I final tabled my second consecutive UBOC event on Wednesday night (I didn't play Monday or Tuesday's events), taking 8th in the PLO8. Obviously 8th is a frustrating result-- especially since I won a big pot when the FT started to take the chip lead with 9 left. The next four pots I played where money went in post flop, I got 0, 1/4, 0, and 0 from. I may have overplayed some hands, but I'm pretty sure in a split-pot game that counts as running bad. (Speaking of running bad, I had dodged some bullets and stealthily skulked around with a short stack in the FTP 55k last night, to get into the money, and then the servers crashed. The way I was playing I felt sure I would win it. Oh well.)

I've been considering returning to the live circuit in 2008. I feel like I'm playing well, when I trust my instincts and the reads I make. I almost owe it to myself to try for another big score, and this fits well when the plan I've laid out for my life in the next couple of years.

(Speaking of all that, part of the reason I don't write more is that I tend to stick with poker themes here. I have other stuff going on in my life, and other important decisions to make. Do you, the reader, want to hear about those? I can write more about my life beyond poker if that interests you.)

Here's something that may help your game:

One thing I noticed (because I found it happening to me lately) and remembered recently was something I was told in a sports psychology class in college. In big games, in high-pressure situations, we tend to feel nervous or anxious. Our body is producing a higher level of energy than normal, and we're not sure what to do with it. So we call it nervousness and try to calm it down. But this is incorrect. The energy is not nervous-- it is our body's response to what our mind knows is an important situation. Our mind has told our body to produce extra energy to prepare for this important event, to play it at our highest level.

What you misidentify as nervousness is your body entering a heightened state of awareness for the upcoming challenge. You don't need to calm down-- you just need to harness and focus that energy. Remember, don't be nervous, be excited.

Pretty good advice in any area of life. Don't be nervous, be excited. The difference is a matter of your own perception and control.

Had one of the simultaneously most successful and frustrating Sundays I've had in a while.

to summarize:

-16th in the Stars Sunday Warmup.
-25th in the Stars Sunday Million.
-6th in the UltimateBet UBOC event (a $200 NLH, like their usual Sunday)

Overall I made almost 17k but the three first prizes combined for something like 330k. And yes, I do believe I could have won all three of those.

More later. I'm exhausted now. Playing for 12 hours without a break, running the high-wire act that is tournament poker, will do that.

November was not my best month in poker. Buoyed by my success at 1/2 and my desire to take it slow and play overrolled, I found myself, either consciously or not, slacking. Since I was sitting overrolled, and I had been winning, I made a fatal mental mistake: Assuming that just showing up would get me the money. It did not.

I wasn't bringing my A game, and my winrate was slipping noticeably. Once I realized this, I also realized something about myself: I need to move up aggressively, because I have to keep challenging myself to stay engaged. If I play a game overrolled, I become less concerned with winning or losing, and I stop trying, assuming that if auto-pilot I'll make money. Realizing this was important and caused me to change my approach; I now intend to move up aggressively whenever possible.

I did take a couple shots at 2/4 HU and ran pretty badly at them. One of them was against the notorious mu_empire (well, notorious if you read BBV); an insanely aggressive player (who was playing like a total spewtard when I played him). Nothing like getting someone to stick in 200BB PF with K2s and T8s and JTo and losing.

The second guy I played was a super-passive player who just hit a hand every time. He won over 80% of our showdowns, and it didn't matter if he had top set or bottom pair, check/call, check/call, check/call was his line. He only raised when he had the stone nuts. And I almost never made hands worth value betting, and when I did, he either folded or called with a better hand.

So I went back to 1/2 for a while. I started finding HU draining to play consistently, so I mixed in some 6-max as well.

I feel like the HU experience made me a much better 6-max player, and I noticed immediately. With the added information of other players and position to consider, my hand reading skills were much more effective at being accurate, and, more importantly, I was taking the aggression to a new level. I had just started by the time the end of the month came on, and it was going fairly well.

Tournaments killed me in November, too. A 21st in the Stars 2nd chance and a 10th (final table bubble!) in the $11 rebuy weren't going to get it done. I only played a few tournaments, but tournaments can really cut into a cash bankroll. So I've been resolved to play them less, or find a good backing deal for me.

Anyway, I feel like I've been playing really well these last couple of weeks, like an element of fear that was in my play has gone. I've been much more aggressive than I was being, and the results are bearing it out.

Yesterday I took second place in the Stars $215 heads-up tournament. The loss was disappointing because I got in with 77 vs. 99 in a spot where I thought my push would fold out a lot of hands, but he had a bigger one. Well, it was still a cash for $7600, which is a nice payday all things considered.

I've also been on a bit of a hot streak at 2/4 6-max the last couple of days... it's amazing what a little game selection and dedication to your craft will do for you.

