I have 54,000 in chips going back at 1k/2k. 18 of us left; tough field.

I'm too tired to post specific hands, but what's most notable is that I had to exhibit some extreme patience-- getting almost no hands the first few hours, followed by QQ in the BB vs. KK on the button that knocked me down to 200 at 75/150. By the end of 100/200/25 I had 23.5k.

How to go from 200 to 23,500 in 14 easy steps:

1)Call all-in in the SB with Q8o after button opens 32s and hold.
2)Shove 550 with K9o, get called by AQs, flop a 9.
3)Shove AQo from BB over CO open, get called by A3o, and chop. (Boo)
4)Shove 77 over UTG open, get called by A2s, double up.
5)Go to dinner break with 3k.
6)Come back from dinner (at 100/200 now), pick up AA in SB, shove over EP open, pick up pot.
7)Open QQ in LP, call all-in from the BB, hold vs. AKs.
8)Open JJ, get 3 callers, bet the KKK flop, take it down.
9)Open AA UTG, get called by BB, raise his donkbet on the Q42 flop. Now we're at 14k.
10)Wait a while.
11)Tell the dealer "give me a good flop, dealer," after checking 83ss in the BB when EP limps his 12x stack. Flop a flush, check-raise, get all-in vs. AA with the As and hold.
12)Raise AJo to 1200 after two limpers at 100/200/25. Check the AK9 flop 3 ways. Call 2k from the second limper (who has 2200 behind) on the turn. Call his last 2200 on the river, hoping he didn't backdoor a flush; feel relief when he shows KQ.
13)Donk off a little in small pots.
14)Go on break.

I ran equally as cold after the next break, folding my way from 23.5k at the end of 100/200/25 to 14k at 600/1200/200. I got a walk and then with 17k opened AA and doubled up through Theo Tran's QQ. Only played a couple more big pots after that.

Field's tough and my table is tough. It's gonna test me, but I feel that if I keep a clear and calm head and don't spaz out, things might go my way.

This hand was against the man who doubled me up with the 77 vs. my JJ.

Let me set up the action with an earlier hand:

Blinds 25/50, pot is five or even six ways. Flop is 4h 7d 8d; SB (the young / predictable kid with the kings earlier) bets out 250, and the man from the last hand calls. Turn is 2c; check/check. River is offsuit J; check/225, and SB thinks a bit, grumbling, finally calling and being shown Jd Td.

Now onto the hand I played:

50/100. He open limps (I believe he was CO at this point). SB completes and I check K2cc. Flop is A55 rainbow. Checked around. Turn Qh puts up two hearts. I bet 150 to try to take it down. He shrugs and calls. River is a black 7; I check, he bets 375, and I call.

Why did I do that? Some tells and some logic.

The tell: He didn't do anything specific to reveal his exact hand, obviously. But I gathered from his body language that he probably didn't have much preflop, and that he was uninterested in the board until the turn card.

The logic: If he wasn't faking disinterest-- and I trust my reads of people-- then his range is heavily weighted to two specific things: he has a queen or a flush draw. He may have checked the flop with an ace or a five, but he would assuredly have been interested in the hand, and would have at least had to consider betting.

Based on the JTdd hand I mentioned earlier, I felt strongly that he would value bet less with a queen and check down anything weaker with showdown value (like a flush draw that picked up a 7). The large bet size polarizes his hand to the nuts or a bluff. And my read tells me he doesn't have the nuts, so...

I call, he says "good call, I missed," and flashed two medium hearts. I table my K2cc and he says "What is that... king high?" He proceeded to act stunned and call me a "genius" sarcastically and other minor grumbling. I did my best to defuse it and be humble but I honestly had to fight a really big shit-eating grin from breaking out. I think I did a poor job, so I tried to joke it off with him. That didn't much work.

I busted out shortly after the first break. Important facts and hands:

2500 starting chips, blinds 25-25, 40 minute levels.

The table was a reminder of why i need to play live more: Mostly loose, mostly passive, occasionally bluffy, very straightforward.

Possibly interesting hands:

Second or third hand at the table I pick up AQs and open to 100 in MP. Older gentleman two seats down calls. Flop is K83 two hearts (I have spades). I c-bet 150; he calls pretty quickly. Turn is an offsuit 10; I think a few seconds and check; he bets 300 pretty quickly. I start to wonder if he's a floaty type and that's a timing tell; I don't have anything to go on so I just fold.

A very friendly and not-bad-but-not-good-either middle-aged lady raises in EP to 100 and I call with 55 on the button. Flop T64; check/check. Turn Q; check/100 because I know I have the best hand; she calls quickly. River J; she thinks a few seconds and checks. I check; AJ good. Sigh.

Weird hand at the end of the first level. Younger guy-- solid, straightforward, talks like he has some idea of what he's talking about but probably isn't legitimately talented, throws in a 100 chip UTG and says "100" before it hits, but the dealer doesn't hear him and says "call". Me-- three seats down-- and the guy after me had thrown in our calls already; a short stack down at the end of the table started asking if that was a raise or call and then there was some confusion; the floor ruled it a raise, and so I called again with black JJ. next to act called; short stack made it 475 with about 300 behind. UTG snap-shoves and I quickly fold; I had a few minutes to think about it in the midst of the confusion, and I decided it wasn't especially close. The short stack threw the rest in reluctantly with 99; UTG had KK and I was reassured that my reasoning and decision-making were still sound.

