It’s been a long time between posts on this site. A VERY long time. Seven years in fact.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge in the last seven years. Like most Australians, poker is no longer as big in my life as it used to be. With online poker banned, and no APPT or ANZPT tours, the motivation for poker dwindled. Unless you were prepared to relocate across the Tasman in order to grind online, then poker was always going to be a tough profession to maintain for an Aussie.

However over the past few weeks there have been a few developments which have sparked my interest in poker once again.

Firstly, the efforts of Rob Campbell to win not one, but two WSOP bracelets was an awesome achievement. He now leads the WSOP Player of the Year race heading into Europe and could become the first Aussie to record that achievement. Rob is a mixed game specialist and has been crushing the games for years so it’s nice to see him get that recognition this year.

I also followed along the WSOP coverage due to the incredible run in the Main Event by my friend Garry Gates. GG was my first boss in the poker world and I’m sure I’ve mentioned him a few times in this blog. GG gave me and my partner the chance to travel the world together and write about poker. He was always supportive and a great person to be around, both at work and socially.

GG and I used to take each other on in some heads-up wars on Full Tilt, so I know first hand that he’s a strong player. He’s also shown the ability to go deep in the Main Event, so I had no doubts that he was capable of landing a big score. He played great throughout the Main Event, but things went against him in the end as he finished in 4th place for a cool $3 million score. Incredible achievement and it was awesome enjoying the ride with him.

The other piece of news was that there are whispers about the potential for online poker to return to Australia. JoeyDel posted a comment on 2+2 which explained how things might be more favourable with this current government for the voice of online poker to be heard and changes to be made. Obviously this all takes time, but good to see some positivity in the Australian poker community and hopefully things can move in the right direction.