Upon entering the grocery store I spot a large yellow advertisement. Mushrooms, on sale! A sucker for a bargain I hastily bagged a couple dozen of the little fellas, nary a thought in mind for what would become of them. Fast forward to today. I remember my haul which has now well and truly made a home in the bottom drawer of my fridge. “I should probably use em”. Dinner was leftovers from last night so I wasn’t looking to create a main meal here, just something to add to the side. I needed a recipe so I did a google and was ready to begin.

Sauteing in some olive oil

Melt some butter and toss to brown

Here’s where it gets good! Add salt, pepper and some crushed garlic. Then throw in some thyme, a squeeze of lemon juice and half a cup of white wine. Let simmer until most of the liquid is gone.

Tear some fresh parsley over to finish it off and serve! Great on it’s own or on the side of anything at all. Delicious, quick, and ridiculously simple.

[x] Will make again.

Recently there has been a spur of discussion over the possibility of adding additional PLO tournaments to the regular schedule on PokerStars. That makes this as good a time as any to chime in with my thoughts on the matter.

Firstly, I am in full support of more tournaments with greater ranges of buyins and higher guarantees. That probably comes as no shock. Not only would more/bigger tournaments appeal to me on a personal level as a glutton for punishment (aka a PLO regular) attempting to quench the unquenchable thirst to further gamble on the four card game we all love but it has plenty of auxiliary benefits too. Tournaments are a fantastic way to introduce new players to a game by offering high prizes and (generally; hopefully) a lengthy playing experience all for a relatively small buyin. They’re also just downright fun and exciting to play. All good stuff.

I’ve taken the liberty of transferring the schedule of PLO tournaments currently available to an easily readable spreadsheet which I’ve posted below:

Clearly there is already a solid spectrum of available tournaments on a daily basis with three additional weekly tournaments offering larger buyins/guaranteed prize pools. But there’s always room for improvement. Let me note here that whilst Stars has indicated an interest in additional PLO tournaments there is presumably a lot of decision making that would go into any major implementations and such it could take a while to happen, if it happens at all. Here is a quote from PokerStars Bryan from 2p2 earlier this week:

Just as an FYI, this idea is being actively discussed by the Tournaments Team at this time. That’s no guarantee of change coming, but we’re discussing it…

A good sign for sure but nothing iron clad. One thing that I think we (the PLO community) can do to better improve the chances of having the tournaments we want added to the schedule is to show your interest.

Stars is a great company in the sense that they routinely solicit and act on customer feedback. If you want more omaha tournaments, let them know! You can do this by posting in a thread they monitor on the forums, shooting an email through or even better by increasing the amount of tournaments you currently play. They will notice.

Something interesting I discovered recently: a few people mentioned adding things like ” a daily $20r tournament”, a thought I myself independently had. Turns out much to the chagrin of myself and some others, there already is that exact tournament every day o_0! That brings me to my next point which is the level of ignorance about the current schedule and what can be done to fix that. Well for starters hopefully this blog post and the above table will help remedy that. Furthermore spread the word – tell your friends, use twitter, facebook, whatever you can and let’s really work on getting omaha tournaments out there.

One problem a lot of people have at the moment is that the guarantees and subsequent prize pools are “too low” compared to the cash game stakes at which they regularly grind. That’s a fair point. The problem is that the guarantees won’t be increased unless more people are playing, and more people won’t play unless they’re increased… the quintessential catch 22. My proposal is to mix in the occasional tournament or four when playing a cash game session – something I plan to do and hopefully if others do the same it will inch forward the progress resulting in regularly higher prize pools. Slowly, but surely.

Anyway, I won’t droll on further — the main purpose of this entry was to post that schedule alongside some quick thoughts. There are still a few awesome TCOOP tournaments left too – good luck to anyone playing in them!

I want to talk a bit about the benefits of having an online presence. I use the term “online presence” extraordinarily loosely: I doubt I could properly define exactly what I mean by it. I imagine it encompasses anything and everything that is attached to “you” online. Whether it’s your real name, a screen name (or many), a mix or none of the above – almost everyone now has an online presence. There are plenty of people who prefer to stay as anonymous as possible and I while can’t fault this right now it is becoming increasingly more difficult to stay under the online radar both personally and professionally. Embrace it, I say.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, YouTube, Forums, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WhatSquare? I’m not even going to pretend to be an authority on this subject matter. I merely try to stay up to date, and that’s hard enough. Being an expert is a full time job. It took me a while to move my online interactions past forums and instant messenger programs but slowly and surely I started to recognise the benefits.

