Aussie Review

There’s no rest for the wicked. With Christmas and New Year celebrations barely out of the way, 2007’s poker frenzy kicks off with a trip down under to play in the prestigious Aussie Millions at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. I had the wisdom to let my good mate and Hendon Mob player Ram Vaswani book my ticket, and we end up flying first class all the way with Emirates, including a limousine pick-up from Cardiff, naturally.

Apparently, that’s the way it works when you fly first class. All very nice, with five-star services, but it comes at a cost – in this case the price of a first class ticket is equal to the gross national product of a developing country. If I was really clever, I could have bought myself a car, hired a driver and still had enough change for a whizz-bang family holiday… for exactly the same cost!

To be fair, if you’ve got the money, it’s has to be the only way to fly to Australia. It’s such a long haul flight to Oz, that it pays to do it in style and comfort. With Emirates, you have your own private sleeping pod – a cabin with electric sliding doors that keeps you cocooned inside with your own full-size bed and PJs thrown in ‘on the house’.

As a result, when Ram and I arrive at Crown Towers, we’re both pleasantly surprised to discover that we’ve touched down utterly refreshed and without any signs of jetlag. So we decide that our first port of call should be the golf course… before we even check in to the hotel.

High life

The venue for the Aussie Millions is the Crown Casino, which boasts two hotel properties, including the luxury Crown Towers, where I’m lucky enough to be staying for the duration. It’s the hotel of choice for a stable of international stars, that over the years have included the likes of Bill Clinton, Elton John, Jerry Lewis, Ricky Martin, Kylie Minogue and the Manchester United football team. Right now, all the Full Tilt team are present and accounted for – Howard Lederer, Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Phil Ivey – as well as just about every other top poker pro you can name.

The Aussie Millions also happens to coincide with the Australian Open tennis championship and the back end of the England cricket team’s miserable Ashes tour. Consequently, the hotel is full of famous faces. I just met Andy Roddick in the lift and Martina Hingis by the pool. Had to blank them both though, as I have an important tournament later in the day and don’t want to lose focus! Although Roddick was overheard whispering discreetly to his coach as he walked by, ‘That’s Vam Raswani.’ He obviously hasn’t caught on to the top players like me yet…

Black day

The 2007 Aussie Millions is my first outing for my new sponsor MANSION. COM, so I know it’s important to get off to a winning start. So what do I do? I go and get knocked out in 20th spot in an Omaha tourney to none other than Irishman Andy Black who goes on to win the tournament. Bizarre, don’t you think? I travel to the other side of the world to get beaten by a player I bump into every week at home.

But I’ve got my own back already though, having just provided expert analysis for the William Hill Poker Grand Prix for Sky TV. I gave Andy some grief for playing like a girl – a comment he agreed with actually. Revenge is sweet.

Anyway, the media event is about to start, and all the tennis players are here, along with Aussie spin-king Shane Warne, who’s also pencilled in to start in the Main Event. I go to a cash game and sit down with Andy Roddick and that chick from the American Pie movies, Shannon Elizabeth. So it’s not a game, but more of a media frenzy, and they all end up playing a sit-and-go with loads of top tennis players taking part. They really seem to have a passion for poker, which is great to see. I guess there’s always a lot of waiting around in between matches (or rain breaks at Wimbledon), which is conducive to dealing out a few hands of Hold’em.

Of course, I’m in Australia, so I’m determined not to leave the country without some sun, sand and surf. After a day on the beach – well, 20 minutes to be exact, as that’s all we can cope with in spite of being coated in factor 30 sunblock and having a ray shield held over me (due to the lack of an ozone layer) – we return to the day job and play some poker.

(Interestingly, I just watched that documentary by Al Gore – An Inconvenient Truth – on the state of the planet. Apparently, Australia and America are the only two countries not to have signed up to the Kyoto agreement. On the basic premise that this agreement has been set up to save the ozone – and Oz hasn’t got one – you can kind of see their point.)

Running man

When I say play ‘some poker’, that’s exactly what I mean. I last exactly five hours in the Main Event, even with a starting stack of 20,000. I’ve slowly built my chips up to 38,000 by the end of the first 90-minute level. Allen Cunningham is on my right and Patrik Antonius is ominously to my left. Antonius cracks my Kings on a board of 8-9-K with Jacks – lol – when a Queen and Ten come on the turn and river to make an improbable straight.

Unsurprisingly (with that kind of luck) Patrik is massive chip leader at the end of Day 1A with 325,000. But he endures a rollercoaster ride on Day 2. Apparently Finland’s finest was close to going out early on, managing to decimate his stack to a mere 2400 half way through the day, which just about covered his antes. Patrick was forced to move all-in with A-10 in a four-way pot, and miraculously re-built to the dizzy heights of 210,000, before finishing the day on 170,000.

No such heady heights for me I’m afraid as my Main Event debacle goes from bad to worse. I’m the big blind and Allen Cunningham the small. He makes up the bet and we see a flop, which comes down 2-6-9 rainbow, and I hold 7-10. Cunningham bets small and I call for my gutshot draw. The turn is a Four. He bets, I raise and he calls. The river is an Ace and he checks. I decide in my wisdom, that he was stealing with an Ace, and now he’s got lucky and hit it on the end, so I check with resignation.

‘Pair’ he declares, and I muck.
‘Wow,’ he says, as he shows 8-3 for an Eight-high hand.
‘Where’s your pair that you declared?’ I ask.
Cunningham replies, ‘I said I have NO pair!!’

The player on his right confirms this. I reach in the muck and show my 7-10 to the amusement of all watching. So there you have it – I can’t even win a showdown with the best hand! What chance of actually winning? None as it happens, as I’m out several hands later.

Mood-killer

In the end, despite his second day heroics, Antonius’s rollercoaster ride comes to an end when he’s busted out in 13th by eventual winner Gus Hansen (see p32 for full interview with the great Dane). It’s a hand that Antonius feels very aggrieved about as Hansen takes a full seven minutes to move all-in with trip Jacks. Patrik calls with Ah-8h on the turn, giving him top pair and a nut flush draw, which he misses. The pair are very good friends, and the perceived ‘moody’ becomes the talking point of the final.

As for me, well luckily Andy Black never saw that hand that I mucked and offers a two percent saver, to which I readily agree. He knocked me out of the Omaha tournament in 20th place and went on to come second, so I reckon he’s on form. Sure enough he puts up another solid performance and comes third in the Main Event collecting AU$700,000 for his efforts, of which I get a AU$14,000 sweetener.

All in all, it’s been a great trip to one of the premier poker venues on the world tour. And while I think about what might have been I draw comfort in the fact that the biggest bad beat of the year so far must be the fact that actor-turned-poker pro Michael Greco hasn’t pulled one chick in a two-week attempt. He’s a disgrace to the navy, says one wag.