well for me. I nearly made it to the second break but yeah that didn’t happen. Things started off quite well I had built my 20k starting stack up to around 25k. The table was your standard live tournament table. Some very solid players (including highly regarded online pro Daniel Kochan seated two to my left) and some live players who ranged from tight solid players to the “I need to see every flop so I can decide if I have a good hand” kind of players. The second type of player was the one who was last seen carrying my chips. Now I very rarely have anything bad to say about anyone and I am sure this guy is a great guy but he seemed to be about as competent at poker as I am at ballet. His modus operandi was to limp preflop every hand and to call all raises so as to see a flop. He then quite enjoyed donk betting into the raiser if he hit any part of the board and check folding when he missed.

So the blinds are 75/150 my friend limps from middle position the action is on me in the hijack and I raise to 575 with . Our friend beats me into the pot with his call and we take on a flop. Our friend immediately bets out a little over pot. Ok, I have top pair which is about 600km in front of this guys range. There is no need to raise and get rid of him I assume he has some kind of a week ace, maybe a king? I will call and see how much more money he wants to give me.

The turn comes the and he again bets out for a little bit more than pot. I am now more confident that our friend has a weak ace as I think he would have residing to checking his king. Once again I call.

The river is the and he bets pot once more. This is an interesting card for me. There are definitely things that he can have that beat me. Did he somehow luckbox a back door flush? His weak ace could have been A-5, A-8, A-9. Could he be completely sick and holding 6-7? I still thought there were more hands that I was beating then I was losing to and He had already shown down 3 bluffs in 3 hours of play. So I called. He tabled {ax}{9x} and was pleased as punch about it. I congratulated him on such a well played hand and folded my now three outered second best hand.

My tournament ended about 20 minutes later when I put my remaining 13bb stack with and was called by my afore mentioned friend with . That was the end of that. I didn’t find any of the results I was looking for but so is the nature of tournaments so what can you do?

Wait till the next one I guess

Have a great week and good luck in whatever it is you choose to do!

JoeyDel

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Joey Del On Star City, Red Eyes And Neil Diamond CD's!!!

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 05:00:53 GMT

In these articles I have often spoken about having to travel down to Melbourne for poker tournaments. A lot of Australia’s premier poker events are held down in Melbourne and when you look at the class and quality of the Crown Casino Poker Room it is little wonder why. They have long since been the shining beacon at the top of the Australian Poker Room list however a change of management and a new found focus has seen Sydney’s Star City Poker Room catching up at an alarming rate.

First Sydney held the APPT Grand Final, one of the biggest events on the Asian poker calendar this was followed by a leg of the ANZPT a tour of tournaments exclusively set in Australia and New Zealand. The success of these tournaments in Sydney has been unquestionable. The Poker Room is bigger than ever, the staff is friendly and helpful and literally millions of dollars have been poured into the poker room to bring it up to par with the rest of the world. However there has been one thing missing.

There has not been a truly Sydney event for quite some time. The two events mentioned above are both part of larger tours and although Star City host some fantastic weekly tournaments for local Sydney players there has been nothing head turning that Sydney could call their own. Until now, the inaugural running of the “Big Game Poker Sydney Champs” kicks off this Monday night (Sydney time) and the Sydney poker community is excited. The Sydney Champs are run in the theme of the Melbourne Champs were the main event has a buy in of $1650, the kind of amount that sits just below your standard 3-5k buy in but is enough to build up a sizeable prize pool. It is going to be an action packed week of poker. With three lead up events ($550 deep stack event, $770 PLO event and $1100 Bounty event) as well as the PokerNews Magazine high rollers tournament!

