I returned to Austin a couple of days ago, and I haven't been playing poker since. Haven't been reading the forums, really, either, and only occasionally thinking about the game.

I decided to give my head a rest, both chemically and from the stresses of poker. I think giving myself some time and maintenance will clear out bad thought processes and mistakes I've been making. I've had too much negativity around my poker playing lately. It's a game! It's supposed to be fun! It certainly isn't meaningful or productive enough to be playing if it makes me miserable.

So I think when I'm done with this little break, I'm going to drop down really low, like NL100, because I won't stress over dropping a few buyins, and I can afford to take the swings that come with playing what I feel is properly aggressive. I feel like the pressure to win lately has made me afraid to put money at risk, and I need to undo that, because you can't make money without risking it.

Oh, and just so this isn't completely without content, there's something I want to quote for you that explains very well how I think about tournaments and why I do things differently than so many of the forum regulars. Nat Arem ("N 82 50 24" on 2+2), who you may know best as the

Anyway, in a response to a question from Bond about who he thinks the best tournament players are and what separates them from the pack, he said this:

"They're all really really good at winning lots of pots without showing down. I hate the concept of tourney life for the most part, but there is some merit to winning small pots and figuring out how and when people are most likely to fold. Becoming a big winner by playing a solid tourney game with a few late position steals is a thing of the past IMO. Some people seem to be afraid to look stupid or put their chips in bad and that's a huge handicap for them. Assuming you've played a lot of hands, I feel like going with your instincts will get you more tourney success than anything else."

And in eighteen months, I've been trying to tell everyone this, and never gotten it quite right. But it's simply: Winning pots without showdown, and knowing when people will fold and how to make then fold, is the single most important skill that will improve your tournament results. And the only way to sharpen your instincts for when those spots are right is to practice and try and take risks sometimes and fail sometimes.

Lots of marginally winning players complain about the {lucky / terrible / spewy} {clowns / donkeys / fish} that seem to win everything in sight. How they "always suck out {at a final table / in a big pot}". And it's true, they do. But the reason they suck out is because they've been slamming at every pot, pushing everyone off them, piling up chips without showdown (because, remember, if you win without showdown, you are 100% to get the pot). And they don't slow down when they get played back at, and sometimes they get caught moving on a draw or a weak-ish hand. When they suck out there, or they win their races, they win the tournaments. It's a style that requires you to get lucky at the key times, but it requires you to get lucky a hell of a lot less often. And success in this game is found by understanding and minimizing luck's role in it, is it not?

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