Yeah I'm back. For the timebeing anyway...

Due to popular demand and the fact that I have a fair bit of spare time on my hands now, I thought I'd try blogging again to keep myself (and my legion of fans) happy.

A lot has happened in the past 6 months since I last blogged but there's no point in going into details as most of you probably already know because I talk to most of you on Facebook, MSN, GTalk or some other method of communication.

I guess the most drastic change which has happened in the last 6 months is that I've decided to give up work for 5 months. This started at the beginning of 2008 (Jan 2 was my last day in the office). I decided that I really needed to take a break from the 9-5 grind of working in an office environment because I wasn't applying myself like I knew I should and my feeling is that if you're not putting in 100%, it's not worth doing.

In doing so though it left me with a bit of a dilema. What am I going to do for income? Well, as most of you already know or have guessed, I'm now playing poker full time. I play both live and online now. I've never really been attracted to online poker but considering that it's so much accessible than live poker AND the commissions are lower, online poker actually does make sense. I've been primarily playing cash games on Full Tilt Poker and playing tournaments on both FPT and Poker Stars. I find the cash games on FTP softer than Stars and I get a nice rakeback from it which is important when playing a high volume of hands. I'm going to start playing on Pacific Poker and a new site T6Poker soon but right now I'm focussing on building an online bankroll on FTP.

The Aussie Millions poker tournaments have just finished up at Crown and was very successful. Although numbers were generally down in most events, the Main Event was actually up. Last year 747 participants took to the felt and this year 780 turned up to play. I unfortuantely missed out playing the Main Event due to not qualifying but I did play 4 other tournaments. I played the $550 7 card stud/HiLo/Razz Tournament, the $1100 Limit Holdem Tournament, the $1650 Bounty Event and the piece de resistance (for me anyway), the $1100 Turbo Tournament. Why I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you. It's coz I finally won a major fricken event! That's right! I won something BIG! It's been a long time in the waiting and I've had some decent results before by winning smaller tournaments but this was an absolute ripper to add to the poker resume! It's definitely the biggest and most important tournament I've ever won and I'm over the moon (as you can probably tell). Finally, when my money went in good, it stayed good. I only had 1 suckout during the whole event and that was when I open shoved from the cutoff with Ac6c for 34k when the blinds were 800/1600 and got called by AJos and I spiked a 6 on the flop. Everything else went to plan and I masterfully played AA twice to double up and then stack another player. It seemed like the stars had all aligned correctly and it was simply my time to do something.

Now with almighty pay check and some recognition that I can play, it puts me in good stead to take on more major tournaments coming up in 2008. I plan on playing in a number of APPT events this year but the schedule hasn't been finalised and it will depend on my committments here at home.

Life at home is pretty damn peachy too but I'll there isn't much to report on that front. No news is good news apparently and that's exactly it. Pouty is now one of the head honchos at her workplace which is really cool. I'm really proud of her and her efforts to climb the corporate ladder. It seems to me though that it's not as great as she expected. She's a little high strung since she took on the role but I'm trying to explain to her that long hours and bringing home work is the norm for a private sector worker. She's been sheltered all her life working for the Government but it seems that in this department of the Government, things are different for the managers and she's having trouble adapting to it. I'm sure she'll get there in the end though.

Time to go and do things now but I hope my latest blog didn't bore you to death and it brings you up to date on my World. I'll try to post a little more regularly in the future.

4 more sleeps

It's been nearly a month since my last blog and I'm not sure where all the time has gone. My life is generally quite boring and simply involves going to work, playing golf on the weekends and when I get time, throw some poker in there.

Not much has changed in the last few weeks except the fact that I'm going on holidays in 4 sleeps time! Yay! I'm uber excited about this trip as it's my first O/S trip in 2 years. I'll be heading to Vietnam and Malaysia for 3 weeks in total. The first 5 days will be in Saigon, followed by 5 days in Hanoi and then we fly to Malaysia for 5 days in Langkawi and then another 5 days in KL. It's a pretty jammed packed trip and I expect to do nothing but relax, play golf, shop and eat.

I have no idea what to expect when I get to Vietnam as I've never been there before but my friends who have gone say it's a wonderful place full of history and amazing sites. Having Pouty with me will also be an added bonus as she can speak Viet and translate/barter for me when we go out and about to explore.

Work this week however is somewhat hectic as I've got a few deadlines to meet before I can go on this holiday without the thought of work plaguing me. Unfortuantely, one of the servers has died today and hence I'm writing my blog now rather than in spare time at home. If this continues, it may be a very late Friday night when I get out.

