Getting comfortable at Star

I'm close to two months in to my house sit in Sydney. With a bit over another month to go before heading back down to Melbourne. In the lead up to this house sit I had mentioned, while at the cash tables in Crown, that I was going to be house sitting in Sydney for three months and would be checking Star out. The consensus had been was that the game was different in Sydney. And there were some tall tales, that, in retrospect, may have been designed to wind me up a little. With tales of the game being a lot wilder than in Melbourne.  So far, at the $2/3 NL tables I have, in general, not found that to be true. There have been some wild patches, but in general, once I had been there a while I started to feel comfortable.

There are differences. With the rake at Crown being 10% capped at $15 and a one off $5 seating charge Vs Stars 10% rake capped at $10 with an hourly $5 seating charge. Overall I prefer the Star rake / seating charge system.  In addition, Crown has a Royal Flush on the Flop jackpot running that is funded from the rake. This results in changes to peoples play at Crown when they are three bet with suited broadway cards. With the tendency being that many people will call large three bets with hands like Kd10d.  And sometimes cracking AA or KK.  Which can lead to some angst by those people who have three bet big pre-flop with KK+.

Another difference between the casinos is the table buy-in limits. With Crown's $1/3 game having $100-300 buy in limits, and Star's $2/3 game having $100-500 buy in limits. I've been buying in for $500, topping up when I drop below $400, and loving having the extra chips in my stack. In addition, after listening to a Red Chip Poker podcast with Doug Hull, I've started to aim to take $1,500 to the Casino, so that I never fell like I'm going to run out of cash if I burn through a buy-in or two. This has been a positive as far as mental state at the tables has been concerned.   Having a larger stack means that losing $100 off a $500 stack does not seem to such a bad thing compared to losing $100 off a $300 stack. And instantly topping up after dropping below $400 seems to allow me to play in a more relaxed fashion. I will be interested to see whether my impression is correct when I return to Crown and start playing with a max buy-in of $300 again.

Study wise, as usual, I continue to do less than I'd hope I would do. But, in general, I am getting through some study each week. With the content varying between podcasts, tidbits off twitter and youtube, some Ed Miller content I've been mind mapping (The Course, and an "Information Dominance" webinar), and some SnapShove training on the train in to Star. The transit time to Star from the house sit in Lindfield takes me over an hour, and often seems to hit around 90 minutes.  An indulgence to make the trip more pleasant has been a subscription to Spotify Premium. And I'm a convert. The daily mix's Spotify has been suggesting have thrown some interesting pieces of music into my head phones. One of the best investments I've made in the past year is to subscribe.