Browse by Tag - Heath Chick
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Welcome To Las Vegas
July 08, 2009So we finished another successful tournament in Melbourne, and after a quick bite to eat I took the boring drive to Geelong to pack my bag for Las Vegas and the 2009 World Series of Poker.
My Godparents drove me to the Gull Bus (a bus service from Geelong to the airport) as Dad had an appointment. He ended up arriving to do the old father-son goodbye of “Be safe son . . . yeah yeah Dad” and straight to sleep I went once the bus took off.
I arrived at Tullamarine Airport and sat around listening until tunes before Heath and Kirsty arrived. Kirsty headed back to Tassie while me and Heath boarded our first flight to Sydney before making our way to Los Angeles.
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We flew the new Virgin Australia airlines; and since it was our first time on the new carrier our expectations were low.
However we were blown away by the service in general – good food, awesome in-flight entertainment and fairly comfortable seats (for economy). I managed to find this poker game and crushed a ten-player sit-n-go making quad deuces and a straight flush while Heath lost thousands on the blackjack game.
I pretty much slept the whole flight to put me in sync for the states, while Heath struggled most of the way. We touched down in Los Angeles and sat round a little before our flight to Las Vegas.
Chris Boncek was supposed to pick us up, but after around 25-minutes we thought that they may have forgot about us Aussie boys. I quick call to our boss Garry Gates and we were told Boncek was on the way. 10-minutes later we were in his car and off to the grocery store to pick up some supplies before settling in for the night.
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While Heath had to work, I had the day off, but I still ventured into the Rio to catch up with the guys and do some other things.
I took to the cash games playing some $1-3 No Limit Holdem, and after about an hour I profited $107 and made my way back to the Amazon room before me and GG decided to play the 11pm $200 nightly.
Donnie and Heath bought $50 each of both me and GG and we took our seats in the tournament which had a ridiculous structure and only a 3,000-chip starting bank.
I eliminated a guy early holding
on a 
board against his Ace-King. A few hands later I opened 
and was met with five callers. The flop fell down Queen-high with two diamonds and the big blind open-shoved for 4x pot with a flush draw – I called and he got there – aarrghh!My stack slowly dwindled down to nothing when the blinds went up to 200-400 with a 50 ante and after a raise to 800, raise to 1,200, raise to 3,750 all in, I shipped my 3,275 stack holding
and both the retarded min-raises folded.Of course when the board ran out
the other all in player tabled 
and I was out in 80th place of the 136 starters with GG to follow shortly after.67 views, 0 comments
Read more: Chris Boncek, Donnie Peters, Garry Games, Heath Chick, Kirsty Brew, No Limit Holdem, Virgin Australia
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TassieDevil Dusted In Second
July 08, 2009The Melbourne Poker Championships have been around since 2007 with Haibo Chu taking down the title only to be followed by James ‘Jabba’ Broom last year.
However with the Main Event still a few days away we have just wrapped up one of the feature events, and new addition to the schedule with the $2,700 PokerStars.net ANZPT Melbourne Main Event.
With Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick qualifying online it would be just me undertaking the blogging duties when this star-studded field sat down; which included the likes of online whiz kids CNT_CRUSHER, xMONSTERxDONGx, Adgee and Seabeast as well as live specialists Steve Topakas, Gary Benson, Emad Tahtouh, Eric Assadourian and Billy ‘The Croc’ Argyros.
However all the above would fall by day one’s end with Chick leading the charge along with Tino Lechich, Peter Aristidou. Sam Youssef and Jarred Graham all trailing closely.
Day two flew pretty quickly with Heath continuing his hot run good streak while forming an image of set-plus only as the final table would up as the following:
Seat 1: Heath 'TassieDevil' Chick (283,000)
Seat 2: Rodney Burles (168,000)
Seat 3: Sam Khouiss (354,000)
Seat 4: Chris Levick (969,000)
Seat 5: Jie Gao (517,000)
Seat 6: Ben Savage (682,000)
Seat 7: Gregory Shillig (190,000)
Seat 8: Peter Aristidou (432,000)
Seat 9: Kristian Lunardi (713,000)My heart should have obviously been behind Heath, but it was so hard to really pick someone I wanted to win. I’ve been friends with Kristian for a few years now, and we’ve played countless of home games together. Peter Aristidou was one of the first Crown regular’s I became friends with, and due to some personal circumstances I really wanted him to take it down too. Throw Chris Levick and Ben Savage into that mix and it leaves one of Australia’s most loved / hate (depends how you see him) players in Sam Khouiss.