Usually when I want to go and play in larger scale tournaments a fortnight of living out of a suitcase is what is needed so I am more than happy to see Star City “Up the ante” on tournament poker and give us poker lovers living here in the Harbour city the chance to play a bit more on home soil. Staying in a hotel is a funny thing, some people love it and some people hate it. Staying alone in a hotel can be quite boring but at least you get to focus on the tournament that you are there to play. However the opposite is true for sharing with friends. Living with friends for a few days in a different city can only mean one thing, good times, the party basically never stops when you are with a group of your mates. It is not however, the best environment for playing marathon 4 day poker tournaments. You learn very quickly that you and your friends have different body clocks. You will say right, I have a big day tomorrow so I am going to try and get a good night’s sleep tonight, this plan all seems relatively simple until your friends decide that a case of beer and a night High Stakes Chinese Poker is what is needed. You are lying there in bed by yourself trying to do the right thing, you can hear the laughter and yelling coming from the other room and you realise that this is never going to happen. You tell yourself “If you can’t beat them, join them” and get up to drink and gamble the night away. This is why so many poker players have red eyes and heavy heads when you see them on the table of a poker tournament, they are not deep in concentration, they’re just wasted from the night before.
However the home town tournament is not without its own set of problems. I am lucky living only ten minutes away from Star City so it is quite easy to focus my day around the poker tournament. However one thing that you realise about playing poker in another city that is fantastic but you only recognise when you play at home is that when you are away, everyone around you is all concentrating on poker. Nothing else exists. When you are at home you are surrounded by a whole group of people that couldn’t care less about your poker tournament. It will be an hour before the event you will be getting yourself mentally prepared and the phone will ring. “Joseph, it is your mother, I need you, come here, it is urgent!” What could it be? I put everything on hold and start rushing over towards her. I get there and as soon as I walk in the door I can see something is bothering her. Messy hair, bags under her eyes...Oh My God, is it something serious. “Joseph, I need your help, I can’t find my Neil Diamond CD anywhere! Help me look for it!” That’s it? You called me all the way over here to help you find a Neil Diamond CD?!?!

This as well as other distractions from those who supposedly love you including “Can you pick up the milk”, “I booked us in to look at the apartment at 2pm” and “The Robertson’s are coming over for dinner at 7...you better be here” are what happens when you are at home. People seem to go out of their way to ruin your chances of victory and inadvertently your life!

Anyway it is great to see some more first class poker being played in Sydney. I will be back next week to give you all the low down from the tournament floor.

Have a great week and good luck in whatever it is you do (especially if you are a Collingwood player trying to upset St.Kilda this weekend!)

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Joey Del On Stripping Down And Watching Videos!!

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:24:56 GMT

Hello to everyone out there in internet land!

As you may or may not be aware I have been playing some cash games of late to add some consistency to my cash flow. The variance of tournaments means that you can go for a serious amount of tournaments without having a cash, sadly, I need to eat on almost a daily basis so I needed to play some cash games as well to try and keep up my ‘healthy’ eating pattern, after all Big Mac’s get expensive. The cash games have all been going quite well except for the last couple of weeks where I have stumbled upon a bit of a downswing.

Downswings are as annoying as they are inevitable; however there is one part about them in particular that I would like to discuss. I don’t know how you guys feel but when I have a bad run thousands upon thousands of hands I look at my game a lot more and start to try and answer a very difficult question. “Am I actually running bad or am I playing bad?” I find this to be a very difficult question and I think that in most downswings that you experience as a player, both are true. To answer it I start to analyse every portion of my game a lot more. Am I continuation betting in some bad spots? Am I opening with too wide a range from early positions? Am I missing some precious value bet opportunities due to playing out of fear as I am running bad?

All of these questions keep popping up in my head and I find myself sub consciously changing small parts of my game until eventually I am playing so different to my standard strategy I am not even sure what is right and what is wrong anymore. This is the situation that I found myself in a couple of days ago. My results graph was dropping down quicker than the stock market during the height of the “GFC” and I was really confused about what I was doing wrong to affect that. So I did the only thing that I thought I could do to make the situation right... I decided to strip down.

