And now, your feature presentation

I decided to play a couple MTTs the other night on UB and I gotta say, I suck. I really do. Either that or I just don't know how to get lucky. In both I got about half way through and pushed with a small-ish stack with AQ vs 88 and AJ vs 99, both hands in which I hit my A on the flop. Against the 88 he hit a third 8 on the turn, and against the 99 he hit his third 9 on the river. All I have to say is.....craaaaap. I did win some HU freeze outs though, so that’s good. I really like playing HU, especially against Darsky. I’ve played probably around 50 million hours of HU against Joe, and we can kind of have a feel for each other’s play, which is good cuz it keeps us out of each other’s way in ring games and MTTs. Darsky is more unknown to me though, plus I have him 2-0 in our HU history. I’m sure that will change though……..

With that being said I think I like playing tournaments a lot more than cash games. I do like the convenience of a cash game, but I really enjoy the tournament strategy more. I will admit that I have some work to do on my NL cash game play, as I usually only double up when I play (although I've barely played NL cash games), while I see others raking in 5 times their buy-in. Is that weird? I can play the limit games, but the extreme ups and downs of limit can get to you a lot quicker than no limit sometimes, and can have a longer lasting effect. If you lose all of your money in a NL in an unlucky hand (which I've been known to do as well) you steam about it for a little while afterwards, but are playing again and winning again so it doesn't usually have a long effect. When you're on a downswing in limit though it can go on for weeks and months, and really have an emotional impact on a person. I understand that extended downswings happen in NL, but to me it just seems like NL is measured in shorter terms.

I haven't been playing much, I'm pretty tired of playing online. Life has been cruisin along on a personal level, though. I ended a long-standing relationship with one of my ex's last week, and that was tough. We were together for more than 3 years, and since we broke up over a year ago we've had a good talking-level relationship and made quite good friends. However after some deep and thoughtful deliberation, we decided to stop talking. While it could takes weeks and months to get into what that relationship was like, I hope she does well and I hope she's happy, and that's all I have to say about that. The Monday after that happened though I got some incredible news, which unfortunately I can't share with you all because of the privacy of the situation, but I can say WOW what an opportunity this is for me! I'm really excited about the new prospect and perhaps in time as the situation evolves I can explain it and show how awesome it really is. It's put me in a great mood recently and will continue to do so for quite some time :)

I've been getting back into graphic stuff recently, and I'm havin a lot of fun with that. What a surprise to say that it all has had to do with poker so far :) I found a poker chip forum a while ago and have been frequenting it more frequently lately. I've been helping people create their own custom poker chips, and have had a little bit of kickback from it (not money, just a few of their own custom chips, but I do enjoy collecting things, so it works). But I am getting some of my art mind back and hopefully I can keep finding things to do with it so I don't dry up again.

I haven’t really been doing much lately though, so I haven’t had much to write about. I really like writing this stuff and hopefully I still have some readers out there. I’m planning on reading a lot next week, both about the new secret news, and about poker as well. Actually I only wanna read one book next week for poker, and that’s Zen and the Art of Poker. I received it a while ago and read a couple pages, but haven’t gone back to read it yet. I heard somewhere that it was a good book to read, and back to the book I shall go. It’s about controlling yourself at the table, not behavior-ily (?), but moreso emotionally. I tend to be pretty active at the table, I play pretty LAG and I talk like you wouldn’t believe, which is both good and bad. Maybe if I try to get into a Zen state of mind I can take my poker skills and shave off the excess stuff that isn’t needed. So we’ll see what happens with that.

I have some plans for this weekend though so I should have some stories to blog out next week. Also, I need a haircut.

Bankroll: $440