Not that I played every hand well. Later in the level I opened A8o to 3x two off the button and the button called. Flop was an ugly AJT; I check-called 300 but didn't feel good about it (I rationalized that he might be making a move based on the earlier hand, but I hadn't had any reason to think that. Turn was a 9 and I check-called 500, knowing even more surely I was behind but rationalizing it with my straight draw (and possible outs to an 8). The river bricked (6 or below-- I don't quite remember) and I checked and he checked back AKs. So, yeah, I was better off assuming he had it, which was my first instinct, but my desire for information and a nice pot led me to make bad decisions. (I later folded AQo from the SB to his 4x UTG and the fish on the button's call. The fish made it tempting but I felt it was still entirely too dangerous. And I hate calling him a fish because he was a nice guy, but he'll almost certainly never read this.)

So a little later I opened JJ in 4th position to 250 at 50/100 (with about 1500 total obviously getting it in) and the BB-- a middle-aged Asian who played too many hands, limped lots of weak suited hands, bitched, berated the dealer once, threw cards once, and generally seemed to be having a miserable time-- called. Flop was 866 two clubs and I bet 300 planning to get it in. He thought for a bit and called. Turn was the Ks and I shoved my last 950. He tanked, bitching about the king, thinking for a while, then finally calling with 77. Doubled back up to 3k.

Then I played my favorite hand of the day.

Not much in the way of hands or pots for a while. The last hand before break I call an UTG 4x shove with A5o on the button; she has A6o and spikes a 6. I think the "double or nothing before break" mindset makes this a good call; plus, if she's pushing A6o, she's not folding KQ, KJ, and probably her range is well wider than that.

I go into the break with 3025. Not long after the break the button opens to 400 and I shove 2525 on top with AhQd. He calls with KsKc. I flop a backdoor heart draw and turn a queen but ultimately do not make the best hand, and say good night and head upstairs.

I tried some online tournament grinding but bricked out of everything I played. It's only midnight or so, but I'm surprisingly tired. Not sleepy, just hazy.

Oh-- I didn't post last night because I was exhausted, but I did play in the, uh, "sick and go" (are we calling it that?) and that was a lot of fun, if not the most +EV table. I might have a post up soon, depending on how much I'm allowed to spoil.

All in all? I feel like coming here was definitely the right choice.

Life has been busy lately; I've been looking for a new place to live and been bouncing around a little as a result. I've managed to play some poker; oddly enough, I've had my best sessions in late nights or hanging around other people. My worst are when I'm focused and commit to grinding. This makes me worried, because I'm obviously going to spend more time playing online when I'm by myself than with other people. I think I encounter severe tilt problems when I'm alone and hit a bad streak.

This is a huge problem because I end up dusting off tons of money after hot streaks when I put in one bad day where I shouldn't play, but do anyway, and don't make myself quit. Three times this calendar year already I've had a winning streak abruptly crushed by one terrible day.

The days where I work out and take care of myself I do well. The days I just play poker and don't have a life I do poorly. Seems like an easy correlation and one that's easy to manage. The problem is weeks like these, visiting family, by myself all the time, bored... not much to do. And you think "Oh, perfect time to put in some serious grinding hours." But it never works-- you run worse then you play worse then you press and chase losses.

There's no excuse. The money is the money. There are no mulligans for mental mistakes. You don't get part of your money refunded if you lost it on tilt. You don't get to spirit that away from your winrate.

Must play well all the time. Must get back into the form I had when I was a consistent winner. Seems like so long ago.

I've been playing tournaments more lately in preparation for the LAPC. I haven't done anything in them although I feel like I mostly played well. Just that I get unfocused and mentally tired sometimes, and I miss opportunities or screw up decisions. I'm not sure what I can do to keep myself playing at my A level as much as humanly possible.

I keep forgetting to write entries. Well-- not forgetting, per se; rather, it's more like, after I've done something in poker that merits an entry, I'm usually mentally drained and don't want to think about poker for a while. The procrastination snowballs and today I am writing the entry I meant to write after my Sunday donkaments.

BTW in the first two FTOPS events I played I got in huge, huge pots ahead and lost. Just a reinforcement that tournaments are stupid, frustrating, and arbitrary, and there's nothing you can do about that.

This probably should be edited before publication, but I decided to just write it out and deal with it later instead of hanging onto it. I'm not producing enough content by waiting until my writing is perfect. And besides, this is a blog, not the New Yorker.

Leaving for L.A. on Monday. Here's hoping for a nice tournament score, some cash success... something. Oh, and here's hoping I can finish selling that action by then.

I'd been really pushing myself to play a lot this week, and as a result, when I finished a session, I didn't always want to think, talk, or write about poker right away. (Or, at least a few times, I was venting to someone about the bad run I was having.)

I did run pretty badly this week by, I think, about any measure. But I also played a lot and put in a lot of hands, and so even though I ran badly, I feel like I learned a lot from them, that getting back into the mix shook the rust off my brain a little. Now that I was playing regularly, what people were doing and why clicked much faster with me.

Just looking at my stats now, I put in a shade over 12k hands and all of my profit came at HU. I was a slight loser overall at 6-max, but I put in solid winrates at 1/2 and 2/4 HU. Of course, it's only one week; my 6-max results were partly due to bad luck, and partly because I probably tilted some off (though I can't think of any specific hand I played badly right now). I'm addressing the tilt issues; I think after I get them resolved I am poised to do very, very well on my next good run.

I'm considering attending the L.A. Poker Classic-- possibly flying to Los Angeles a couple weeks from now, hitting a few of the preliminary tournaments, the main event, and possibly playing some of the cash games on the side. I've got a few details to work out, but some concrete plans are forming, so where I had this as an idea for a while, it's now starting to look like a real possibility.

More next time. Doubt I'll play Sunday, but this week should leave me with some free time.