(My poker adventure at the
Crown Casino on the south bank of Yarra in Melbourne.)
Wait a fucking minute, that is a false statement. Melbourne was the very first place in Australia I landed when I migrated to Australia in late 1988. I was flying Malaysian Airways the cheapest then from Bangkok to Sydney and the bloody plane stopped at KL first and then Melbourne on the way to Sydney my destination.
But right now I am in Melbourne for more than four weeks. The reason I am here is to play live poker tournaments at the Crown Casino. I’ve been playing poker tournaments on Internet, first on Full Tilt and now on Poker Stars, for more than two years and I believe now is the time to upgrade myself to live tournaments or feel the real felt of a poker table. Fortunately Crown Poker in Melbourne has cheap live tournaments going on almost every day.
In Sydney the Star Casino has live Poker tournaments everyday too. But at A$250-300 buy-in it is just too expensive for me just to learn. In Melbourne Crown Casino the weekday games called Midday Madness have just A$60 buy-in. So I am now in Melbourne madly playing poker tournaments every weekday last four weeks.
Urban Central Backpacker Hostel
For a Burmese man on tight budget like me a cup of rice a day is a decent enough food and what I need more is just a bit of oil and salt. So I went for that hostel and a week later I am occupying a bottom bunk with a French boy on top bunk and one Korean and Japanese on other bunk bed. Two Asians left after just few days and now I got a German boy and an Indian-English man as my roommates in addition to the original French boy.
I had never been in a backpacker hostel and first few days were really an eyes opener for me. It smells of human odour and shit and piss and unwashed cloths but I soon got used to it. The environment even reminded me of my army cadet years and later the boot camp. Apart from free rice and coffee and bread the added pleasure was seeing so many young white European women and being in close proximity of them sexy things.
But like the hostel smell I soon got used to them and even started seeing the ugly side of them. They smell too and expose too much flesh and eventually becoming quite disgusting seeing too many boobs and arses close up. Like seeing a porn video too many times repeatedly. Maybe my strange fetish of white women will be cured and Asian women will be attractive for me again if I stay here long enough.
Pullpackers Not Backpackers
And a lot of them are young girls 18, 19, or even 17. So they pack a lot of good dresses to party wherever they go and they do need flat suitcases. And with wheels so easy to pull them heavy cases around. So instead of backpacking they pullpack all over the world and accordingly they should be called pullpackers not backpackers.
So I soon got rid of my heavy backpack and bought a suitcase and became a pullpacker too. Why not!
Hook Turns
The wise forefathers of Melbourne had built the beautiful city filled with really wide streets and then put tram tracks right smack on the middle of them all over the city. Unlike in her rival Sydney where the old tram tracks on the narrow streets were dug up to make ways for the cars Melbourne wisely invented Hook Turns so that trams and cars can coexist together harmoniously.
A Hook Turn is basically a right-hand turn from left-most lane as it removes the right-turning cars from the tram tracks which occupy two middle lanes of the road. Since a dedicated hook-turn-lane and a hook-turn-light are provided at every hook turn it is not that difficult to do a hook-turn once one is educated of hook turns.
Aussie Rules Footy
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that stupid footy game called AFL. When I first saw it on TV I was unbelievably shocked by it. It was kind of a mad cross between rugby and soccer. Later I knew a bit more about it. The game was supposedly invented by a group of bored Aussie-English cricket players about 100 years ago.
Cricket is like jazz. It is an acquired taste and it is so extremely boring that one has to born into to love and follow that particular sport. Most of the time these cricketers do nothing just stand and watch if they are not betting or bowling in normally very long innings (sections).
And English men love their other sports too. Such as war-like rugby and nobly-nimble soccer. So more than 100 years ago the bored cricketers in Melbourne started mucking around with both rugby, which involves tackling and picking up and running with the ball, and soccer, which requires kicking the ball, with the readily available rugby balls. The Aussie Rules footy was born as the mad cross between Rugby and soccer.