Khouiss is loud, arrogant, always portrays the image of a broke degenerate, but is a character worth paying too watch. All in all it was Khouiss for the win followed by an Aristidou, Chick, Lunardi chop in second . . . well in the perfect world anyway!
The final table went fairly smoothly apart from having to blog and assist the six-handed event as our other blogger had fallen ill; along with taking photos it was always going to be tough for a while!
Kirsty keeping watchThe rail filled up with everyone’s cheer squad increasing as hands continued to play out. Heath’s fiancée Kirsty flew down to lend her support and was a bucket full of nerves as she sweated him over his left shoulder, while Hux came down to pen Heath’s new nick name . . . Heath ‘no-set-no-bet’ Chick!
Players kept falling while both Heath and Chris slowly accumulated, and it was fitting to see them both make heads-up play. Heath started at a seven-to-two underdog and slipped further behind until he spiked a three-outer for a double up and then made a flush with
all in preflop against the Ace-Queen of Chris.
Heath 'TassieDevil' Chick all inWith Chris getting visibly frustrated it all came to and end when his
out flopped Heath’s 
to take down the title and $158,050 first prize as Heath was left to ponder how close he came.Still, his $103,550 payday should make him feel a little better, but I guess the lesson learnt here is that no PokerNews employee should ever play Queens when at the crossroads of a very important poker highway!
Congratulations to Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick for capturing second and taking the cake as the better tournament player . . . for now!
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The Race To 10k . . . Is Over
April 18, 2009The Race To 10k between Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick and myself is officially over!
It took a little over three months but Heath prevailed with the final results as follows:
thkcduckworth - $6,652.85 (1 final table bonus)
TassieDevil - $10,021.45 (10 final table bonuses)The net result was Heath winning $250 for winning the race, plus $100 for most live winnings and $225 for final table bonuses for a total win-fall of $575. All-in-all congratulations mate, and for your great efforts I thought I’d present you with a trophy . . .
Congratulations Heath ‘TassieDevil’ Chick!* * * * * * * *
I’m definitely thinking of starting The Race To 10k II which will be open to all current employees of PokerNews and PokerNetwork, but with a few changes to the conditions (after I expressed by annoyance at some of the results Heath was logging in <100 player fields). I think including a Pocket Fives points criteria as one of the conditions will even the competition amongst players that don't play on some of the small and 'soft' independent sites and only play Full Tilt and/or PokerStars. Also some of the monetary amounts will change as their are bound to be more then two participants with also an alteration to the final table bonuses for the online sector.
Whatever the outcome, make sure to keep checking out Tilted Behaviour for any developments on the next race or any other poker news from around the country and abroad.
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Another Flight Dilemma
August 28, 2008The day started well with everything being packed and organised on time. I headed to dinner with Ibs and Joyce at Cervo where we tucked down a quick meal before heading to the airport. After checking in and proceeding through customs I went straight to the gift store and picked up something to drink as well as a Hong Kong/Macau travel guide.
As I walked towards my gate there was a new electronics store. WIth the first chance I could I jumped on the Nintendo Wii and PS3 and took over for the next 40 mins or so as I waited for Heath and Kirsty. However meeting up wit them was not going to happen tonight as they couldn't get a flight on the same plane and therefore were bumped to an 11am flight tomorrow.
Some Melbourne guys strolled through including Karib Karib, David 'LeeWah' Lee and Lily Bui. We hanged out for a little bit before they boarded their plane to Macau via KL. As I sat waiting patiently for my plane that dreaded announcement came over the speakers, "QF 95 has been delayed due to maintenance issues . . . for four hours". Damn!!
Sitting in the terminal for a further four hours was absolute hell and I spent most of the time strolling round, listening to music and doing what I could do to stay awake until I boarded the plane.
But to my disappointment that would never happen.
Our flight ended up being cancelled and moved to 4pm the following day. Once everyone was cabbed out of the terminal, I managed to find an earlier flight at 11am. I headed home to sleep for a few hours before having to head back early the following day.
Second Attempt
Awake and heading out the door of my apartment I receive a call from Heath to meet up at the Crown cab rank (obviously so he can ride free on Qantas!!) Everything worked out fine this time, and once in Hong Kong we caught a 40-minute cab ride to the ferry dock that cost us 400HK. The ferry ride was about half an hour and once in Macau we encountered our next problem.As we rolled up to the Rio Hotel we had one issue . . . they didn't have a room for us. With Melissa, F-Train, Dave and Paul already in a room and without a number we knew it was going to be hard . . . but not this hard.
