Last night I laid down to sleep at like 9pm. I ended up reading for a couple hours, but still passed out easily before midnight. The last few nights before that I hadn't gotten much sleep, so it felt really good. I woke up and went to class feeling refreshed and full of energy for the first time in a week.

After class I came back to 6 fresh inches of snow. My walk to school from my house takes about 15 minutes, and it is one of the better parts of my day. It always has me feeling slightly more awake and refreshed early in the morning. I get to walk along a trail, get some fresh air, and romp around in the snow a little bit. Anyways, there was a bunch of new snow so the going was a little bit slower, and I realized there was no chance my car would get down the driveway.

I normally box twice a week, Wednesday being one of the days, but had to forego that today. I went in the garage to swing some kettlebells around, then came back in to test out my new C2 Rower. I did 3 5 minute rounds for a total of 3800m. It was really hard. Rowing is no joke. I will try to do that 3 times a week and improve my form and hopefully see some results there. I enjoyed it to be sure. I have always been big on variety of workouts, and this just gives me one more option.

Anyways, after workout, PostflopAction was sitting at 1-2 plo, so I asked if he wanted to play some HA. We ended up playing 200-400 HA for about 2 hours, and I had my best day ever, making a little over 440k. I am no Hastings or anything, I can't pull out 4m in a night like its nothing. I felt I ran pretty well (obv), but I also felt like my game was top notch. I haven't played NL much in a long time, but I felt very comfortable there. My bluffs were working, my sizing was good, and I was getting max value from hands.

PLO I felt I did well in also. I don't generally play deep stacked PLO unless the game is extremely good, and even more rarely HU. I played fairly nitty and tried to keep pots small oop and didn't mind getting a little bit in pf if I was in position. He was playing super aggressive so I just min raised every button and was happy calling off 6x pf to play with 300x stacks in position every time. Occasionally I would 4 bet to random sizes when I had hands that could stomach a 5 bet.

After an hour he asked if I would stop min raising (he wanted me to 3x in PLO instead of min raise, in NL I was 3xing every time), and I said I was just going to play my game. He asked twice more, and finally quit after I said no the third time. I dno, but I think it is strange for a regular to start making demands like that. Next someone will ask me not to check raise (ok maybe not but still). How I play preflop is up to me. I will limp and min raise to my hearts content, as it is part of how I play the game. If I got stuck making it 3x and calling off 9x for reraises every hand, I would be out of my comfort zone doing something I am not used to doing. This is unacceptable to me.

There are certainly arguments to be made about doing it to keep the game going etc, but again, I am comfortable playing my style of poker that allows for various raise sizings before the flop, small bets on occasion, min raising, all sorts of fun stuff. If I start obliging requests like that, I won't be playing my game anymore and could be put in spots I am not used to seeing, which could result in a big loss for me.

Anyways, I wasn't too sad that he quit, being the nit that I am I was happy to lock in my biggest win ever. After finishing, I studied Euclid propositions, filled out an hour or so worth of paperwork while skyping with Lisa (we want to get a puppy, and the best breeders want to make sure their animals go to the right place I guess. This is a good thing imo, so I didn't mind), and am about to go finish Phaedrus. It is an interesting life I am leading right now, but it seems to be working out fairly well.

-David Benefield