Now ladies, calm down! I am not about to put on ‘the gun show’ for you. I am not even going to strip down to my favourite g-string, when I say strip down I mean my poker game. Every time I am going bad and am confused about what I am doing wrong I strip my poker game back to the absolute basics. I play ABC poker for a few thousand hands. Really nitty TAG kind of stuff. Once I am comfortable with this I then try to start adding in extra components one at a time, still just basic things like increasing my steal range and maybe 3 betting against lose players with a wider range.

I find this time in the game to be of a real importance as I add one thing and monitor it for a while to make sure that I am 100% happy with what I am doing. When I am happy with what I am doing I will look at adding something else. If I add something and it doesn’t seem to be working this is a good thing as I know exactly what this thing is and I can look at it subjectively and decide what needs to be modified to increase my win rate.

Even though this takes time I think it is an important part of playing poker and something that is worth doing every now and then when things are bad. It really helps you to look at your game and to make sure that what you are doing is relevant in the current climate. Poker changes so much and changes so quickly if you are consistently doing the same thing you are not staying at the same level, you are falling behind.

I am in quite a fortunate situation as I have a good group of friends who are all proficient poker players and are more than happy to offer advice on specific hands or on game theory as a whole. Having discussions with other poker players regardless of their skill level is such a great way to look at the game from different angles. Being involved in discussions with poker players through online chat or on poker forums is vital to becoming a long term profitable player.

It doesn’t matter how long you have been playing or how many hands you have played. You can always improve and you can always get better. Keep reading articles (the strategy ones, not the dribble that I post), Keep watching videos (again the poker ones, not the amateur porn that I may or may not have flooded the internet with) and keep evolving as a poker player. This is something that I have been working on of late and I am happy to report that my results graph now finally resembles a bull market again instead of a bear one.

Anyway that is enough mindless dribble from me for one week. Best of luck with whatever it is you choose to do. I hope that your cards hold up, your sports bets get there and that you get a free round of drinks where ever you end up over the weekend.

Speak soon

JoeyDel

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Joey Del On The Victorian Poker Championships, Coffee Flavoured Phones And Being Counterfeited!!

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:18:56 GMT

Hey guys,

I am back in downtown Sydney, now the fact that I am actually writing this blog at the moment should tell you that I didn’t win the $190,000 first prize on offer in the Victorian Poker Championships down at Crown Casino. Don’t get me wrong I love writing these and talking to you guys but if I was a couple of hundred thousand dollars richer I am pretty sure I would disappear for a while.

So the trip was interesting, the tournament itself was eventful. I busted out about 4 minutes before the dinner break on the first day. Which really helped the appetite; it is fair to say that I wasn’t blessed with an abundance of luck on the day. Firstly I received my first ever 5 minute penalty and was excluded from the tournament for a few hands. I was given the penalty for using my mobile phone however this was not possible as my mobile phone was not working. That morning before the tournament I had settled in for breakfast at the ‘Automatic’ Cafe on the Crown Promenade with Daniel Neilson, Mathew Pearson, James Obst, Dean Nyberg and one of their friends Josh, who I had met for the first time but he seemed like a nice guy. Anyway about half way through the breakfast Daniel decides that it would be quite fun to hover my mobile phone over my coffee and pretend that he was going to drop it in. Well this was funny until it slipped from his hand and actually fell into my coffee. Actually this isn’t fair, at that point it didn’t stop being funny, actually it became hilarious. My point being that at the time of receiving a penalty for talking on the phone my phone didn’t actually work...NOT GUILTY YOUR HONOUR!!