The firstly booked us in one room, then another, then another, then another, then another before finally telling us that there were no rooms left apart from a few suites. Being tired, grumpy and very annoyed after waiting two hours in the lobby; I made them put us up in a suite for the night with everything to be sorted out the following day with their manager.
Two angry hours later we had two rooms for us and what a set-up they both had; lounge room, study, king size bed, four couches, two bathrooms, two mega-plasmas and all the extras! However there was no chance to savour any of it as I was quick to bed following a hot shower.
P.S - pretty please I hope they have no room for us tomorrow so we have to stay in their suites!!
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Victorian Poker Championships Re-Cap
August 24, 2008As you can tell I've been a bit lazy in the blog department; so I thought I should get back on it before I head to Macau for the APT and APPT tours.
Its been nearly a week since the Vic Champs concluded with Jay 'Seabeast' Kinkade taking out the title and the 200k first prize. It was a very busy two weeks for both me and Heath as we had some new reporters on hand; which meant we were on the floor getting hands ourselves at points because things got slow. We tried to get some hustle out of them but after a while we realised the difference between me (as a reporter at the WSOP) and them . . . I'm GATES trained!!!
Victorian Poker Championships Main EventMade quite a few new friends including a bunch of guys from Sydney including Brendan Edmonds, Callum Ford, David Lovell, Ronan Barratt - had a crazy $1-1 home game one night at about 3am with Phi as well. So much action with super call's and pown-age occuring.
We worked like dogs over the two weeks, with me working everyday and Heath the same bar-one due to an appearance in the Tasmania State of Origin team. Late nights, early starts became standard after the first few days; but it all comes with the job I suppose. In terms of the workload, I do love having the extra workload on my plate (which also included the photography - excluding the ME) because I prefer things to be perfect then half-hearted and easy.
Oh well, so tomorrow I head off to Macau and Hong Kong for nearly three weeks. Me, Heath and Kirsty are on the same flight to Hong Kong tomorrow night and will be meeting up with Melissa Caaaaaastello, Dave Behr and Dave King for the double tour. After Macau I have a few days in Hong Kong to go shopping and drinking and will be joined by Melissa; as we're going to share a room. Heath and Kirsty are going to be there to, so it could be a fun few days.
Stay tuned for a daily post on Macau as we battle the humidity, hustle and bustle and degenercy that Macau will bring!
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Read more: Jay Kinkade, Victorian Poker Championships, Heath Chick, Kirsty Brew, Melissa Castello, Dave Behr, David King
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WSOP Main Event and South Point
July 27, 2008So me and Heath got an early out after covering the main event so we decided that on one of our last nights in Vegas we should go play some cards together - something we haven't done over the past month and a bit.
Once back at his place we head across the road to SouthPoint Casino (where they film the high stakes poker shows) and sit down to play some $2-4 limit holdem. We chose limit because we wanted to sip on a few beers and not stress over trying to make money in NLH, but rather have some fun.
We both buy in for WAAAAYYYYY to much; but who cares . . . its limit!! Grind away for a while until this hand came up that tilted the both of us. Bit of background first - table is pretty passive, so we're playing alot of hands, and bluffing is working 88% of the time. I'm dealt
under-the-gun +1 and limp after Heath folds. A few limpers round to the big blind who raises to $4, I call and so does everyone else. Flop comes down 
; big blind checks, I bet $2, she raises to $4, I raise to $6 and she calls. The turn falls the 
and she check-calls my $4 bet. When the river lands the she again check-calls $4 and table my cards ready to scoop the pot in. However she rolls 
for nut full house and me and Heath look at each other and go, "what the fuck!?!?!?!"Oh well, I moved on, took some pots down as Heath kept getting rivered by the same two people everytime he played a pot, until finally I hit YAHTZEE!!! Lady from last hand limps UTG, Heath limps UTG+1, I raise to $4 and get three callers to the lady who raises, Heath calls, I cap and everyone calls. Flop comes
, lady bets $2, Heath folds, I raise to $4 and it is called round. Turn falls the and it is checked to a guy in late position who bets $4, lady calls, and I call. River is the 
and we check to him again. He fires $4, lady calls, I raise to $8 (Oh yeah!! Booyah the river check-raise in limit!!) and both players call. I table 
for the nizzles and the late position flashes 
as his cards go into the muck.
