I’m in South Africa at the moment, arrived last Monday night. I played in the Million Dollar Sun City Shuffle Up tournament at the Sun City Super bowl. Thursday was the first day of tournament play and there was a hectic re-buy period for about the first 4 hours. I’m not sure how many players started, but looked like a few hundred. My 888 team mate Jeff Fenech and I made it through Day 1 and I was in the top ten in chips with $95K, I think the chip leader had $102K.

Going into Day 2 which was yesterday, Jeff and I were pumped, being in the top ten chip stack gave me confidence and I started out playing well. Then all of a sudden I lost a couple of big hands and one which finally crippled me. I had a Queen-Jack of clubs so I raised and he called, a 9-clubs, Q-diamonds and 10-clubs came out on the flop this means I had a straight flush draw and a top pair - total monster of a hand I am always happy to get all my chips in here. I bet and he called then the turn card came, 5-diamonds, I bet again and he called the last card was a 2-spades, I bet again and he called, he showed a King-Queen to win the hand. So unlucky I didn't hit what I needed. I was almost knocked out with only $15K of chips left.

After that disappointing loss of hand, the table broke and a new table was formed. I didn’t play the first couple of hands and then I was on the big blind, the blinds were 8k/16k and I had a 6-7 of hearts. I got raised so I went all in with my remaining chips. Everyone else folded and the player had K-2, a King comes out on the flop and I’m out. Although I thoroughly enjoyed it, I was disappointed that from coming from a top ten player with $95K of chips at the start of the day, I ended up around 110 when I was knocked out.

Jeff busted out about 4 hours before me, he was disappointed too and said it felt really intense today, there were a lot of re-buys. After nearly making it through 2 days of play, I was pretty mentally exhausted, we did learn a lot though and it was great to be back in South Africa.

My next poker tournament is the WSOP in Europe at the end of this month, I’ll also be playing a bit online. I’m heading back to Australia in the next day and then off to London around the 25th September. I’ll keep you updated on how I go in London, hopefully it will be one day better than my effort in South Africa.