Another bizarre moment in my day occurred when the dealer, as happens occasionally, only dealt me one card when I was on the button. I don’t usually look at my cards until it is my turn to act so you could imagine my surprise when the action got to me and I looked down to only see one card (which just to mock me was the ). I informed the dealer of what had happened and we had a situation on our hands. Now as I was on the button my card was the top one on the deck. As far as I was concerned, and most of the players on my table were in agreement, they could just give me the card on top and we could all just carry on as normal. However the dealer didn’t think that this was possible so he asked for one of the tournament directors to come over and make a ruling. The TD came over, looked at the situation and said that my hand was dead and I had to fold my 1 remaining card! What is worse is they wouldn’t give me my ante back! Now I don’t doubt that this is the rule because I have always found all involved down at Crown Casino to be competent and fair but come on...how stupid a rule is this? I did absolutely nothing wrong yet I had the privilege of losing my button and having to pay chips to do that! Ridiculous!

Apart from my lone in the above mentioned situation I was literally card dead all day. The best un paired hand that I got in 7 hours of play was and I only got this hand once. The best pair that I was dealt was which I only got dealt once again and lost a fairly sizeable pot when Pierre Aoukar flopped bottom pair with and called me down on every street only to trip up on the river. Mr Aoukar would be the man who eventually eliminated me from the tournament in a situation similar to the one above.

Firstly let me say that Pierre had the biggest stack on the table by far. He had been playing a very aggressive game and had hit every card that he needed to chip up his stack. I felt though that he was feeling invincible and that he wasn’t really looking to fold anything. I felt that fact combined with how well the tournament was structured, we were just about to go to dinner and I had a well below average stack with 80bb, meant that I could spend a little bit of money to try and cheaply see a flop against Pierre in the hope of doing some damage.

Such a situation arose when I made a fairly dubious call from the big blind with . The blinds were 200/400 with a 50 ante. Pierre raised to 1200 from middle position, he was raising more or less every second hand, after everybody else folded I called from the big blind.

It is fair to say that I had a little bit of movement in the lower regions when the flop came down giving me two pair. Well it wasn’t like Pierre wouldn’t bet so I checked, he bet 1,500 then I raised to 4,500. He sat there thinking for a bit and then made a very logical 4 bet to 15,000. I instantly moved all in for around 33,000 and he snap called and slammed his cards down on the table.

At this point I was like great, he must have flopped a set or something, I mean how else could he snap call a 5 bet shove and slam his hand on the table so confidently? Well he didn’t have a set. He had turned over the for just an overpair and making me a 3 to 1 favourite in the hand. I am not sure if he had made an error of judgement or if he felt I was likely to 5 bet shove with {kx}{jx} or something like that but anyway his snap call turned out to be genius as the turn came the and the river the to make him a bigger 2 pair than me and to send me on my way out of the tournament.

Pierre Aoukar was a nice fun guy and was good to play with, I have to admit of all the people on the table I don’t mind losing my chips to him. I guess the lesson is just to not tangle with a guy that runs like God.

Anyway that will do me for now, I will be back with more next week!

Have fun and good luck in whatever you do!

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Joey Del On Melbourne, The One Outer And The Stand Up Review!!!

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:18:02 GMT

Well I am here.

Melbourne, love it or hate it is the home of poker in Australia. In risk of getting bashed by my fellow Sydneysiders I have to admit that I love it here. There is something special about sitting by the Yarra sipping on a coffee whilst writing an article that fits in with my desired lifestyle.

I am down here for the 2009 Victorian Poker Championships one of the larger and more salubrious tournaments on the Australian tournament Calender. I flew in this morning. I don’t know why but every time I travel interstate I always decide to catch the first plane in the morning thinking to myself ‘sure no problem I can be on board a plane at 6am’ of course I forget to factor in that with airplanes 6am isn’t really 6am. For starters you need to be there forty five minutes before the flight and then it actually takes forty five minutes to get to the airport, factor that in with the fact that I never pack my bags until the morning I have to go and next thing you know I am waking up at 4am.

Now I don’t know about you but I am a firm believer that 4am is a time that should only be visited for three reasons. Firstly if you are playing the Sunday majors (Monday morning Australian time), secondly if you are still up partying from the night before and thirdly if it is ANZAC day and you are required, by virtue of being an Australian, to start your day’s drinking as close to dawn as possible.