Heath playing $2-4 LH at SouthPointSHIP SHIP my first bonus for the trip and it paid $100 for the straight flush. That pot plus the bonus took me up to over $300 and I never looked back! Final hand for the night was when Heath says, "I'm getting aces here", I follow up with saying, "If you get aces, I'm going to 3-bet!". As the cards are dealt Heath states, "I got 'em!" and throws out $4, I sweat
and instantly three-bet (well seriously, who isn't with natural nine???). It ends up getting capped and we see the flop of 
- oh yeah, second nizzles!!! Heath bets, I raise, he calls. Turn is a sick 
and we check-check, river falls a blank and he checks as I fire. "Oh this is sick, if you beat me here I'm leaving, I've had enough, I'm leaving" as Heath throws in $4. I roll my hand over and he stands up, knocks his chair over as he tables 
and picks up his chips and cashes out.As I'm raking in HEATH'S CHIPS I decide that I should go as well and leave SouthPoint a $150 winner as we head back to Tommy's and Heath's place where I'm crashing for the next few nights.
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PokerStars Players Party
July 27, 2008With the freeroll over and having a healthy $400 in pocket (as Heath and Guzzardi both had 10%) we were off to the PokerStars Players Party at Rain nightclub at the Palms. With Eric and Don ditching me as I was having a piss in the Rio carpark, I swung a lift via Garry along with Boncek and Schipis. On arrival we met up with some of the fellow PokerNews employees, grabbed our armbands for VIP access and headed inside.
The main bar and dancefloorAs me and Heath were asked for ID's, all the PokerStars pros were being snapped by the many cameras and intervied by our own Melissa Castello. Once into Rain we were greated with a burlesque-themed party and by a mass of people taking up all the dancefloor space on the bottom level. Losing Heath as I wondered past the main bar and up the stairs, I spotted Slippers and Dane high on the third level and headed straight there. As we headed down to the second level, directly above the main bar, we joined a booth filled with predominately Aussies. Joe Hachem and family, Tony Hachem and Shane Warne, Emad Tahtooh, Grant Levy, Billy the Croc, Gary Benson and many more filled the couch and standing space as a longed for a drink.
Grant Levy, myself and Tony HachemHeading up to the bar I bumped into Joy and her entourage which included Maria Ho , who everyone seems to be obsessed with apart from me. As the girls bought me a drink I found Donnie and we negotiated our way back into the 'Hachem' area as our VIP status of grey wristbands weren't as good as the black ones needed to have full VIP access. After Joe did his speech about how PokerStars are going in this years main event Emad let me have his black wristband and I tucked it under my black hair tie that was around my wrist from earlier.
Dita Von Teese in her second show of the nightAs the night progressed everyone was downing the free drinks as more and more fun was being had. With burlesque dancers on platforms and suspended above the air, a Dita Von Teese show on the front stage, a fight between PokerNews employees Eric Ramsey and Joe Schepis as well as a full on pash-fest put on by Dario Minieri and Isabelle Mercier it was definately a night not to miss!
Dario Minieri and Isabelle Mercier going at it on the bar
One of the burlesque dancersWe all headed to Maccas after the night was out, and just when you thought the night couldn't get any better, who do we see having maccas . . . Joe Hachem and his family. I always thought that Joe was so down to earth, but to see him taking a chunk out of a quarter pounder just proves it more. After eating our burgers I decided to crash with Don and Slippers as Christian was playing $1-2 and who knows how long he would be there!! Another night on a couch . . . its something I'm definately getting use to . . . ha ha ha.
P.S - I'm going to post some photos in this blog, but for the rest head to my facebook.
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Read more: PokerStars, Rain Nightclub, The Palms, Chris Boncek, Garry Gates, Joe Schepis, Heath Chick, Melissa Castello, Anthony Molinaro, Dane Jensen, Emad Tahtooh, Joe Ha
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USA vs the World and the PokerNews Freeroll
July 27, 2008With all of the day 1's from the 2008 WSOP Main Event being played there has been a planned break before the two day 2's are to begin. With reportable events on (because who cares about the Casino Employees event . . .) PokerNews planned a day out of fun for all their employees.
The day started nice and early at 1pm at the Las Vegas Indoor Soccer Centre where kick-off between the USA and the World in the inaugural PokerNews International Friendly began. With Garry captaining the USA team and Felipe (our photographer) captaining our World team, the fireworks soon began when USA captain Gates scored the first goal for the home team. It was quickly followed by USA-recruit Dustin Sitar when he scored soon after. Not only was he a non-PokerNews member (one was allowed per team) but he was also a successful poker player.
Scores were traded back and forth with the USA staying ahead at all times until half-time. We lost our star in Giovanni, and it would be left to me, Slippers, Thano, Felipe and some of the Dutch-PokerNews staff to gain the lead back. However this would be a really hard task as the USA team contained 4 semi-pro soccer players in Dustin, Garry (who has played indoor many times before this match), Don ( who played college soccer) and Neil.