Professionally (at least as a poker player) it can open doors: sponsorship deals become possible when people start to know who you are, your appeal as a video creator for a training site goes up and you can advertise coaching to a wider audience. Not to mention the connections you can make with poker players with whom you can discuss theory and strategy to excel your game to new levels.

On a personal level you can make real friendships with like-minded people from all around the world. I’ve met some of my best friends online. You can starve off boredom by interacting with the rest of the world on twitter or reddit. Hell, starving off boredom doesn’t give what you can do justice – you can expand your mind an amazing amount by reading some of the great content on the world wide web. “Duh!” someone just said. It’s obvious, but far too few people take advantage of the learning possibilities available.

While I was at the PCA we had a Team Online meeting where, amongst many other discussions, we received a great talk on Social Media. I won’t go into full detail of everything discussed but there was a lot of food for thought given and one direct result of the meeting has been the creation of my Facebook Page. I had literally never thought of having such a thing in the past – what’s the point? Well it turns out there are a lot of nifty benefits. I can use the page to post things that are too big for a tweet but too shallow for a blog post. I can use it to better interact with anyone interested in my poker or life. I can use the page to better promote poker and specifically PLO. And I intend to do all these things.

Promoting poker/PLO is something I am especially vested in. Not only is it my game of choice but I firmly believe it is the future of poker (I won’t expand on why I think that here but suffice to say I have my reasons). I plan to use my page to post short articles and tidbits that might help those new to the game grasp certain concepts better – or better yet to help show the glory of the game to someone on the edge about trying their hand at it, hopefully swaying them in the right direction! It can also be a great place to bounce ideas of people – suggestions for promotions or challenges I can do, thoughts on the state of the games and ideas to improve the landscape of online omaha. I love feedback both on a personal level and as an ambassador for PokerStars so the wider an audience I can reach, and the easier they can reach me (and through me Stars) the better!

One idea that extends the concept of interaction is to request hand histories from anyone who wants to send them in and review them in short ~2-5 minute videos posted on the page. Actually let’s try that now – if anyone interested in getting a HH reviewed send me a msg through my page and I will pick a select few to analyse. If I don’t pick yours for the video, and there aren’t too many overall, I will at least respond with an analysis via text to anyone who submits one. Call it some free coaching I’ll have to state a limit of one HH per person, though who knows if that’s necessary.

So I got a little sidetracked there with shameless promotion. To bring it all back to where I started – if you’ve been more of a “lurker” in the online world and are reluctant to set off down the deep, dark alley that is social media, I highly recommend reconsidering. There are some very real benefits to embracing the social media world being created around you. And it’s not like you can run from it. Not forever.

You’re tired, so you put it off until tomorrow. Oops. You forgot that you have a jam packed schedule and will be out of the house all day. It’s now the third day and having been postponed twice already another day doesn’t seem too bad. From there it gets increasingly easier to put it off. Just another day, what’s the big deal, it’s been a month. That’s kinda what happened to my grand plans of blogging before heading overseas (let alone the chances of posting while away). It’s also what is currently going on with that pile of receipts that I need to sort through and with my inbox that needs cleaning out and with that book I want to read. Nobody cares about those things though. Besides, I’ll get to them tomorrow.

A lot of blog-worthy stuff has happened over the last month. Much more than should fill any non-outlandishly-sized post, something I prefer to avoid. The simple solution is to pick a topic to discuss today and save the rest for my next entry or four, hopefully completing them within a short time frame. The problem to this though is that I have made many a comment of this nature in the past and nary have been fulfilled. Those blog posts and ideas topped an ever growing “to do” pile in my mind that seemed to vanish into thin air on January 1st 2013. Weird how that happens. Alas, all I can do is try. Today I want to close out the SNE-related blogging I was running with late last year. The rest is for tomorrow.

My last post on topic had me at 700k VPPs with grand plans to hit the million by Dec 22nd before we left for our trip. Suffice to say I fell short. I ended the year at 827,111.07 VPPs hitting the 50k mark in December allowing me to maintain SNE coming into 2013. My decision not to make those last 170k odd points stemmed from the fact that I was sleeping less and less while still falling behind pace. The day before my last entry of this wonderful day was when I decided to take it easy for the last few weeks of the year and I couldn’t have been happier. I had a great, stress-free December and don’t regret the decision one bit.

