I’m in Australia for the Aussie Millions for the next couple of weeks. The Crown Casino is one of my favorite places to go in the world and I try to never miss a chance to go down there.

The casino is awesome, the food is ridiculously good and the sights never cease to amaze me. Most importantly my friends, the poker is great.

Anyway, I was playing in the first event last night — a $1,100 four-day donkament, and I drew an awesome table, full of a bunch of wild Aussies, two young Americans, a couple of fringe pros and the brother of a big-name pro.

I was heading along smoothly until I tilted like a madman.

Late in the night, big-name pro’s brother has a huge stack, most of it from when his queens cracked an opponent’s kings early in the tournament and from an equally nasty beat he put on me, rivering an eight-high flush to my top set. Anyway, big-name pro walks up to bitch to his brother about some unknown woman who knocked out the short-stacked big-name pro with pocket tens, to big-name pro’s ace-queen.

Apparently, the big-name pro had five-bet the woman, and she didn’t back down calling his all-in with the f—ing tens. Big-name pro carries on and on about how unlucky he is, how he can’t catch a break. (Without giving away his identity, let’s just say, he’s got a multi-million dollar score to his record.) And this isn’t the first time I’ve heard him complain — so it shouldn’t surprise me.

Then, big-name pro’s brother starts bitching about the same thing. How “effing” unlucky he’s been and he’s serious, talking about a hand where he called a super short-stack with A-10, only to get sucked out by the short-stack’s K-10 — meanwhile, he’s easily got the biggest stack at our table.

I chime in here: “I wish I was as unlucky as both of you.” Then I pointed to the brother’s stack and said, “You especially. You’re really running bad.”

“Mind your fucking business,” big-name pro says.

Now, I’ve played poker with big-name pro’s brother before and the guy couldn’t have been nicer, ditto for big-name pro. They’re fun to have at the table, they play tight as balls and most of the time, they’re civil. But now…

“Why don’t you stop crying and let your brother focus on losing his chips?” I asked him.

This is when the tournament director, who had been called to the table by the dealer seconds before, steps in and tells the pro to leave and gives me a 10-minute penalty. Which I turn into a 30-minute penalty. Apparently what I said was “abusive” language. When I get back, I can’t find my table for another 10 minutes because it was broken up.

After I sat down at my new table, I should have taken a couple of deep breaths and laughed it off — my cure for tilting. But for some reason, this particular series of events stuck in my brain so I bluffed off a massive amount of chips and when it was time to bag up, I finished with much less than an average stack going into Day 2.

So here’s the lesson — because I guess there’s supposed to be one or why else would I be telling this story — stupid things are going to happen at the poker table. People are going to say stupid things, that may tilt you. As far as I know, their speeches were part of an elaborate scheme to tilt everyone at my table.

The point is, learn from my mistakes.