Since my first two blog posts, I have not played much online poker until the last few days. I was traveling a lot: Singapore, Japan and Macau. The latter was ofcourse a poker trip, and an unprofitable one!
I went to Macau with Quinn (aka ‘Coxquinn’, aka ‘Laser’, plus many other names that he has multi-accounted – just kidding!’). The first day was probably the most eventful. We were supposed to catch the Air Asia morning flight to Macau at 10am. Because I had just come back from an exhausting ski trip in Japan the night before, I was knackered and slept through my alarm. I woke up at 9.10am – which I knew straight away that I already missed my flight!
So I phoned Quinn to tell him that there is no way I can pack my bags and get on the plane in time. He didn’t pick up. I kept trying while I was looking for another flight. On the 10th time or something he finally picked up, to the sound of a person who had just woken up! For what it’s worth, he is a Brown University graduate!
Anyhow, we both booked the afternoon flight (same airline) and made it to the airport on time, but both really pissed off with ourselves for missing the flight. We were supposed to arrive in Macau at 7pm, and this would mean that we would make Day 1b of the Main Event (11,000 HKD) which started at 8.10pm. On the plane, we got really good seats for a low-cost airline; we were sat by the emergency exit, which meant there were more leg room.
Two hours have passed and the plane was about to land, then suddenly there was an announcement. Apparently there were heavy storms and we were heading for Hong Kong because it wasn’t possible to land in Macau. I was furious! I already bought in to the tournament online and I was certainly gonna be very late for it! We landed in Hong Kong and straight away I borrowed Quinn’s roaming to unregister from the tournament.
Unfortunately, I was already too late. Apparently, registration and unregistration closed half an hour before the tournament starts, and it was already 7.50pm. So I decided to email PokerStars (the tournament is sponsored by them and I had previously registered through the software) to get myself unregistered. I think I sent the email to three different PokerStars emails just to make sure they get it in time. I was panicking a bit while Quinn was pretty chilled out because he hasn’t bought in to the tournament yet! I can’t think of many examples where you get rewarded for being disorganized!
Finally in Macau
After about an hour and a half, we finally took off. We landed in Macau Airport without any further holdups and rushed to the taxi to get to the casino. It was about 10pm by the time we got to the Grand Lisboa. I had no idea whether I was unregistered from the tournament, or my chips would be blinded off.
We arrived at the Grand Lisboa and rushed to the cardroom. I spoke to the staff to ask them whether I was in the tournament. When I told them my name they said they had already unregistered me! Well done PokerStars! Anyway late registration was still available and we both got in to the tournament after about an hour’s wait. By this time we had around 40-50 big blinds. I busted at about the last two or three levels of the day.
Quinn made Day 2 but somehow woke up late for it – I even had to wake him up. I think he was around 40 minutes late but quickly chipped up to get to his Day 2 starting stack, but then busted out pretty soon.
We then played the High Rollers (30,000 HKD) and both busted on Day 1. The only highlight for me was getting to play with Johnny Chan. At this point, if poker is fairly new to you, please google ‘poker tournament variance’, just so that you know that I don’t suck at poker! Well maybe I am bad, who knows…
The next day was our last day and we played cash games and degened on Blackjack. I won a bit from cash games but lost about the same amount on Blackjack. So it was another losing trip in Macau, oh well next time…
Back to Grinding Online Poker
I was back home for about two weeks and didn’t play any poker. This was until a few days ago when Quinn cheekily sent me a link to NLHE $25/$50 Leaderboard for March 2012. His new Party Poker screen name was at number one with $100k+ profit! It was done in 1200 hands i.e. what a luckbox! To be honest, he really deserved it and I know he has been grinding very hard for the last year or so.
Anyway, this really got me going. I was obviously a bit jealous. Plus my parents and my girlfriend have been bugging me a lot recently and asking me why I haven’t been playing any poker. They all thought I was broke! And they are the only non-poker people in the world who are supposed to know that I make money playing poker for a living!
So I have been playing a lot in the last three days (Pot Limit Omaha on PokerStars), and won about $5,000. not including any bonuses/rakebacks. I am definitely gonna be playing lots more and will post results in my next blog post, regardless of how well I do.
Thanks for reading!
Mapp888
P.S. I have just realised that I wrote far too much about the journey to Macau. I’m still a newbie to blogging – apologies!