Here’s a graph of my hands from that moment I thought I was going to get SNE and ramped up my volume through to my last day playing online for the year:

An annoying run for sure but nothing too  far out of the ordinary.

I intend to make SNE again this year, hopefully completing by September. My wedding is scheduled for early November and with needing to be in India a couple of weeks beforehand + the honeymoon afterwards I am not expecting much time at all for grinding poker. That’s okay though – after putting in 260k hands in 50 odd days I feel mighty confident that I’ll get it done. So far so good too.

As far as goals and resolutions go I will make another post with my plans for the year (on and off the tables).

I have but one resolution: Do the things earmarked for tomorrow, today.

I intend to write a poker update within the next few days. That can wait. What can’t wait is the telling of my tantalising tale of the last 24 hours. Naturally it’s all about food.

It actually began many months ago. My good friend Will and I had both watched the episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” where he visited Sydney. Specifically to this post we’re interested about the part where he visited the Victor Churchill butcher. Somehow the whole episode is on youtube, so here is the clip of his visit for anyone interested:

Will is one of maybe a handful of people that I know who shares the same zest for food and cooking that I do. Obviously we had to go there. When he planned a climbing trip to the Blue Mountains we immediately decided that he would come to Sydney for a day of food.

The day was yesterday. It began with us meeting up at the Sydney Fish Markets for lunch. Embarrassingly despite having lived in Sydney for almost four years now, this was my first time at the markets. The place is amazing. The freshest seafood of countless types and varieties everywhere you looked. Heaven, if you will.

Not knowing where to go or what to do we decided to work our way through the building eating a little something everywhere. We began with pacific oysters. These were no ordinary pacific oysters – they were aptly named “X JUMBO Pacific Oysters” – we devoured them too quickly to remember to take photos but they were without a doubt the largest oysters either of us have ever had. Delicious, too.

From there we tried some fresh tuna sashimi – sliced in front of us, some cooked prawns and calamari, and more oysters – Will opted for some cooked kilpatrick and mornay style while I went back for another dozen from the first place – this time Sydney rock. While still fantastic they didn’t hold a candle to the first batch.

Last of all we got a crab leg each to satisfy our crustacean cravings. They were almost frozen cold and while apprehensive at their icyness at first, they turned out to be jaw droppingly good on a hot summers day. It was at this point that I had my lightbulb moment. I was almost not going to mention this million dollar idea for fear of someone stealing it, but then I thought I would be doing the world a disservice keeping it all to myself and that I must share.

It happened when a bunch of the ice in the crab claw melted and mixed with the juices and meat of the crab. I cracked open a piece and put it in my mouth and in flowed a gulp of crab-flavoured slush. It was perfect. So, my idea? A crab cocktail. The kind with alcohol and lime (or something), not with a dipping sauce. So far everyone I have told has recoiled in disgust at the idea (slightly sullying my hopes of being a crab cocktail kingpin) — but I stand firm that it would be amazing. Next week I begin stage 1 of testing – I’m thinking vodka or gin but we’ll see. Whatever happens, it’s going to be a gooooood week.

Okay – Fish Markets aside, we then set off to find Victor Churchill. Despite getting lost numerous times on the way we manage to make it there and boy oh boy was it worth it. We walked in and immediately had the feeling of being like kids in a candy shop. The video clip posted above gives a great idea of what it’s like on the inside but here’s a closer-up photo of the cabinet we were most enamoured by:

We were focusing mainly on the steaks but it was hard no to get distracted by everything else there. And get distracted we did – buying an assortment of sausages and a fancy type of rock salt (literally rocks of salt that need to be grated). Will had mentioned cooking duck fat roasted potatoes as a side dish later so we picked up some duck fat too. But now for the gold, the steaks. It wasn’t an easy decision but with the help of one of the staff there we decided to get two steaks and slice them up to share between us and Puneet for dinner.

The one on the right is a 380g (0.8lb) grass fed rib-eye on the bone. That’s a pretty decent sized steak – it makes the one on the left look downright scary. It is a 1.15kg (2.5lb) dry aged, grain fed rib-eye on the bone. The mother of all steaks.

