Halo7′s Poker Blog on Bluffworld.com

Ouch, 7:30 came early as we left with Autopia Tours on the Great Ocean Road Tour.

This tour takes you all along the south coast of Australia to the west of Melbourne and includes some incredible scenery and sights.  It was really a bargain at A$95 a person and we decided to add on a helicopter tour for $60 more per person.

It took an hour to get out of the city, and our first stop was at Bell’s Beach. 

This famous surfing spot was in the final scene of the movie Point Break. We had our morning tea here as well, getting into the Aussie spirit.

From here we moved onto to a historic lighthouse that was scene in some UK TV show as well.

The road really is an amazing journey, hugging the coastline with scenic vistas around every bend.

Our guide knew of a spot just off of the road to take in some of Australia’s unique wildlife.  We were able to see a few koalas in the wild, along with some parrots that would fly down from the trees and eat bird seed right out of your hand!  Hopefully, we won’t come home with a gift of bird flu LOL.

After this, we travelled inland a bit into a rain forest where predictably, it began to rain.  We braved the cold and saw some massive trees that were hundreds of feet high along with huge fern trees as well.  Here I am standing next to one of these massive Ash trees.

From here we moved on to the main reason I wanted to go on this tour, the Twelve Apostles.  What are the Twelve Apostles exactly?  In a nutshell, it is when the ocean surf wears away the land around limestone columns due to the hardness of the rock and leaves towering fingers of rock seemingly planted in the surf.  Here is a placard that explains it pretty well.

Here are a few stunning shots of these formations.  It is really hard to get a bad shot of these monsters.

Our next move took us along the shipwreck coast to the Loch Ard Gorge, which was the spot of a major shipwreck in 1878 (of the Loch Ard, duh.)

This was really an incredible sight with a magnificent arch with the surf crashing around it. 

You could also hike down to the beach cove which is where the 2 survivors of the ship dragged themselves out of the water.

After leaving here, we headed down the road a bit and took our 20 minute helicopter ride.  If you ever make it down under, make sure to add on the “whirlibird”, it was incredibly memorable.

From above, you were able to see a whole different view of the coast and it was like a moving postcard.  I will include all of these shots since they turned out so well.

The final stop was “London Bridge”, another neat limestone formation. 

It had an interesting story behind it when 2 tourists were on the furthest point of it in 1990 when one of the arches fell into the ocean, stranding them.

After this, it was time to head home and after a few hours drive inland, we arrived back to the Oaks at 10 PM and crashed into bed with a 6:45 wakeup call to make our airport pickup at 7:30.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!
Well, the time has finally come for my trip to the APPT Sydney Grand Final.  I have been very busy with real life lately moving etc so didn’t play a lot of hands in November. I probably only played 3 or 4 thousand hands in November and made a bit thanks to a nice session at 5/10 NL on Carbon Poker. 

But now the time for the big Australia trip has arrived and my wife and I left on December 6^th at 7 AM from Miami headed to Los Angeles.  As I have mentioned previously, we extended our trip from the 5 nights in Sydney that I won with two nights in Melbourne and two nights in Cairns (which is where the great barrier reef diving takes off from.)  With the time change, we arrived in LAX at 10:30 AM or so and our flight to Melbourne didn’t leave until 11:15 PM that night so we had a 13 hour layover which we planned so we could go check out Commerce Casino in L.A.

We previously had a 6 hour layover in LA when we went to Hawaii and had checked out the Hollywood Park Casino which is only about 5 miles from LAX (pretty horrible players but a really shady location and casino).  Since we had more time, we were able to take the 25 minute trip to the poker mecca of the Commerce Casino.  Commerce actually offers complimentary pickup and drop off to LAX subject to availability.  They just ask you to tip the shuttle driver upon arrival.  You just call the concierge to set it up.  I was expecting a typical hotel type shuttle service, so imagine my surprise when the driver calls me on arrival and says he is pulling up in a black stretch limo.  We loaded our bags in and enjoyed a nice ride to Commerce in style.

Commerce was about how you see it on TV with one huge room full of maybe 100 tables and then another large room with 50 more tables.  They also have an assortment of other California approved games such as Baccarat and Pai Gow.  It was kind of strange going into a huge casino without a slot machine in sight.  We had lunch at the sports bar type restaurant and then scoped out the tables.  They had just about any limit you could imagine from 100 NL on up to a 400/800 Horse game and my wife was happy to see they had fixed limit games as well. I surprised my wife with a massage at the Splash Spa ($80 for 60 minutes) to help her relax for the coming marathon flight to Australia and I sat down at a $200 max 3/5 no limit game.  A couple of strange things at Commerce compared to Vegas or other typical poker rooms:  First, the $200 is a maximum and a minimum, no more, no less.  This means you are immediately short stacked compared to a normal $500 (100xBB) game.  Also you can’t top off as you lose a few chips until your stack gets below $100 (half of the initial buyin).  But if you happen to bust on your initial $200, then you are allowed to rebuy for $300 (go figure).  I also considered playing in the $400 game (5 and 10 blinds) which makes you an even shorter stack to begin with.  The blinds are another difference compared to the typical 2/5 blinds found elsewhere.  You put in $3 for the small blind which the dealer immediately takes $1 of for the rake.  Even if it folds around and you “chop” the blinds when it is just you and the BB left, you still don’t get the $1 back, which kind of sucks.  The rake is also heavy at $6 max even on small pots.  Nothing like winning a $20 pot that only has $14 in it because of the rake.

