It sucked, we got thrashed, the end. Okay okay… I’ll go into a bit more detail. Plane arrived in Syndey with no hassles and I met up with Hui at the airport. Rohan had driven up from Sydney and parked in a long term car park that was a couple of km’s away so we caught a cab to pick him up and then go to the hotel, which was pretty close to the airport itself. Once we were checked in we pretty dumped our bags in the room and headed to the train station to go to the game.

We got there without any hassles and had a bite to eat before heading into the ground. Rohan was excited because his team (the Canberra Raiders) were playing in the Toyota Cup Grand Final, which was being played before the main game. We got there in time to catch much of the second half. The game ended in a draw and it went to extra time and Rohan was on the edge of his seat. After an eternity of overtime the Raiders scored a try to break the deadlock and win the game.

The pre-match entertainment was pretty uneventful and the game finally got underway after a long day of anticipation. I wasn’t all that confident going into the game and even early in the game I knew it just wasn’t going to be the Storm’s day. When the Storm went into the halftime break 8-0 I was glad that Manly had missed both their shots at goal and we were still in the game, but I knew things would have to change drastically for the Storm to turn things around. The kicking game without Cameron Smith was a real weakness, we really let ourselves down with some of the finishes of sets of six.

The second half of the game is pretty much a blur, think I just totally tuned out after Manly scored the first try. Once the game was gone the Storm just seem to lose all hope and collapse, which was disappointing, but it doesn’t really matter if you lose by 2 pts or 40, you still lose a Grand Final. In some ways its better to lose in that manner than to lose in a really tight contest where your emotions get toyed with. Congratulations to Manly, they were the better side and the Storm just weren’t in form at the right time of year while Manly peaked when it mattered.

The disappointment of the game was washed away quickly as we got out of Homebush and headed into the city for dinner. Hui took us to a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. The service was pretty bad, but it gave us more time to reminisce about our Vegas trip earlier this year and plan our next potential adventure to Macau. Recently retired Melbourne Lord Mayor John So was sitting at the table behind us and as we walked out he commiserated with me on the Storm’s loss.

I didn’t get much sleep as Rohan and I stayed up watching poker training videos, talking about strategy and concepts and just life in general. I got up early and caught my flight back to Melbourne. On the way home from the airport my car started making some strange noises, so I might have a problem there.

To make a dismal weekend worse when I got home the hotel I stayed at last night called. It turns out I’d stayed at the wrong place! I booked through Wotif and printed out my paperwork thinking I was staying at one hotel, turns out I had it completely wrong. The funny thing is the hotel checked me in no problems at all. The funny side ends there though because now the hotel I stayed out has charged me and I can’t get a refund for the other one it seems. It is a public holiday in Sydney today so everyone who I need to complain to isn’t available so I really can’t get anything sorted.

I am a full ring regular trying my hand at some six max. This hand could just as easily have happened at full ring, but was just interested on your perspective as the dynamic is a tad different.

Villain seemed pretty solid, we had just recently played a blind vs blind pot where I stacked off with AJ on an A high flop to his set of sixes.

Poker Stars $2/$4 No Limit Hold’em - 4 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Hero (SB): $489.00
BB: $734.00
CO: $416.50
BTN: $199.80

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is SB with A A
2 folds, Hero raises to $16, BB calls $12

Flop: ($32.00) 4 T J (2 players)
Hero bets $26, BB calls $26

Turn: ($84.00) Q (2 players)
Hero c/r, b/c or other?

I’m flying up to Sydney around midday tomorrow to attend the 2008 NRL grand final between the Melbourne Storm and Manly Sea Eagles. It is the second year in a row that the two teams have faced off in the season decider. I am a lot less confident this time around than I was last time, but I think I’m actually more fires up. If the Storm do happen to get over the line I think it will be a whole lot sweeter than last year given what has gone on in the last two weeks.

Over the last few seasons the media from the Northern States (rugby league heartland) have been pushing an agenda against the Melbourne Storm and in particular highlighting the supposed use of the illegal grapple tackle. The fact is that yes the Storm have had some ugly tackles, but so has every other team, they just fail to be highlighted because they aren’t from the Storm. In my opinion it is tall poppy sydrome at play and and the media and opposition fans are looking for some sort of out or way to take the gloss off the Storm’s dominance. Mostly, I believe, because they can’t handle the fact that a team outside of New South Wales and Queensland can have had so much success. The same thing happened to the Brisbane Lions when they won three premierships in a row, Essendon and Colling wood tried to balme salary cap conessions and take away from their success.

At the end of the day Cameron Smith is super stiff to be missing the Grand Final and there doesn’t seem to be any jsutice whatsoever if you comapre his involvement in the two tackles he was suspended for this year to that of others in many incidents across the season. We will have to fight for a premiership without our captain, but the great thing about the Storm is that they are a well drilled and balanced team. We have our super stars, but we also have 17 contributers every week and we are the best unit going around. Manly have improved a lot though and the physical drain that having to player three weeks of gruelling finals in a row may show.

I’ll be going to the game with Hui and Rohan. It will be our first re-union since our trip to Vegas. Hopefully I’ll have plenty to report after Sunday from the game and maybe some photos!

The first weekend of October marks the start of the cricketing season in Australia. Brad and I hadn’t played for a club since we were about 12 years old so it really was a new experience fronting up on a field of men. The games are played over two Saturday’s, so the conclusion will be next Saturday, but it isn’t looking good for our team.

We won the toss and elected to bat. The openers stayed out there for a while keeping them out and taking the shine off the ball, but once one of them fell we had a mini collapse to 3-28. The ship was somewhat steadied before we lost another couple of wickets to be 6-93 three balls before tea. Brad was forced to go out a face those three nerbe racking deliveries, but managed to get through to the break unscathed despite some nerves. After the break he cut lose and bit and played some nice shots and had some luck along to way to make 15. Soon after another wicket fell and it was time for me to head to the crease at number 10.

Batting out in the middle is absolutely nothing like fronting up in the nets. You don’t have 11 white shirts ringed around you talking smack. I started at the non-strikers and two balls later my partner got cleaned bowled and it looked like I might not even get to face a ball. The number 11 came out and we managed to stick around for a while, an over and a bit later I scored by first and only two runs with a small punch through the on-side. Not long after that my partner was given out off a dubious caught behind and I was left not out on two.

For my first batting experience I was glad to finish unbeaten, but I would like to have spent more time out there. It will be interesting to see whether that remains my batting position in future games. The team total finished at 146 and we used only 57 of out 65 overs. Thus, we were forced to front up on the field for five overs with the sun getting low in the sky making it very hard to field with it blazing in our eyes.

The last five overs ruined the day completely, our opening bowlers got carted by one of the batsman… it was absolute carnage. The ball seemed to be following me around on the field too, I would have covered a fair bit of ground chasing balls around and going to retrieve them when they had been smacked for a boundary. The guy ended up lodging a half century in just five overs and they went to stumps 0-57. What was unfortunate about it all was that we had three small chances to get him out along the way and we didn’t take them.

We will front up next week needing a lot of luck to go our way tod raw us back into the contest. All in all though it was good to get my first bat out of the way and hopefully I get to have a bowl next week.

My new Dell Studio 17 laptop arrived the other day and I forgot to blog about it! The reason behind my purchase was preparation for a long hot summer spent under the air conditioner and to give me scope to travel in the future. The other laptops I have are old and can’t handle the rigors of mass-tabling online poker so it was time for an upgrade.

I got a choice of colour and I went with the ‘tangerine orange’. I’ve listed all the specifications below for anyone that is interested.