So here I am now sitting in my apartment that I have for the weekend trying desperately to stay awake as I write this article and take care of some other work. I am excited about playing in this tournament as I have not had an opportunity to play a live tournament in a couple of months. I would like to put in a good showing in this tournament but as we all know tournament poker is a funny thing.

Outside of poker I had my first stand up comedy show last weekend. Now that was some fun. I am one of those sick people who enjoy putting themselves in difficult and awkward situations. This was certainly one of those situations where I was nervous! I was completely fine the whole way through until I actually got to the venue where I was to perform, I felt like a school boy on his first date, my insides shrivelled up, my palms were sweaty and my legs were weak. I remained like this even when I was on stage, in fact I only really started to relax when I got my first laugh. I am quite happy to report that I think the show went quite well. I mean I didn’t get booed off stage and I didn’t even have any rotten fruit thrown at me so that has to count for something right? I have booked four more sets over the next few weeks so hopefully they go well. It is still a learning curve for me at the moment so fingers crossed things will go well. Either way it certainly is a lot of fun.

WOW, I just had to interrupt my original plan for this article to tell you about a bad beat that my friend just copped. I am sharing a room down in Melbourne with Sydney players Daniel Neilson and Paren “Puzz” Arzoomanian. As I was sitting here writing Daniel was playing some of his standard $10/$20 cash game tables on Full Tilt just to kill some time. Daniel is renowned for being an indifferent ‘Don’t give a stuff’ kind of player when on the poker tables. So you could imagine my surprise when he started giggling like a little school girl and hurled his lap top across the room (Ok, he may have just gently placed it on the couch next to him, but creative license right?) . He then showed me the hand history and I like to make fun of my friends for being cry babies at the best of times but this honestly was one of the sickest beats I have ever seen.

Without going into too much detail we will just assume that Daniel played the hand correctly and the villain played the hand like an “OMG mega spewtard donk”. On the turn, Daniel held on a board. He then check-shoved and was insta-snap called by the other genius who turned over . Obviously the river came the meaningless to give our clever friend the one outer he needed for a straight flush and Daniel shipped his two thousand dollar stack across the table. It reminds me of a great rhyme that Mike Matusow can often be heard singing at the poker tables “Poker, Poker, it’s all skill, start with the worst hand and go uphill”.

In other news PokerNetwork Radio is now bigger than ever. I mean literally due to the tonne of positive feedback we have received after chatting with him last week we have decided to give the morbidly obese Pierre Bush a little more air time on the show. Now I am not kidding when I say obese. Pierre is so fat that you could exercise by jogging around him. But like most fat people, (except for any fat people that are reading this... I love you keep reading ) Bushy runs bad at life and it is a lot of fun to make fun of so make you sure you check that out as well as all the other fantastic things that are happening on PokerNetwork including the forums, the news section and the live reporting now complete with video coverage from the very blonde and very sexy Lynn Gilmartin...actually I wonder if she is single? Hmmm I am going to find out!

Until next time, have fun and good luck in whatever it is you do!

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Joey Del On The Family Brawl, Poker Tilt And The First Stand Up Comedy Gig

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:04:55 GMT

Hello again everyone out there in poker land!

I hope the week has been good for all of you. Things are pretty exciting for me at the moment; first off all let’s take a look at last weekend’s trip to the Blue Mountains that I discussed. I made two assumptions about the trip and they both turned out to be true.

First of all it was hard to slot in playing time around the family activities. There was always something to do all the time and also why is it that nothing works outside of the city. My internet connection was working fine as we hit the outskirts of the city (Shout out to Emu Plains) but as soon as we drove past that sign that said “You are now leaving Sydney” the connection just insta-dropped out and was nowhere to be seen until we crossed back over that magical line some 4 days later.