From my previous experiences at, I was expecting wild action at the Commerce and I was actually pretty surprised to find a tight passive table.  Not as tight as online, but still surprising.  Many times raises preflop would kill all the action and only pick up the blinds.  A few noteworthy hands:

I had run my initial $200 buy in up to maybe $350 or so without any notable hands when I pick up QQ in the small blind.  There are maybe 3 or 4 limpers and then the button raises it to $25.  I consider reraising to isolate, but decide to play it a little more conservatively out of position and just call. 3 others call which makes a $125 pot on the flop of JcJh7h.  Clearly not a dream flop, but as long as a J isn’t out there, I am in pretty good shape.  It folds around to a guy who had made a 3 barrel bluff earlier with no pair no draw who bets $75.  The PFR folds and based on his previous play, I decide to call and see if the flush gets there since that is another possible holding for him.  The turn is  the 5c and he bets out $100 ($200 behind).  I consider putting him all in now, but figure if he is ahead, I might lose less by just calling and if he is running a bluff, a raise will let him get away from his hand.  The river comes 2s and he bets enough to put me all in.  At this point, I am putting him on either a J or air or a busted flush draw.  So I make the call and get shown JTs for trips.  I clearly could have gotten him out preflop with a reraise, but I don’t hate how I played it considering his previous bluffiness.  I rebuy for $300 and start to rebuild.

After this, things go very well for me and I run my $300 rebuy stack back up to about $1500 so I am up $1000 when the following hand happens.  I am in middle position with 8h9s and there are 3 limpers in front of me so I call the $5 big blind, the button calls behind me as well and 7 of us see the beautiful flop of 6c7sTs.  The big blind bets out $25 and there are two callers.  I consider raising at this point, but since I am 2^nd to last to act, I decide to wait until the turn to pop it.  So I call the $25 and then the button raises to $100 with about $150 behind.  The BB calls the $75 more and then the UTG person moves all in for $225 total!  So here it is up to me with a raise and a reraise all in and I have the nuts.  The BB had a big stack, but I figured that the cat is already out of the bag once I call the two raises, so I go ahead and move all in (I cover everyone involved).  The button calls all in, the big blind drops out after some thought and when the hands are turned up, I am against Th6h on the button and Js8s from UTG.  I am a huge favorite when a blank comes on the turn, but the offsuit 9c on the river kills my hand and gived the UTG player a higher straight to take the main pot.  I get a small side pot, but the $700 main pot gets shipped to the UTG player.  FWIW, the BB had kings that he limped with and almost didn’t lay them down.

After this, I just kind of get whittled down until a few hands before it is time to leave.  I run into KK when I have TT on a safe flop and lose about $350 on that hand so only ended up leaving with a profit of $250 or so.  My wife kicked butt in her 4-8 limit game and made $200 as well, so we headed back to the airport richer than we arrived and with a little extra spending money for Australia. 

We get to the airport and find out our 11:15 departure has been delayed to 12:30 which ends up getting delayed again and we don’t actually take off until 2:30 AM or so which pushes back our arrival time a couple of hours as well.  The flight was a bit miserable and if you every happen to go, make sure to dress warmly so you are comfortable on the flight.  Also make sure not to be 2 rows behind an infant who is screaming for the first 3 hours.

We finally arrive in Melbourne and take the skybus shuttle from the Airport to our hotel, the Oaks on Market.  The Oaks is really more of a “serviced apartment” than a hotel that includes a kitchenette and a living room rather than just a standard hotel room.  When I priced it out, it ended up being the same price as a hotel with a lot nicer rooms.  The location in the central business district (CBD) of Melbourne was close to everything and we could walk everywhere we wanted to go.  It was about 2:00 PM when we got checked in and it was a beautiful sunny day. 

We decided to go find somewhere to grab a late lunch and a pint and walked a few blocks south of our hotel across the Yarra river to the south bank. 

This was an incredible spot with café after café lined up along the riverfront.  We found a spot called “World Café” and we sampled some of the Australian beers (Hahn Extra Dry and Toohey’s Super Dry) as we snacked on a world dip appetizer.  We pondered staying here all night since the beers appeared to be helping with our jet lag. 

I did want to make sure to check out the highly regarded Crown Casino (home of the Aussie Millions tourney in January), so at about 8:00 we headed over and walked through the casino.  It is really a quite massive and impressive place that compared nicely to a Vegas casino with high end shops and all the games you know and love (although craps was notably absent).  We wandered down to the poker room and checked out what games they had running.  Since it was Saturday night, they had several no limit games running (up to 2/5 with an interest list for 5/10) and also surprisingly had 4 games of 5/10 limit running.  A really interesting thing was they actually had several of the 10 person “Poker Pro” electronic tables  running with $.50/$1 limits.  These tables are all electronic with no dealer and have a touch screen that shows your cards when you cup your hands over it.  Pretty cool to see these actually in action and there were maybe 4 full tables active.  It will be interesting to see if this proliferates in the future since it is undoubtedly cheaper than live dealers.

At this point the Australian Beers and jet lag were both kicking in so we decide not to play and instead head back to the hotel.  We had booked an all day tour leaving the next day at 7:30 AM so we decided to skip the Melbourne nightclubs as well.  That’s it for Day 1-2. More soon!