1^st  real blog update of the year. I know it's a bit late, I guess I kind of got out of the habit whilst waiting for the new site to go up, but since we're here now at our brand spanking new home I'd better get my pen out....

Australia was one of the best poker trips I've been on. I call it a poker trip but in total I played 3 tournaments (although I did play one of these twice...) oh and there was a charity event which James dispatched me from quite quickly so not sure that counts lol. Australia is somewhere I'd always wanted to visit and but for my lack of passion for flying maybe I would have got there sooner, but I wasn't disappointed. We stayed in Melbourne for the duration of the Aussie Millions before moving up to the Gold Coast for a few days and finishing the trip in Sydney. James, JP and I have all gotten into golf in a big way and so we were playing as much as we could in between the various events and having some good fun.

As for the poker itself, the 1^st 2 prelims ($1k hold'em repecharge and $1k PLO) not much to report. I got a stack together in the PLO but pushed the action a bit too much late in day 1 and fell just before the end in a quite unfortunate 3 way all in. That left just the main event. I ended day 1a about 5^th in chips overall. I had quite a steady progression through the day, adding about 10k to my starting stack of 20k every level it seemed. I took a small set back at the start of the last level, losing a 60/40 in the blinds but before I had chance to lick my wounds I found AA behind a raise and an exciting looking 3bet from a nervous player. I played it fast and we got it all in before the flop, with his unfortunate kings giving me a full double up to end the day on around 100k.

Day 2 began really well. I picked up some nice hands and some good spots to bluff. In particular I picked up kings in consecutive hands, once on the button finding a reshove from K10 in the big blind and the next hand when utg had open shoved with AK. I got to around 180k when things started to go wrong. I opened on one players blind 3 times in a row, and each time he shoved on me. On the final time I raised with a pair of 5s, pretty much deciding to call if he shoved again. He did and his 8's held. An unnecessary call really for around 25-30bb even if I did feel slightly aggrieved to be dominated. The next significant hand came against the same player, who had now built his stack up nicely. He opened from the Hijack to around 3,200 at 600/1200/100 and the button (quite a lively albeit bad player who was slightly steamed up – mainly by me :( 3bet to around 9,100. I squeezed out aces in the small blind and this was such an incredible spot as I knew the button for sure wasn't going to fold. I put in a small 4 bet to around 19,400 and waited to see how the button would react....but before he could the initial raiser moved all in for 90k! Again I'd managed to find Aces against Kings. This pot was massive and would take me to 2^nd in chips overall with about 120 players left. All was going to plan until a king rolled off on the river. I was still left with a just below average stack but never got any momentum back after that and was knocked out just before the dinner break.

Now that we're back I'm already starting to think ahead to both the WPT championship in April and the WSOP and try to get everything sorted for that. Before that though my focus is really going to be online. JP was on a really good run online in our house in Australia and I couldn't help but be inspired by it. I had a decent run of my own over there online, albeit it below the 25 50 level he was playing at but 30 buyins at 5 10 considering I wasn't putting in great volume was a nice way to start the year. This year I'm really going to try to put more hands in online and have been trying to work up a set plan of how I'm going to take some shots in bigger games as I hopefully reach certain milestones. At the moment I'm thinking of playing some 10/20 games when I've reached 60 buyins for the year at 5/10. This will give me a 10 buyin shot at 10/20. If I'm, not successful I'll drop back down and try to rebuild. If I am I'll do a similar thing with the 25 50 games.

My main weaknesses in my online game thus far have been (1) not putting in enough volume (2) quitting winning sessions too early (3) not quitting losing sessions early enough! And (4) not taking enough shots. I hope to work on all of these areas as I move forward in the year and I'll try my best to use this blog to update on my progress.

Karl