∇xB

It has been a week, maybe less, since I decided I would add tournaments into my daily grind.  All told I’ve probably played about 4 of the ~30 or so high valued tournaments I set out to play since then.  I am bad at following schedules.  Still, I am proud (and very lucky) to say that I have already found some initial success.  I managed to get third in the daily 40k gtd on stars for solid score of around 4k.  The tournament ended up drawing 6911 to smash the gtd, as tournaments on stars are wont to do.  I think I should be getting together with AMT to discuss the tournament HH, since I got to the final table probably more so on run good than on playing well.  Keep an eye out if you are a low-stakes MTT grinder.  We recently adopted a stray cat, perhaps a day or so before my previous score, so I have to assume this run good is a function of kitty-karma.

I have not been running so well in the cash games, and I completely blame myself for this.  The reality of the situation is that I simply haven’t been taking enough time to study and shore up my weak spots in my worst games and I just watch myself bleed money.  Certainly I haven’t been running the best either but I am coming across situations where I am uncomfortable and unsure of what to do and I am simply failing to address them when the session is over.  Coming to a new session without addressing my previous leaks is simply lazy and intolerable in my mind.  One of my strongest points as a poker player is that I have a very large set of tools available to me through my peers and my own mathematical insight to be able to understand how to objectively evaluate a situation and extrapolate what is important to be applied to my overall game.  This is why I play mixed games rather than zeroing in on a single game and trying to destroy it.  Also: short attention span.

I am very thrilled that by moving to tournaments, I find out there is a whole new toolbox with which I am unfamiliar.  I have only a vague idea of ICM and understanding of various tournament theory concepts, so I am excited at the prospect of adding more methods of analysis to my poker toolbox.  It feels like being in college again and taking new math classes and learning all sorts of new methods of analysis.  In a good way.

This tournament score has taken a lot of pressure off of my need to grind to pay the bills for a little while, and in theory this should motivate me to be working on my overall life goals.  Sadly it has had the opposite effect and created a sense of complacency.  It is my hope that admitting to that will be enough of a kick in the ass to get me motivated.  That said this feels like a good note to end on given that I have essentially neglected my to-do list for the past few days.  Hope you all run as well as I do.