What a privilege it was to be invited to a summery Melbourne on Withnail’s ticket.

I was approached in September and just about managed to contain my excitement at the chance of another crack at an Aussie Millions title. It’s been seven long years since I was last there and for one thing the flight via Hong Kong didn’t feel as tedious as I remember, although I suspect the more you fly long distance the more accustomed to it you become.

2010 sees me shifting my focus from tourney-plodder to cash game-grinder so a shot at another big buy-in event was a welcome change from the 1-2 cash game which is currently my regular haunt at DTD.

I played Day1b and the event looked like it had a good structure with a 20k stack and ninety minute levels. My table looked OK, with former champion Lee Nelson, two Brits I knew, no Scandis and a handful of locals.

An hour in and card dead I felt the need to make a play and sandwiched between the two Brits an opportunity arose on the button. The cut-off opened to 250 and I made it 700 with 5-6s, only for the SB to four bet to 1700. Obviously I called and when he checked the ace high flop I fired and fired once more on the turn. He flipped his kings up and I dragged the pot.

Unfortunately that little play was both the most fun I had and the high point, as I met a succession of nasty and nastier decisions. I should probably have sensed all was not well when I got a five minute penalty for texting at the table and taken a longer break in the sunshine.

A few hands later it went call, raise on the button and I three bet to 2000 with AhKh. The raiser called and I happily led out for 2000 on the Ad,Qd,9 flop but was put to the test when he immediately made it 6000. Hating life, I swallowed and surrendered the pot. I’m in my forties now and it felt way too early to be going broke with top pair, top kicker. Die A-K!

More pots where I’d made two pair on a four to a straight or flush by the river came and went. By the time we made level 3 I was somehow down to 6000. Inconceivable. This was still OK though, if you ignored the average. Still sitting with 30 BB’s minus a running ante, I just wish I’d found a fold on the following hand. A tight player had limped, the SB made it up and I checked Jc-8c. The flop fell J,J,3 and the SB led out for 500. I called and the tight guy made it 1500 pretty swiftly. The SB folded and despite having a really bad feeling about the situation my hand just felt too strong to bin so I shipped my last 5000 in and he called pretty sharpish with 3-3. No suck-outs ensued and I was busto.

Very disappointing! Of course there are worse places to wander around when you’re depressed but it still took a new day to shake off the gloom.

The best line I heard in the cardroom was this from a grizzled old gent who was raising every pot in the 2-5. When someone asked why he was so aggressive he replied, ‘I’ve got a million buy-ins’. Now if only I could have convinced him to relocate to Nottingham...

Julian