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Published: October 31st 2008
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October 31st, 6:25am, Auckland
I think I am adjusted to the time change because I am up at 6:25am but I feel tired instead of feeling awake. I went to bed at 10pm so I got a fair amount of sleep.
Ok, I guess I should finish yesterday’s blog since I had to get the first day posted because all you blog whores were bugging me for it.
I watched some TV in my room until about 6pm last night and then I thought I would go in search of some nourishment, but instead I found the casinoooooooooooooooo! It is in sky city, the complex that houses the Sky tower, a hotel and 10 restaurants and bars. It is a typical casino but there are some different rules down here for blackjack. For example, the dealer has to stay on soft 17, one nice difference is if you want to play two spots you don’t have to double the minimum, and the weirdest one is that anybody can bet with you on your spot. Let me explain, let’s say I have $20 on one spot, some guy walking buy who gets a feeling can put any money down he wants on
your spot BUT has no say in the hand, so if I want to hit the 20 I can and he can’t say anything about it, how stupid is that, and it happened quite a bit!
In the end I ended up $250 after about two hours, which is interesting because I was talking to the pit boss about poker and apparently there is a poker tournament tonight with about a $200 buy in! I grabbed a pizza on the way home and headed back to my hotel to eat pizza and watch poker.
11:32pm
I finally found some free internet access at Esquires coffee. When you buy a coffee you get an hour free wifi access so I think that will become a regular stop for me. After breakfast at Esquires it was time to explore the city a little bit more, so I checked out the bus schedule and found my way to Mt Eden. The dormant volcano sits in the middle of Auckland and offers some pretty fantastic views of the city. I wandered around for about an hour, taking some pictures and saying hi to the cows before heading back downtown.
I decided to walk
back into downtown which took about an hour and a half and is a great way to explore the outskirts of the city. There are lots of great little shops along Mt. Eden rd and I saw some very interesting cars as well.
I had a couple of hours before dinner so I caught up on some poker strategy for tonight, and then headed over to sky city to find some grub. I decided to try the restaurant on the main level and the steak called my name so I tried that. I think lamb might have been a better choice though because the steak was rather tough, the wine was good though.
About 42 players signed up for the no limit Texas hold’em tournament tonight, an average number they tell me. We started with 5000 in chips and the blinds were 25 - 50, rounds lasted 30 min. I started with a tight strategy until I had some of the players figured out and then made a couple of moves, one with a set of 6’s, and one with big slick that hit on the flop. I was up about 2500 when I made a bad choice not to
call an all in bet of 1900 right before the break, I had a wired pair of 9’s, and when I folded the guy showed me K 9, oh well. After the break I continued plugging away until our table got broken up as we were down to 19 players. I got moved to a table with a bunch of loose players and I knew I was in for a fight. I got down to about 3500 when I caught K 9 of diamonds and got raised to 1200 before the flop. I was the big blind, which was 200-400 so it was only another 800 to call, so I did and we went heads up to the flop which came 9s 4d 7d, I was first to act and I figured with top pair and a flush draw I better get all my money in there right now, unfortunately the guy with the pair of ladies called and I couldn’t catch a diamond or king or 9 or anything else for that matter on the turn or river so I was done!
I drowned my sorrows with a pizza and some cheezies and called it a night. I have
one more day here and my ship comes in and I can’t wait to get onboard to see some old friends and some new faces.
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