I haven't been playing all that much golf recently as it's cold and miserable here in Melbourne right now. The maximum temp is struggling to hit 13 degrees most days and I usually play early in the morning so it's no more than 7 or 8 degrees when I'm teeing off which isn't much fun and even less so if it's wet. I've gotten to the point where I'm quite selective of the days and conditions I play in as I want to go out there to enjoy myself, not to get all grumpy and sick which is usually the case when it's wet and windy. I played last Sat in a stroke round at Commonwealth where I shot a very respectable 41 on the front but collapsed on the back 9 with a 48 which brought me right back to handicap. I was hoping for a good round as I was striking the ball well but it all fell apart on the back for some reason. Just bad positioning really which I can only blame myself for. The putting was actually surprisingly good with on 30 putts all round which is extraordinary for me considering I suck at putting.

I also played a round the week before with some mates at Amstel GC which is a public course in Cranbourne. It was best ball match play and my parter and I came through with the goods to win our match 3 & 2 in a hard fought battle considering we were 1 down going round the turn. Our prize for winning was our round of golf was free and so was lunch. Mmmmm, free lunch.

Poker has been an absolute killer for me recently. I can't seem to win at any decent rate. Online I'm about 2.3k down for the past fortnight and I'm 2.4k down in live games for the month. I have no idea why I'm running so bad right now. I'm winning my fair share of pots but I think the pots I'm losing are far larger than what I'm winning. I am going to take some time with a couple mates when I get back from holidays to examine each other's game and bounce ideas off each other on how to become a better player. My tournament play is still reasonable though as I came 4th in the $340 Friday night tourney at Crown a couple weeks back which I won a satellite to get into for $90. 4th paid just over $900 so that was ok for a night's work.

I've stepped up my live games though and play the $2/5 NLH and when it gets up, the $5/10 NLH. Having 100BB really helps the cause when playing real poker and I find I play big stack poker a lot more effectively than short stacked. It's easier to manouver hands and intimidate other players when you're betting 15% of your stack to their 50%. The $5/10 game is brutal though and can swing big time. Although some may consider $5/10 to be middle (if not small stakes), it's a level I'm becoming more adjusted to and the level of play is far better than that of $2/5 which was still at a pretty good level. It's funny though. Even though I play the biggest live game Crown regularly offers, I still find myself losing online playing the $1/2 or $2/4 games. I think I rely too much on my read of other players which I don't the the benefit of online. I can only judge one's play by how much they bet, their betting style and how long it takes them to react. I really need to learn how to play online better if I'm to be a better all rounded player.

Some of my friends are playing in the World Series of Poker currently being run over in Vegas. This is the jewel in the crown for serious poker players as there is WSOP 55 bracelets on offer including the $50k H.O.R.S.E tourney and the $10k WSOP Main Event which paid US$12M to Jamie Gold last year. Some would argue that the $50k H.O.R.S.E tourney is the hardest to win as you have to be skilled in 5 different forms of poker rather than just NLH which is the structure of the main event. However, what makes winning the main event so hard is that you'll have to go through nearly 10k people this year to do it.

Anyhoo, it's time to get back to work so to those in KL, I'll be seeing you in July. Keep the cars running and the drinks cold!

No rest for the wicked.

WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, WORK, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, POKER, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS, CARS.

And that’s about it for the last couple weeks :( I lead a rather boring life right now.

The week after

The Melbourne Poker Championships for 2007 are over and I'm pooped. I only ended up playing in 1 tourney which was the $175 NLH turbo event which started with 294 runners. After 7 hours of play, I ended up coming 12th which I'm fairly happy with. It was my first tourney in sometime and I think I played some decent poker to end up in the money. What pissed me off though was the pay structure. It was crazy! The top 30 got paid but here's the thing. The difference between coming 11th and 30th was $88! That's right. It takes an extra 2 hours of play to make another $88! 21-30 got paid $353 and 11-29 got $441. 10th however got $882 and the prizes after that pretty much shot up from there.

Tournaments which are so top heavy rely on people making bad decisions for all their chips in a desperate move to make it up the pay structure. I'm more of a fan of playing real poker where you don't have to move all in on any ace high or small pair but that's what was required here.