Anyway, November was a disappointment, but December is already off to a hot start. I'd like to keep it up, and the way I'm playing now, I expect good things to continue.

So I'm back in Louisiana visiting the folks for Thanksgiving. In between big homecooked meals and football, both televised and backyard, I found the time to play a little poker.

First, though, I forgot to mention that I finished 21st in the Stars 2nd Chance on Sunday. A really disappointing and frustrating run, but the positive note was that I played a better tournament game on Sunday (including the Million and FTOPS ME) than I had in a long time. I feel confident enough in that to start mixing in a few more tournaments,

Heads-up has been pretty variance-filled lately. I took a couple shots at 2/4 recently that went poorly. Today my session started out terribly but I stuck with it and ground back about half of what I had lost, which is at least something to be happy about. Just gonna keep at it...

I meant to write more, but it's late and I'm pretty tired. Maybe tomorrow.

Now that I've played a few FTOPS events, I feel qualified to comment on what I've observed since my return to tournaments. My conclusions? Well, read the subject line.

I found a few things stood out as noteworthy in my tournament play this week:

1)People are even worse than I remembered.
2)It's really hard to take advantage of that.
3)I don't have the patience to wait around at a nine-handed table for premium hands, if I think making a move will work.

Unfortunately, none of my moves worked, despite my reads frequently being correct. I busted Sunday's event thusly: Opening with a pot-sized raise on the button with AQ, the BB called. He pretty quickly potted the 652 flop, which I took as an obvious sign of weakness. I called to take it away on the next street. The 8 turn came, he thought for a few seconds and potted again. I had a pot-sized shove left over his raise, so I shoved. He called pretty quickly with K6o. As usual, an expert play on every street that gets rewarded because I'm too stupid to know when people can't be bluffed off garbage.

After piling up some chips in last night's FTOPS I lost about half my stack with AA to A4o (brilliant job defending from an UTG raise and making trips, sir), and then the rest when a loose clown with a huge amount of chips potted 72s PF and I flat called on the button with QQ (due mostly to stack sizes and setting up a good postflop pot size for an overpair). He pot/called the 754 flop and turned a 2.

Sweet.

I busted the 100r event on Saturday by losing three consecutive races, two as the favorite and one as the slight dog (to somebody who called PF with 42s and open jammed two pair on the flop-- I had AKdd on a 542dd flop).

It's just really frustrating playing tournaments. People make so many egregious mistakes, and I seem to have forgotten how to take advantage of them. Either I bluff people who can't be bluffed, or I get outdrawn or lose races. The nature of what it takes to win a tournament is so capricious that I'm not sure I can ever really move back into them. When I'm playing heads-up, I can get inside my opponent's thought process, figure out what he's doing, what his moves represent, and how to take advantage of that on every single hand. In a tournament, I have to cross my fingers and hope I can get in a pot with a donkey, and then hope the donkey puts his money in bad, and that my hand holds when he does. If it doesn't, that's it. I don't get to reload; I don't get another chance at those chips. If I didn't bust out, I have fewer chips to use as a tool, which means my relative EV has gone down too.

I do have one funny bustout story, only funny because of how it happened. I was grinding some heads-up cash and entered the Full Tilt Mulligan on Sunday because I hadn't quite gotten my tournament jones out of my system. I draw a pretty tough table to start so I decide to not get too fancy and wait for a hand. So I'm patiently folding, concentrating on cash, and then I look up and see that I have 2700 chips in the SB, a raise and reraise, 3 cold callers, and AK. So I just said to myself "Well, I'm gonna bust here, but this is standard tournament play, LOL donkaments," and shoved.

The actual action in the hand: shaniac UTG opened for a minraise to 60, and UTG+1 made it 225. SirWatts cold called in MP; two other people called as well. So by the time it got to me, despite two people taking very strong lines, I see a big pot and AK and even if I'm assured to be called I'm getting like 1.6:1 on my money to shove it in here, so I do.

UTG+1 re-shoves pretty quickly, at which point I figure I'm toast, because he must have a big pair and even if I have outs I'm just not gonna get there, because I don't get there. Action goes back to SirWatts who tanks for a long time and then finally calls all-in. The button also calls all-in.

Imagine my surprise when UTG+1 turns over AQs. Watts, as it turns out, was tanking forever with Kings (!), which makes me wonder what would have happened if he actually laid it down. The button has 87s, and given the odds he was getting to go big or go home, I like his play better than the AQs play, anyway. So of course I have two outs and miss and that's that.

I still found the hand funny, which at least, made that the best tournament I've played this month. Unfortunately, I don't play tournaments for amusing bustout stories, so if things don't pick up soon, I might re-retire from them.

We'll see how some more FTOPS events go. I'm skipping Wednesday and Thursday's events, because I put live music over poker, but I should still have time to play a few more and try for that second big score I've been dreaming of.