We decided to reverse-sear the baby steak and cook the big mamma in the oven for the majority of the time, using the pan only to get a good sear on it. Searing (n.b: we put the steak into a dry fan, all the fat you see is rendered from the steak itself):

While the steak cooked away in the oven we started on the duck fat roasted potatoes with rosemary. Duck fat in pan, frying, resting then done:

The big steak had to rest for a while before we could slice it so that’s when we cooked up the smaller steak. I didn’t take photos of it – I was too busy gawking at big mamma. Speaking of which, here she is after resting and a final sear:

The mark of a well-rested steak is that when cut into the juices don’t come flowing out (which means they along with their incredible flavour remain in the steak). Ours came out perfectly:

Finally, our meal in it’s entirety. Served with a 2009 Old Paddock & Old Hill Shiraz from the Hunter Valley. This was definitely one of the top 5 steaks I’ve had in my life and easily the best any of us had ever had as a “home cooked meal”.

Bon freaking appetite. We slept well last night.

As I mentioned two posts ago, Puneet and I recently had our engagement party. Speaking for the two of us I can say that it was without a doubt one of the best nights of our lives. The event itself was almost a month ago but I’ve waited until now to write about it because I wanted to put up some photos of the night (which we only received this week). Let me preface this by saying that this was no ordinary engagement party – it was like a mini freaking wedding. Minus the weddingy stuff.

The night was the culmination of months of planning in order to ensure it ran smoothly, and ran smoothly it did. Given the amount of work that went into this one night affair I shudder to think about how many magnitudes more will be required for our multi-day Indian wedding extravaganza. Oh well, that’s a problem for future Roy. Or more frankly, future mums and Puneet. Bless them.

The party was held in Brisbane on the rooftop level of the Rydges Hotel at South Bank. Mum and Dad picked the venue. I reckon they did all right.

Since the party was in Brisbane we had a bunch of friends travel from interstate and almost everyone (us included) stayed at the Sofitel. Not only that, we managed to get almost an entire floor to ourselves. I feel the tiniest pang of guilt at the “almost” part; there were a couple of rooms on the floor that didn’t belong to our party and given how late into the nights we partied it couldn’t have been a pleasant experience for them trying to sleep. Oh well. They could have joined us? We were very friendly. Pang gone.

It was an incredible amount of fun staying at the same place as most of our friends and only heightened our excitement for the wedding when everyone will again be together. There were always people around, something to do, and everyone was in party/celebration mode. Having an excellent bar in the hotel lobby didn’t hurt one bit.

Anyway let me backtrack a bit. We landed on Friday evening with plans to head to mum and dad’s house for drinks/dinner before meeting up with everyone back at the hotel. It was Puneet, her parents, myself and two of our friends so I decided to think ahead and book a van for us rather than battle the arduous Friday evening cab lines, especially since we needed something that seated more people. We get to the baggage claim area and there is someone with a sign “Mr. Bhasin”. Ok, cool. We get our bags and follow the guy. He leads us to the row of cars waiting for passengers and we pass some nice cars, some vans, a mini-bus and we get closer and closer to the end and then there’s only one vehicle left:

Turns out there was some confusion with the booking and low and behold we got a limo. Nice way to kick off the weekend. I think it took about 8 seconds of being inside for someone to exclaim “What, no champagne?!” No, no that would have been too much. And would have also really made me think we were stealing someone else limo rather than there being a mix up. O’Brien, anyone?

Drinks/dinner at m&d’s was fantastic. Albeit a bit rushed since we had to get back pretty early it was a fun evening and mum held nothing back with her food banquet (any lesser word would be doing it a disservice).

The rest of the night was primarily spent at the hotel bar. Some of our friends were already there and others were arriving throughout the night – the room was buzzing and it didn’t end until the early hours of the morning when the bar closed. Also despite having numerous delicious beverages I am fairly certain I was stopped every time I tried to take my wallet out. Turns out there’s something about getting engaged that makes people want to buy you drinks.. I should do this more often? Hmm.

Saturday morning was relaxing with a quiet breakfast downstairs before chilling out by the pool for a while. It was after that that things got hectic. I got a haircut, Puneet got her hair done, as well as I don’t know how many other girls — then it was time for them to get their make-up done while I ran around town trying to find somewhere to cut another hole in my too-large belt. We were racing against the clock to make it to our photo shoot before the event in time – we wanted to take some photos around Brisbane before the party began. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side, but thankfully our photographer was excellent and managed to find a few locations to take some great shots. A few favourites:

Once it started bucketing down we thought we’d stop playing with fire (or water rather -shrug- same thing) and head to the venue rather than further risk getting drenched. The next 10 hours flew by. As soon as we arrived we had to get changed – Puneet into her Indian lengha and me into my suit. The moment we were ready we headed upstairs and that was it. We had a second of silence in the elevator, then the doors opened and we stepped into the room. Our next silent moment wouldn’t be until the next morning.