Play during the first halfThe second half was all USA as the retained their lead until the final minute. With the scores at 11-9 in USA's favour, one of our dutch players put a ripper goal in to put us behind by 1, and with about 30 seconds to go, yours truly scored one to even the scores. As the USA players sunk to the ground, we lined up for peneltys, and being the shittest soccer player alive I sat back as the first reserve. As we shot first, the scores went 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2, 3-3, 4-3, 4-4 until it was up to the captains. Felipe stepped up and shot deep into the top corner to put the scores to 5-4 and next it was up to Garry. As he lined up with all of the pressure on his shoulders he aimed to the far left, and as it hurled toward the back of the net it was saved by our goalie sending the World team to victory!!
Following the soccer match we played a game of bball and were joined by Christian, Dane and Guzz. With an intense match it was the USA's turn to take home the victory against the predominately Australian based world team.
Christian heading to the basketFollowing a quick trip home we would arrive back at the Rio for the PokerNews freeroll. Not before I left Guzzardi wanted a piece of the action and bought 10% of me for $10 - which I thought was a fair deal as the chance of cashing in a freeroll is always small when you're a great player like myself (ha ha ha) as there is so many banana plays occuring.
Slippers and Eric foldingThe freeroll began in the Amazon room at the same time the Casino employees event was being undertaken. Wearing my Nascar-inspired shirt with all the online poker company's logo's attached from Full Tilt to 888 to t6 and poker-affiliated company's such as PokerNews, Bluff, PokerRoad and WPA I sat down and played extremely tight until moving to my second table. I took down a few pots and built my stack to around 6000 (double starting) before again moving to my third table. Sitting with Don, Eric, Leon and some others time ticked away as we approached the starting time for the PokerStars party.
Me stealing some blindsWith only two tables remaining people really wanted to cash in this freeroll, but I was aiming high for the first prize of $2000. Having swapped 10% with Heath earlier, he was eventually eliminated and began to rail me hoping to make some money off me to cover his potential expenses later on. With Eric being the only one to pass on a deal with 13 remaining I limped to the final table of 10 in about 4th chip position. Deciding on a deal, we all took $500 and flipped for the remaining $300 - which I lost.
Getting changed out of my poker-shirt we were all on the way to enjoy what PokerStars could provide for not only their players and staff, but also their VIP's in us PokerNews guys.
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Read more: Thano Vasilakos, Neil Fray, Filipe Pacheco, Anthony Molinaro, Christian Vaughn, Dane Jensen, Donald Peters, Eric Ramsey, Garry Gates, Heath Chick, Michael Guzza
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2008 WSOP Main Event
July 27, 2008Today was the start of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event, and with a starting field of 1297 it worked its way down to the 600 mark to end the first of the four day 1's.
One of the starting tablesWith everyone due to work, I was assigned with Heath as my blogger and Zeeks as my fellow reporter. With half the team leaving at dinner, everyone's workload was doubled and as we approached the 5th and final level of the night everyone was ready and done for the night. Finally with an early night (that being an exit from the Rio before 2am) I was on my way home for an early night.
As the major American public holiday being tomorrow, and an early exit due for me and Heath, plans are for fireworks, poker, some grub and who knows what else.
Details to follow . . .
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2008 Melbourne Poker Championships
July 26, 2008We have just concluded the 2008 Melbourne Poker Championships down here in wet and cold Victoria. After reporting, blogging and taking photos for a total of 9 days at around 12 to 15 hours a day, it seems as though I'm ready for working at the WSOP this year; instead of playing like I did in 2007.
With not much on the horizon, I really wanted to be part of the team this year, and with the help of Heath Chick (tassiedevil and/or aardvark to some of you) who coordinated the PokerNews team, he was able to organise a spot for me on the team in Las Vegas through Garry Gates.
However with the WSOP starting in less then a week, and with nothing organised besides the guarentee of 4 days of work a week while I'm there from Garry, what are the realistic chances of me leaving the miserable weather of Melbourne for the gambling mecca of sunny Las Vegas?
Here is a list I have compiled; which if satisfied means that I'll be on my way to WSOP 2008:
- organise frequent flyer points flights
- confirm accomodation with fellow reporters and Melbournian's
- probably need to round-up some extra dosh before I head over, so I ain't living from paycheck to paycheck
- tie-up all loose ends down hereWell, thats all I can come up with at the moment, but stay tuned to hear what else gets placed in my path.