So all the playing I did had to be at a cafe in Katoomba, this was lol in itself, we went to one cafe and tried to set up our computers there and the owner told us that we could not use the internet there as people who go online sit there for hours and don’t order anything, he then told us that internet usage also ruins the ambience of the place. So I looked around his little cafe and noticed that there was nobody in there, congratulated him on such a well thought out business model and moved on.

I did not mention the name of that place because I forgot it, which is upsetting as I would have liked to slam them, however I will mention the name of “Parakeet” cafe. This place was awesome and if I ever do move to Katoomba I will ensure that it is in walking distance of this place. The people that ran it where happy for me to leech of their internet connection all day and were extremely nice and the food was pretty good too. Anyway, I figured they deserved a free plug.

The other thing that I mentioned was about the inevitable family infighting that happens on these trips. Yes it happens, but after monitoring I am confident that if I was not in our family everybody would get along really well, all the fights generally revolve around me and I always seem to be at fault. Oh well I guess this is the price I have to pay for being really, really good looking.

I made a modest attempt at bush walking whilst I was there too; this is as ridiculous a past time as any out there. We tried to do this walk near the three sisters (Katoomba’s most iconic landmark- google it if you don’t know what I am talking about, it is good). Basically the “highlight” of this walk is the “giant staircase”, 1000 very steep steps from the top of the three sisters to the bottom. If you are thinking of doing this DON’T!!! Not Fun, I got about 200 steps down and decided that this was silly and walked back up. I mean come on guys it is 2009! Can we not get a lift or an escalator put in there? I mean what yeah was the Jetsons set? They have flying cars; the least we can do is save people having to walk!
Poker has been going quite well for me lately; I have been playing some cash games to supplement my tournament schedule. When I play I generally play for a set amount of time. Why is it that the toughest decisions always seem to happen within the last 5 minutes of a session? It happens so often that for 85 minutes I will be thinking “Well this was a good session” and then with 5 minutes to go BANG! He rivers a flush against my flopped set after calling a pot sized bet for half of his stack on the turn. Ship the 400bb pot to him, I mean what would I possible want to do with 400bb. It isn’t like I am relying on poker for my main source of income or anything...

You may remember that about a month ago I mentioned that my girlfriend had enrolled me into a stand up comedy course for my birthday. Well now the course has come and gone and I have my first ever show this Sunday night (Star Bar on George St Sydney at 6:00 pm if you are in the area and interested). This is both a nervous and exciting time for me. I don’t really know what to expect, it is quite hard to write something that you think is funny and hope that others will share your point of view. I think I should be ok but I am prepared for the very real possibility that nobody will laugh at all. After giving it some thought I have decided I will combat these nerves and my fears in the good old fashioned way, alcohol, and lots of it. So if anybody does come and notices that I am swaying a little too precariously close to that point where you fall over if you could just come up on stage and prop me up I would greatly appreciate it. Also if my words are too slurred and you cannot make out what I am saying please do me the courtesy of just laughing out loud at thirty second intervals, it would be greatly appreciated.

This week’s edition of PokerNetwork Radio is a lot of fun; we have a chat with Pierre Bush. Bushy is a larger than life (quite literally- the guy loves a Big Mac) figure in the Australian poker community and he would quite easily be the most unlucky person I have ever met. We have a chat about various standard occurrences in a day in the life of Bushy, things such as how the 1 hour flight from Newcastle to Gold Coast for the ANZPT Queensland took him 12 hours and how he managed to lose in excess of US$10,000 in Vegas during the WSOP from events that have nothing to do with gambling. You know when people are just so bad at life it becomes funny, for everyone else, well that is Pierre in a nutshell. If you are feeling a bit down at the moment or you think you run bad and need to be cheered up, well have a listen to Pierre’s stories and you are sure to be cheered up in no time.

Well that is it for now. I will be back next week with some comments on my stand up show as well as some exciting tales that have happened on the felt. By this time next week I should be down in Melbourne for the Victorian Poker Championships, undoubtedly there will be some stories from there.

Good Luck in whatever it is you choose to do.

Joey Del.

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