It's a New Year!

It's been over a month since my last post as December and the early part of January traditionally are devoted to busy technology deployments and festive season events for me. I've had a great Christmas weekend and New Years day and I hope that you all have enjoyed the same.

On the poker side of things I have stopped my SnG grinding for the time being and just tried to focus on satellites into the Aussie Millions main event which is just over a week away now. I have had some near misses both in a live satellite at The Star Casino and on the PokerStars 6 round satellite formats. Qualifying is not over yet as I have another set of satellite rounds on PokerStars tonight and although a lot of luck is needed to progress through the 6 rounds I also find the fast bingo style format as a lot of fun. I start from the 60FPP round 1 stage so going through the gauntlet is really like free rolling. Needless to say that when I land in Melbourne next Saturday I'll spend the first few days before the main event trying to grind up the entry fee. 

On the personal side of things I enjoyed my first trip away to Adelaide for Xmas with my girlfriend Fi and I really enjoyed Christmas in the City of Churches. I'm not someone who always likes the fast hustle and bustle of Sydney and with my origins based in Wollongong its no surprise that I liked Adelaide. I was even introduced to a local landmark that I had never heard of before called Mall's Balls - now before your minds go racing into the gutter just refer to the image below from Adelaide's CBD shopping mall. Apparently it's Adelaide's version of Sydney's Town Hall as a meeting place...

I have also spent some time over the past month playing 20nl cash games on the Entraction network with mixed success but breaking very even overall. It still amazes me how bad people can play cash games and still seem to get away with it for long periods of time...either way the goal here seems to be earning rakeback and bonuses rather than pure profit as it seems everytime I have an overpair it won't win or draw any notable value. I have never been that great at grinding out bonuses online via cash games. I obviously need to work on my cash game again and figure out any leaks. I am almost sure one of them is loosening up too much after going a few buy in a head in a session and continually spewing cash on big over pairs.
As for coming blogs I'm sure the main focus will be on the Aussie Millions over the next couple of weeks. I'm not sure if I will be grinding any type of SnGs for a while since I am also in the middle of moving house as well.

I'm hoping that a few of the lads from Ireland can make it down here for the Aussie Millions but I have not heard anyone confirmed. If you are are on your way lads drop me a line!

Well there isn't much more to report on this early in the year but I am looking forward to just one more week at work before heading down to Melbourne to play in some big tournaments again. On that note I would like to wish everyone a happy 2012 in life and hopefully some poker too!