The complicated rules and the battle line form attacks from rugby were eliminated for simplicity and soccer’s golden rule of not picking up or even touching the ball was also ignored. And forget about so hard to get soccer goal and rugby try as the 1,000 goals score is basically possible for any AFL player, thanks heaven.
Midday Madness At Crown Casino
They pay only top seven and we were at what they called BUBBLE rush. The bubble would be the last one before the CASH as only 7 would be paid. I got the hand A-Q and the chip-leader asshole betted nearly half of my chips and I was forced to go all-in. I was so happy when he called and showed A-J. But soon I was utterly devastated as the FLOP had two Jacks and I was eliminated as the BUBBLE.
Only after seven more failed tournaments I got 7th place and A$150 at my 8th tournament of Midday Madness at Crown and I was thrilled. I then won A$ 450 fourth prize from my 12th tournament of Midday Madness. Now for last four weeks I played tournaments on days and cash games at night. Cash games are giving me a regular income like 2-300 dollars a day but tournaments are not really a bread earner. That was my thoughts before I won my first tournament on last Thursday.
It was the regular $125 buy-in No Limit one and from the first hand of pocket aces and two more hands of pocket Kings and Queens gave me an inkling of winning the tournament. Finally after more than five hours I was in the heads-up Final Table battle with a local player from Melbourne.
The battle was grinding on for another hour and finally we decided to split the $5,000 prize, which was the total of 2950 first prize and 2050 second prize, right at the middle. So I won A$2,500 the biggest poker winning so far in my short poker career and soon my four weeks poker holiday at the Crown Casino was over. I came back to Sydney by Melbourne-Sydney Day-Express train on last Monday.
Gus Hansen & Joe Hachem The Two Poker Pros
Gus’s book basically taught me how to handle every single hand logically. Only thing I do not like about his Loose-Aggressive style which basically calls to play most hands with a standard raise of three Big Blinds. But I like his philosophy of “NLHE Poker is essentially a FLOP game” and copy his style of “No-Flopped No-Play” into my games.
Joe’s Tight-Aggressive style strongly advocates to play the hands of only two picture cards which means A,K,Q, and J the highest card combinations. But I still hesitate to bluff like him once a tight table image is established.
How I Play NLHE Poker
I have developed a relatively fool-proof system like the various systems I have developed for my future trading as since a long time ago I’d realised that following a strict system is a must for any emotional games involving substantial amount of money like trading or playing cards or any gambling like activities. So I developed a poker system after two years of playing the NLHE poker on internet.
My poker system involves four steps namely;
1) Starting Hands Selection,
Some wise guys have strongly suggested that only hands with minimum 50% Average Winning Percentage (AWP) should be played. I tighten it further by only playing the hands with minimum 55% AWP. Those hands are A2 to AK, K7 to KQ, Q9 to QJ, J10, and the pocket pairs 44 to AA. One can find the AWP for the poker hands easily on many internet poker sites.
2) Minimum Raise and Maximum Call allowable,
Minimum Raise and Maximum Call respectively for 55 to 59% AWP are 2 and 3 Big Blinds (BB), for 60 to 64% AWP are 2 and 6 BB, for 65 to 69% AWP are 2 and 7 BB, for 70 to 74% AWP are 2 and 8 BB, for 75 to 79% AWP are 3 and 9 BB, and for 80 to 85% AWP are 3 BB and All-In shove.
3) Flopped Definitions and Bet or Call at TURN if flopped, and
- Made Hands,
- Over Pair,
- Top Pair,
- Mid Pair,
- Flush Draw,
- Straight Draw,
- Two Overcards, or
- One Overcard with Bottom Pair.
4) “Is my hand the Best Hand?” for River & Show-down.
Finally you have to think very, very
hard and decide if your hand is the best hand once you reach the RIVER or Show-down.
Once I decided my hand was the best hand the only option left was to shove all
my chips for the ALL-IN the best English word ever invented for
No-Limit-Hold’em poker.
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