Electric. That’s the only word to describe the feeling in the room. It’s a tremendous feeling to be surrounded by your closest friends and family who have gathered in the same place to enjoy and celebrate an evening with you. It was unbelievably fun. We half walked half was dragged around the room meeting and greeting people – some that either Puneet or I were meeting for the first time, others that we hadn’t seen in years, and others still that we see every day. The drinks were flowing, food was floating around on trays and even the gods decided to give us a break as the rain subsided. It was magical.

To top if off our photographer Tyler (of Vivid Photography) was excellent. He wasn’t disruptive and you almost didn’t know he was around at time yet at the same time he was also seemingly everywhere at once. The night followed with food, some speeches, music and dancing:

Puneet and I with our parents

Dad giving his speech

Cheers!

My turn to speak.. nervous was an understatement!

A couple of short and sweet speeches by Puneet's friends

Let the dancing begin!

Aaron teaching people how to dance to Indian music

This was one of the highlights. Later into the night we put Gangnam style on and in a moment of epicness our token Asian of the evening turned into Psy and launched into a no-holds-barred gangnam style dance

So of course everyone else was then trying to dance to it too. Good thing the alcohol had been flowing for a while by this point otherwise it would have been a lot more embarrassing.. for all of us

The party wrapped up a bit past midnight  but the night was far from over. We headed back to the hotel and drank at the bar until it closed, then continued in one of the rooms into the wee hours of the morning. Pretty sure they caught on that we were breaking the rule of number of guests allowed in a room after 10pm when we ordered some wine and asked for 12 glasses.

Sunday was a day of recovery and recuperation. Slowly but surely people started to go on their merry ways and head home. Those still around at midday joined us in a great lunch at Eagle St Pier where I couldn’t help but order a round of bloody marys to try keep the momentum alive. It worked, kinda. Then before we knew it we were at the airport and it was all coming to an end. A whirlwind of a weekend, really, but one that will be forever etched in our memories as an incredible time in our lives and we hope also in all those who joined us in the celebrations.

I’m rounding the 700,000 VPP corner and the end is in sight. Well almost. Actually no not really. There’s still a long, uphill battle ahead. I’m on track to make it by the 20th of December assuming maintaining a 10k per day average. Yesterday Puneet and I booked our flights to India leaving on the 21st so now I really don’t have much of a choice. 300k, thirty days.

I had a funny series of thoughts run through my head earlier – other last minute SNE chasers will appreciate this. I was re-doing the mental arithmetic that we all do every day to re-calculate our “on pace” VPP rate and all that jazz. Since it’s such a close race for me my thoughts led me down this path: “Thirty days has September, April, June, and Nov… ahh god dammit!”. That extra day would have helped. A friend mentioned that since this was a leap year I already got my bonus day. I quipped back that that day was given to Past Roy and it’s Future Roy who is in dire need of the day now — two entirely different people. Actually they’re not getting along very well at the moment. Future Roy resents Past Roy for putting him in the position he’s about to be in. Poor ole chap.

Anywho – in keeping with the short and sweet updates, here’s my updated graph of the month. It’s always somehow much less painful when your EV line proceeds upwards even if your real winnings stay stagnant. Also with all the delicious top-end-heavy SNE rakeback coming in during this final stint it’s all roses:

I’m not going to lie, life is hectic at the moment. I haven’t given up trying to get SNE and I don’t intend to – but it has been a rough start (or re-start rather). I go back and forth between playing a max of 12-15 tables and attempting to play up to 21 tables and I haven’t completely settled yet on what I prefer. I’m leaning towards fewer tables but longer hours — a stance I may have to give up towards the end of the grind if I fall much further behind pace. Speaking of which, I am on track to hit SNE by about the 18th of Dec if I maintain 10k VPPs per day and miss zero days. That seems unlikely. What will need to happen is a few 10k+ days for the inevitable sub-10k days — something I am trying to do this week.

This update will be short and sweet. I think most of my updates from now until the end of the year will be – time is lacking. Life is: wake up,  poker, poker, poker, gym, poker, poker, dinner, break for a few hours, poker, poker, poker, sleep. Repeat. Breakfast and lunch get scattered somewhere in there. I’m really happy to be going to the gym almost every day – it’s helping keep me sane as well as more mentally clear, not to mention in better physical shape.

Here’s a graph of November so far:

Not a great start but I am optimistic and confident in my game. It’s all about volume now.  Good luck to everyone else pushing for a final sprint to SNE!