My final hand was when we were 6 handed on 2 tables. I was sitting on 33k and the blinds were 6k/12k. The under the gun folded to me and I had to make a move with my Kh9h so I pushed. It folded round to the BB who had about 65k infront of him. He reluctantly called showing 7-5os. I was a big favourite to win this hand but as probability would have it, he hit his 7 on the river sending me packing. Ah well. Whatever. I wasn't really fussed. I was card dead for 3 levels when I couldn't get anything half decent so my blinds just dwindled away.

I missed out on the main event due to case of "didn't wake up in time" and CBFs. I've been playing a lot of cash games recently and it's now taking its toll on me. I'm going to take a bit of a break from it all after this week and recharge the poker batteries.

Besides poker, life has been cruising along quite nicely. I've got DECA on this weekend again in Shepperton and that's going to be awesome! I just got my car back from RE Customs and Ray and the boys there have done a great job on it. My car needed a turbo rebuild, some new cooler piping, a tune and some TLC which it received with a smile. The car is now making 388awkw which means I'm still having a ball in it. I did a quick timed run from 0-100km/h the other night and managed to clock it a 3.4secs which an average launch. I reckon it'll be good for a 3.2 but we'll just see how it goes.

Still trying to save money for Vietnam and Malaysia but I'm pretty sure now that most of the trip is going to be funded by my poker bankroll. I know Vietnam and Malaysia both prefer cash rather than credit card so I'm trying my best at putting cash away to take on the trip. I'll just use the credit card for anything I want that's crazy expensive.

Till next time, sleep tight!

Quick Update

It's been nearly 3 weeks since my last blog so I can't remember everything that's happened in that time so I'll just give you quick tid bits of what I can remember.

I guess the most important thing that's happened is Pouty has now offically become a member of the 30 club. Her birthday was on April 25 and I tried to make it as special for her as possible. Pouty usually loves her birthday but for the fact that this one was going to be for the big 30, she was somewhat depressed about it. She's always wanted a surprise birthday party and has complained that noone has ever done one for her so with the help of her best friend we put a plan into action. 6 weeks before the event, we began planning but collecting the details of all of Pouty's closest friends to gather for a dinner in Fitzroy called Claypots. By the time the day came round, we were all prepared and ready to rock! I told Pouty we were going for a drink with her friend before heading home and after some coercing, I convinced her to go.

Upon walking through the door, she was surprised by 32 of her closest friends and family. Her face was priceless and we knew we'd done the job. She was so happy that we'd managed to make the depression of turning 30 into a real celebration.

In her words, "That was the BEST birthday I've ever had!". I was satisfied with that.

To top it off, I took Pouty to Sydney on Monday to have dinner at Tetsuya's which one of our favourite restaurants in Australia. It recently got voted as the #5 restaurant in the World. Their signature dish is a Confit of Petuna Tasmanian Ocean Trout with Konbu, Daikon & Fennel (Photo). It was a 10 course degustation dinner beginning with 5 seafood courses followed by a course of wagu beef, a serving of duck and then 3 deserts. I absolutely love dining there but due to geographical and financial difficulties, this is something we can only do once a year, if that.

We flew back to Melb on Pouty's birthday as it's a public holiday here in AU and most things are shut. By the time we got home, we were both pretty tired but we stopped off at Pouty's parent's house to say hi to mum and dad. A quick stay turned into having something to eat (which I can't complain about as it's ALWAYS yummy) and some chit chat about things going on. The rest of the day was spent at home bumming out until the sun went down and I headed to Crown for a bit of poker action.

Poker has been good for me in the last week or so. After 6 sessions, I'm up about $3200 which has pretty much covered my airfares and accommodation for our upcoming holiday. All I need to do now is save/win some spending money. The Melbourne Championships are underway right now and in 3 events, I've cashed in 1. It was only a small one but I'm pretty revved up for the main event which on Saturday. It's a $1100 buy-in event with a $10k starting stack! Deep stack poker is always fun and I'm playing decent poker right now so I hope to go deep into that one. I also have a private $1k buy-in event on 8 May which is only 20 people but all the entry fees go back to the players and it will pay top 5 with 1st gettting $10k! I can't wait for these events and expect big things.

I guess my next blog will be after the Melb Champs and my private tourney so I'll keep you updated. Until then, take care!

Motivation - The lack there of...

I have no idea why but I've been hit with a massive wave of the CBFs (Can't Be Fucked). There is no real reason why I should be feeling this way either and it's really shitting me.

Life has been ok in the past few weeks and now that I'm going on holiday in 10 weeks, I should be happy with what's going on.

