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

  Septembre 11, 2009

  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 The Pension Card, Family Vacations And The Girlfriend Tilt!!

  Juillet 30, 2009

  Today is a pretty significant day in the ‘Del’ house hold. My old man (feared mid stakes MTT player “Zappatore”)is turning 60 today. 60 is a magical age for two reasons. Firstly because if I reach that age I am pretty sure that every single medical and health book that has ever been written can be labelled redundant and thrown in the bin and secondly because this is the age where you get your pension card. That means sweet, sweet low budget travel and movie tickets for the rest of your life.

  Whilst it is a little scary to think that my father is now a pensioner it means that we are all going away for the weekend, one big happy family. Now I don’t know about your family but for us family trips did not work when we were all in primary school, somebody would always maliciously wound someone else, so I shudder to think how it will go down now that we are all “grown up” (I am the youngest at 26) to be honest if I live to write an article next week I will be somewhat blessed.

  The trip this weekend though has brought me to a point I would like to discuss and that is playing poker whilst you are away from home. Obviously when you are away on a poker trip this is not a massive issue. Most of the times that I go down to Melbourne or anywhere else for a tournament with a group of friends our time usually consists of playing live poker in the tournament then coming home and playing online poker whilst we decide which teams to bet on in whichever sports are happening anywhere around the world. These trips when you are surrounded by like minded people make it very easy to get your quota of online playing hours in. It is the trips without these people, when you go away with ‘non poker’ people that the problems start to arise.

  Take my girlfriend for example; now don’t get me wrong she is very supportive of my poker, she loves what I do and that I am trying to live a dream. She likes it now that I am a dream filled 26 year old, I wonder if she will still like it when I am a broke 35 year old, but I digress. Whilst my girlfriend is very supportive of my poker and before we go away she will be like “yeah sure, bring your laptop we will make sure we allocate time for you to play” in reality this is a lie.

  Allocate time to play? Those of you who have a girlfriend will know that there is about as much chance of your girlfriend allocating time out of HER holiday for you to play poker as there is of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allocating time to peace.

  You will wake up in the morning and load up your computer to play and she will be like “Hey don’t play now, let’s go to a cafe and have breakfast first and then you can come back and play”. So you will go to a cafe for breakfast and then after you are finished you will be thinking ok now I will go back to the hotel and play for a bit, your girlfriend will then pipe up “Oh let’s have a look around the shops before we go back!” Now for a guy looking around the shops is a very simplistic task. You stand in the middle, you turn around, cafe, butcher, post office, news agent, seen it, awesome, let’s go. But for a woman this is not the case, every shop must be carefully examined and scrutinised. Every item picked up and looked at, every shop assistant must be spoken to. How can male and female be so different? It is ridiculous. Then of course after this little 3 hour ordeal finishes it will be time for lunch. Then time for a walk or some other tedious tourist attraction, then time for dinner and then well, if you still have any energy left to play poker after all of this then you are a tougher man than I am.

  Our holiday is off to a place called the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney. Some international readers may know it. For the Brits it is where that Jamie Neale guy went missing for 10 days whilst bush walking and then was found. Don’t worry about this happening to me. I will not be walking down the street let alone through any bushes. In fact I imagine the only way that I will see any bushes is if I have an argument with one of my sisters and she wraps me up in a blanket and tosses me into a ravine.

  Another thing that has had everybody talking on the Australian Poker Circuit at the moment is the “Australian Poker Hero” this is a reality TV show being hosted by Full Tilt Poker. It is a great opportunity for players from all around Australia regardless of skill level to compete on TV. The winner will then win a free entry into the Aussie Millions, Australia’s premier poker tournament so it is truly awesome. All you need to do to enter is a) Be Australian and b) play in a freeroll on Full Tilt Poker. They are easy to find on there so make sure you give it ago.

  PokerNetwork Radio has rounded off its 15th week. This week we had a chat with top Australian online MTTer Dean “Dinhjo” Nyberg about all the important things in life, Vegas, favourite snack foods and birthdays. We even snuck a little bit of poker talk in there so all in all it is a lot of fun. Make sure you check it out and leave some feedback. Also come and say hi to me and some of Australia’s best poker players in the PokerNetwork Forums, PokerNetwork is run by PokerNews and is one of the best places to go for information and advice on our favourite game.

  That is all for now.

  Have a great week and I will write more soon (assuming I live through the weekend)!

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