Hey, not really updating about anything in particular but realized that I haven't updated in a while. The most notable thing I've done recently is highly improve my record keeping. I used to keep ok records in like 2006 but then kind of stopped once I got to the point where I was in good enough shape that a mid 5-figure downswing(which was about as bad as you could go through in MTTs back then) wasn't a major setback. Over the last couple years my record keeping has been pretty sporadic and I haven't really complied things. I compiled all the live tournaments I've played into a database, and decided to add additional spreadsheet pages for other things. For the last several months I've always kept a notepad file open while I play to record what I've played, how many times I've rebought, what I've busted etc, primarily to get an idea how much I spent/cashed in a day as well as to keep me more alert if there is a table that may have closed and not reopened(euro sites aren't as amazing as all you Americans think).

The primary reason I never really recorded all my online results in a spreadsheet is unless I play like 20,000 MTTs I'm not gonna learn much from the stats, instead I'll just find ways to be bitter about my short term results. What I've been doing now is just inserting the stats of # of tournies played, total $ spent buyins, total cashes($, and #) and then show profit, ROI and ITM%.

I also have pages in the spreadsheet for Swaps(% and site-to-site), pieces I've bought, prop bets I've made, and other sources of income/poker related expenses I've incurred. Hopefully I can keep this up, but who knows.

Since getting back, I've been profitable 4 out of 5 sessions which when playing MTTs seems pretty damn unlikely, I haven't made a killing by any means, but the sessions have been pretty interesting. I've been putting a lot of thought into how to play specific tournaments, or how to schedule specific days lately and think I'm getting a fair bit better. I'm usually not the type of guy whose big into "hiding information" but I feel like I don't really want to say which specific conclusions I've drawn, since if 50 other grinders start copying my schedule/ideas it kind of defeats the purpose, since a lot of the things are really small/nitpicky and although they likely lead to slightly more profit now, they'd probably mean significantly less profit if everyone did the same. A lot of it just boils down to playing more tournies and skipping several of the highest buyin tournies,

Last Wednesday and Sunday I had 2 Rocky like comebacks to save my sessions. On Wednesday I played in the afternoon including the 109 rebuy turbo ECOOP event. I was fairly disappointed since I was in for 709 in the rebuy period, then finally ran up a stack before the server crashed and they said they'd be refunding people. I figured the refund system would kind of screw me and distribute equally to everyone left, but it was in their T&C's that they pay back everyone whose still in the amount they spent and then split 1/2 even, 1/2 chip-chop, so it worked out to be a pretty favorable refund for me. Other than that tourney, I spent like 3700 on buyins and had 300 in cashes + a 26 FO that I registered in for some reason. I was 1 tabling for ages, but after cardracking like crazy at the final table I won it for a little over 7k(it was the biggest field tourney I've ever won, 17xx players).

On Sunday I more or less repeated the same thing, and until ~930pm I had 1 cash of my 50 tournaments played(a mincash in the morning 109r) across nearly 10k in buyins. I then got into comeback mode and ran up stacks in the 2nd chance, 750k and 109 turbo on Stars. The 750k was fairly disappointing, I was a fairly sizable chipleader for quite some time in the money, then got it in AA v a midstacks KQ vs TT and lost the main pot and the size pot to the TT. I then built my stack back up and IIRC got the chiplead back. I then got it in AA v KK on a low flop against the same guy and then he got there against me again to bust in like 100th. The 109 turbo was actually ridiculous for a Sunday tournament. I'm pretty sure in the final 18 there were only a few people who were even close to winning players and I remember thinking about 5 of the final 9 were probably bottom 10% in the field. I'm likely underexaggerating, several people folded down to an ante, people were folding out of the BB when they had less than 2BB to start the hand, people raise folding to 5 or 6BB stacks, it was ridiculous. I ended up coming 2nd for 10k to make the day profitable.

Monday was my one losing session of the 5, and then today I decided to play 38 NLHE MTTs and cash 6 for a total of 2k across 6k in buyins, and play 3 PLO MTTs and final table 2 for a total of 14k across $860 in buyins. I think overall I have run pretty mediocre at tournament PLO before today(and am almost certainly down overall after playing the 10k in WSOPE 2008 and some of the big SCOOP/WCOOP PLO events), but today was pretty sweet. It sucks how my big blog post is about winning 10k at PLO when you can consult another cardrunners blog and see a guy win 2million at PLO and then boast about his cooking abilities instead. Anyways, I got stacks in all 3 of the PLO tournies I played(the 200's at 2:00 on Stars and Tilt, and the 400 ECOOP event), and eventually dwindled out of the FTP tourney but kept winning pots in the stars one. I managed to final table, knock out some shortstacks, get there against a big stack when he had about the perfect hand against mine but I binked the 30/70 and then was 5 handed with 1/2 the chips. I then just lost a bunch of allins and came 3rd but with Poker Stars payouts, its hard to be too disappointed with a 3rd place finish.

After that I was still in a few tournaments with stack, most notably the 400 PLO ECOOP. I was absolutely crushing and had about double the ITM stack(30 paid) with 40 left. I kept building on that and with 18 left I was the chipleader with about 2.5x average. The guy to my right was limping ridiculous holding quite regularly and then eventually decided to mini-limpraise AA52 against my QT98ss and then win the flip on the 762 flop for the chiplead which took me down to average. People were busting extremely quickly(the bubble lasted ages so average was really low) but I managed to coast to the final table and then hold AQJJ against 9875 against a shortstack to be about average with 7 left. I then went extremely carddead and eventually busted in 5th for 9k.

Tomorrow should be pretty exciting, it appears like it will be one of the more epic Sundays of the year(at least 3 of the euro sites are having their monthly/quarterly tournament) so I'm going to try to get some sleep and wake up to run good.