I have a strange feeling that it's due to a bit of a snowball effect thing where a number of little niggly things are starting to build up and bringing a need for concern which means that other things suffer.

One of these things is my motivation. In the last week, I've worked damn hard to bring up my average workload here so that I can start getting into people's good books and hopefully progress further into my career here. It's a good company with a lot of room for progression but I need to stand out from the rest of the crowd if I'm to get anywhere around here. Today though is different. I've been working my ass off to put my initials next to as many test cases as possible and either passing or failing them but for some reason, I'm working at about half pace today. The fact that I'm writing this blog at 1109 in the morning is evidence that the CBF bug has really gotten to me.

Yeah, I know it's Friday but it was also a short week due to Easter so that's no excuse for procrastinating like this. I think it may also have something to do with my finding out today that although I passed my last testers exam, I'm not certified yet because they forgot to mention I had to sit the general overview course first and pass that exam which actually means that I've now done my exams out of order. I know have to go and study the overview course first and then sit that exam and pass and then they will say I'm certified. What a bunch of bollox! Why didn't they tell me this initally? I was waiting for my pretty certificate to be handed to me at our next Testers Practice meeting and my name along with my 2 colleagues in the weekly newsletter. Ah well, at least I've passed 50% of it now. I just need to find the time now to do the other exam.

Home life is ok I guess. There's been a couple issues at home but nothing that looks life threatening. Defiantly need for worry in some areas but like all good things, I'm sure things will work themselves out eventually.

SAU is starting to take up heaps of time though. Our Secretary has had to step down from her role last week due to personal reasons. Because of this, we've had to call an Extraordinary General Meeting for next week to hold elections for a new Secretary. As this has never happened before, all the members and committee are going over our constitution with a fine tooth comb to make sure that we're doing things by the book. There are questions flying left, right and centre and chaos is about to take to the streets! I just hope that after the election things die down again and we can all get back to our normal lives. DECA is also coming up in mid May so preparations are beginning for that too. It's going to be massive in Shepperton as some people from SAU-NSW are going to come down and join us for the fabled SAU DECA Weekends.

Poker has been a roller coaster ride this week. After making a tidy profit last week, I played on Wed and Thurs to lose a fair chunk of the previous winnings. Wed was the worst when in 2 hands, I'd lost $950.

The first was when I flopped the nut straight and made my leading bet $70 into a $130 pot. This was called by 1 player and everyone else folded. The turn brought a 2nd club to the board and I bet $250 into a $270 pot. He then pushed his stack of $450 into the pot which I instantly called knowing he was on the flush draw which he was. Great read. River card was a club and that was it. He had nothing to call on the flop besides his K high and a backdoor flush. Fucking banana!

The next one was when I raised from the cutoff with 88. 4 players and the flop came A 8 4 rainbow. Early position bets $60 into a $120 pot. 1 caller and a fold. I smooth call with no danger on the board. The turn brings an Js making it 2 spades on the board. Initial bettor puts $100 into a $320 pot. This is called by the next player and I now raise it to $400. The initial bettor thinks for what seems to be forever and then pushes all in. The next guy then thinks forever and folds his J 10. I instant call. He turns over AJos for 2 pair and I turn over my 8s. The river then brought 1 of 2 cards which were going to screw me over. Another A hit the board giving him a full house As over Js and I had 8s over As. Absolute cooler hand!

Last night was a case of trying to win back my $1k. I managed to get $400 of it back before giving up on it all and walking out disappointed that I didn't play more hands while in position as I was flopping 2 pair or turning straights with non suited connectors. It was disciplined play but a case of "What could have been".

I hope that I'll get out of this rut soon as it's starting to really piss me off. I should be happy! I've got a good life with good friends, good family, good health (as good as could be expected), and a good job. Is there really anything else I need?

AutoSalon and holidays!

Once again it's been while since I last blogged. Same excuses as before though. Simply no time.

Melbourne AutoSalon was held a couple weeks back and I decided to head down there with a couple mates to check it out. SAU usually has a stand present but now that they hold 2 shows a year, we've decided to make a big appearance at the November show rather than the April show because it's too close to our stand at the GP each year. There were a fair few nice cars there but the coolest things were the bikes! People have decided that there is only so much bling you can put on a car so they've moved onto bikes now. There was a really sexy black GSX-R 1000 with gold handlebars and other sections done in gold which made it look HOT! There are some pictures in my slide show on the right of the blog if you're interested to check it out.

