Manila. Sigh. Sydney. Yay!

Hi all, Im on the flight to Sydney at the moment. It's a good 8.5 hrs before I get to touch any solid ground. So what's better than recounting a painful experience which I wouldn't otherwise be motivated to write about? Manila.

I got knocked out on level 4 of the tournament, which was a very early stage. At the start of the game I got seated to the right of this guy who I couldn't figure out. He's filipino, and he's got me outplayed bad. On top of that, I was very card dead. I dwindled down to just above 5000 chips, from the 10000 starting stack. It came to my rescue when my table was the very first one to be broken up. When the break up happened, I got relocated to a slightly better table, neighboring JJ Liu. I doubled up to 10k on AK vs JJ and then got up to 20k with a straight hit on the river which also happened to knock JJ out of the game.

Things turned bad when I raised from MP with A6s and was called by the SB. I missed the flop which was Ts9s5h. SB checked and I checked as well. The turn was an Ac. SB checked again and I felt that I had to bet (first mistake, could've actually check-called all the way as my kicker sucked). I bet 600 into the 750 pot but SB raised me to 2000. I knew him as a guy who liked to test his opponents. I felt that he's doing just that, so I decided to not back off and reraised him to 6000 (second mistake, check-calling again was a much better option. Folding ain't bad either.). I seriously don't put him on any Ace. Any ace or pocket pair he would've reraised me preflop. He wouldn't call me preflop with T5 or 95, but he might with 9T. He went all in after my reraise, and I was put to the ultimate test. Do I stick to my read and put my tournament life on the line, or do I let it go? I still had 10k chips at that point and it's still a formidable stack. I decided after five minutes of deep thoughts to fold.

I never got to know what the guy had, but he said he had KQo for just a gutshot. I bought it cuz that's one of the two hands I put him on (KQ and KJ) but he could very well be bullshitting me and actually had the 9T. Bleh.

Very shortly after I had AKo under the gun and I raised it up. BB called me and we went to the flop. Flop showed A96 all diamonds and I had none. BB checked and I bet the pot to see what happens. BB called me so that doesn't give me too much info at all. Turn blanked and we checked. The river blanked as well and BB bet 3500 at me which was about the pot again. I called and he showed me KdTd. Disgusting.

My Knock Out Hand was AQ. Doyle said it's a horrible hand and he wasn't lying. I shoved it in and swiftly ran into AK. Boohoo.

So that's my (short) conquest in Manila. As for the trip itself I haven't got much good things to say about and I don't like to say bad things about other people's city/country so I'll stop right here.

As for Sydney, I'm SO EXCITED! I've never been down under before and it's cool to fly down! I have my rental car ready for me at the airport and I'm still deciding what to do on my first day. I'll be playing Day 1c of the APPT Grand Final so that will give me three full days to see the city! I plan to do lots of eating and roaming around and try to not play much poker. (Exception: there's this 6max tourny at 12;30pm today (Dec 1) and if I can't decide what to do by then I might play it.) I'll write about my trip as often as I can and I'm sure it's gonna be a great one! Australia here I come!