I know in my most recent blog post prior to this one I was talking about slowing down and choosing to spend my time working on some other things in my life. I ended up taking 4 or 5 days off from poker and finally once I felt like putting in a session , I did. And things just started falling right into place. When everything is clicking on all cylinders. Making nutted hands, board runouts are always better for you than for your opponent, you start winning all your flips, you begin to know exactly when and where you can bluff raise and when to make huge call downs all in w/ A hi type hands. It's such a powerful feeling when these things are happening. It's the times when these things happen that are a big part of the reason I loved poker in the first place. Just winning is the solution to almost all the problems in my life.

I definitely haven't stopped anything regarding the new business I am working on. We are just sort of at a standstill since we are waiting for some paperwork to get pushed through and I'm just pretty handcuffed at the moment because I can't move forward until these things are done. It's just out of my hands at the moment.

So in the meantime, I have been playing actually a lot of poker. Way more than I have of any month this year, and my results have been incredible. One thing I've started to struggle with lately though is--well, I haven't really played much 10/20 since around Jan-Mar of 2011--and this month I've pretty much been playing nothing but 10/20 and a little bit of 5/10 tossed in. It's quite an adjustment dealing with daily swings of 5-20k. For example, today, I started off the day up 8k my first session. Second session I lost 10k. Third session I lost another 18k, but made a heroic comeback beginning in the 4th hour of that session and managed only to lose roughly 3500 on the day.

It's a big change going from playing 2/4-5/10 and swinging ~1k-5k a day and then playing almost exclusively 10/20 and swinging all the way up to 5k-20k a day, and I noticed myself actually tilting really hard and making some terrible terrible decisions.

One massive mistake I made... I opened QQ in CO, BTN 3bet me (who had been 3betting like 18%), I 4bet, he called (100bb effective). Flop was 7h5c2d, I chk he bet 1/3 pot I called, turn Th, I chk, he bet 1/3 pot again, I called, river Jd, I chk he chks back 56hh. --So clearly his strategy is to barrel w/ equity and set up a river shove, but not to shove the river unless he actually makes his hand. So like two orbits later I 3bet his CO open from BB w/ AQo and he calls (~2800 effective), flop comes AT5r, I bet 220 into 400, he calls, turn is T, I chk, he makes a big bet like 560 clearly setting up a river shove. I call, river bricks off, and he snap jams for I dunno how much it was, maybe 1400 or so, and I was just tilted and called, obviously I was shown KT. This was beyond stupid of me because obviously I had the very strong read that he would barrel the turn w/ his semi bluffs but not follow through on the river unless he had it.

This type of mistake just stings simply because I know better. I knew which button I was supposed to click, but I clicked the wrong one out of pure frustration. There's no excuse for making this type of mistake. But to all you guys who play a bit lower who frequent this blog, I guess you know ... even someone like me makes these kinds of mistakes from time to time.

Anyways, despite some stupid mistakes, I am quite pleased that I made such a big comeback (obviously I had to run pretty good for that to happen, but I did make some good plays along the way too).

Think I'll probably take at least tomorrow off and maybe a few more days just to chill and sorta give myself a chance to recognize the big picture that I will be winning and losing 10k a day on the reg if I decide to continue playing in these games, it's not easy, but eventually I think I should get used to it.

Up exactly 60k on the month--barely edging out my previous biggest month by ~5k, so it's good news all around.

Oh and lastly, shout out to my buddy Russell Thomas, member of the 2012 November nine. 3 years ago when I was out in Vegas we stayed in the same house, he took 5th place in one of the $1500 events that year, and I've discussed hands with him from time to time, so definitely I know he has some skills. I don't really ever follow the world series because I feel like it's such a crapshoot, but it really is quite an accomplishment to make it that far, and I know he's a good guy and a hard working dude who has made a lot of the right decisions in life so all I can say is that he deserves the success he's had, I wish him the best of luck at the final table and that I will be rooting for him.

Out