I also played my 2nd round of Charles Lane at Commonwealth a couple weekends back. Once again, my opponent didn't seem to want to win. I thought I was going to go down in a blaze of glory in this round as I was playing the runner-up in the club championship. A very competitive man who has won the club championship twice and countless monthly medals for his efforts. After squaring the 1st hole, it was downhill for him from there. I won the 2nd, 3rd and 4th convincingly. He missed a putt on 4 to square the hole but it lipped out taking me to 3 up after 4 holes. We squared 5-7 but I then took 8 with a good second shot and 2 putted for a net birdie. We squared the short par 3 9th and it was pretty much over from there. Being 4 up after 9 gave me a pretty comfortable buffer for the rest of the match where I just kept my ball in play. I managed to birdie the short par 5 13th too which then put me at 5 up with 5 to play. I couldn't lose which was a good feeling. He managed to hole a 35 foot putt on 15 to give him a chance but unfortunately pulled his drive on 16 into the lake which meant that I only had to finish the hole to win and seal the match.

All in all, I didn't play brilliant golf but I did enough to keep the pressure on him to try to make shots which in the end made him fail. My next round is next week when I play another guy I know fairly well. We've played on Sat mornings before and he doesn't know what giving up is. He'll fight to the end and I'm really looking forward to our match.

I've played a couple other times in between but I'm hitting the ball really badly right now, especially my putting. I really need to get some practice in if I'm to advance to round 4. I've got to the point now where I know where my weaknesses are and where I need to improve to bring my handicap down so I'll just work away at it until my match and we'll see what happens. I really enjoy match play. It's a great form of the game which makes you think about every shot before playing it. Do you play aggressively or defensively? What can you do within the rules to put pressure on your opponent? It really does become a mental game with one's self to play well and forget about previous bad shots.

Pouty and I went to the Comedy Festival Gala last week which is a bit of a ritual for us. There are a number of great comedians out here at the moment including a couple Poms which we thought were outstanding. I don't have the brochure with me so I'm not even going to guess names. We also say Wil Anderson last week for his solo show. He's never one to let the crowd down and once again, he was brilliant! We're off to see Puppet Up Uncensored on Sunday night which is essentially an adults version of The Muppets. I can't wait and the reviews say that it's awesome!

Heading to the footy on Friday night to watch my beloved Richmond Tigers take on Pouty's Collingwood Magpies. I'm not expecting much from my team considering we're now 0-2 for the season and we haven't really looked like playing as a solid unit yet. There's a lot of fight in them to come back from behind but we really shouldn't be behind to start with. Along with that, injuries are striking again and with another 20 rounds to go, I'm sorry to say but making the finals for us will be nothing but luck. We need people like Nathan Brown, Matthew Richardson and other key senior members to pick up their game and inspire our young side.

On another note, we had our SAU renewal BBQ day at RE Customs a couple weeks back. My car put on a dismal effort on the dyno clocking up 325.9awkw. This is very disappointing as I was expecting somewhere closer to the 400awkw mark. I've now left the car down there with Ray to examine where the problem is and he called me today with some bad news. There's a boost leak from one of the cooler piping which has collapsed in on itself due to high ware and tear. I was losing about 45kw through this leak. In a way, it's a good thing because I know where the power was being lost but it's a bad thing in that I need some new piping made up. I've also asked Ray to have a look at a couple other little issues which hopefully he can fix without my problem. I hope with a new workshop looking at my car, all the small niggly things can be identified and fixed so I don't have to worry about them anymore.

Poker has been good recently. I've played a couple times in the last week or so and I've made just over $2600 in those sessions. This is a great time to make money (more so than usual) because I'm going on holidays! Pouty, I and my family are taking a 3 week trip to Vietnam (Saigon and Hanoi) and then to Malaysia (KL and Langkawi) It's gonna be ace because this will be the first trip I've been OS with Pouty since 2004 when we went to Malaysia and Thailand. I've never been to Vietnam so I'm really looking forward to it and I have lots of friends and family in KL I really want to see.

The Melbourne Poker Championships are coming up in late April too so I hope to be playing in a number of events there and hopefully make a good cash in at least one of the tournaments. I haven't been playing tourneys recently because I've wanted to improve my cash game which is what I usually play. I've been trying to concentrate harder on the hands I'm not involved in to study my opponents and their betting techniques. You can learn a lot from people when you watch them persistently and not involved in a hand. It's what pros like Phil Ivey and Erik Lindgren do constantly and it seems to work. It's just another facet of my game I want to work on.