Last week was pretty gruesome, culminating with today, when, in addition to playing my B or C game most of the time, I managed to take my first 3%'er beat of the month and had about 5 sets/overpairs cracked in big pots. To be honest, I didn't even really care and was mostly playing on autopilot - leaving in 3 days has me thinking about other stuff too much. There are 2 videos I want to make for CR before Wednesday, and I still need to get some cash from the bank, check in with my backers, etc. etc. etc. In fact, I haven't even started packing. Yeah, standard.

To psych myself up, I've been looking at other people's blogs. It's surprising how much I can forget about running well until it happens, how bad other people's streaks can be and for how long, and, for that matter, that I'm still playing tourneys. I've said it about a dozen times by now, but this might be it; after the WSOP is over, I want to switch to MSNL full time. It's just not worth it to continually run bad when Cake and other sites still have the kind of games that they do, and on top of that, tourneys often tie me to the computer late at night when cash games, even if I only play them when they're good, basically run 18/7.

Of course, if I win something, that'll probably immediately change. But I do feel like waiting around for bi-yearly scores is just not that much fun compared to booking steady wins and watching the bankroll line go upward relatively steadily day after day. I might not be able to play 20K hands in a day, but I can certainly book longer sessions in cash than tourneys. So what's stopping me? Thus far, basically some laziness + feeling that cash has gotten tougher faster...except, just by checking out the MSNL regs that frequent tourneys, I know I still easily beat those games. Even my lazy ass has gotten to the point where I think I have to switch.

Meh.

After my last entry, I wound up only playing a handful more events - the razzament (made it deep, but to no avail), a few other midstakes NL tourneys, and the ME, which I just busted in an hour or so ago. It wasn't one of the best tourneys I've ever played, but for how card dead I was, clawing as deep ITM as I did (300-something after not seeing a PP for the last 2 hours and restealing every hand I played) seems pretty reasonable/made my FTOPS profitable. I also took fifth in the Cake 75K for 3700 while I was at it [running like the sun to get there], which makes today an actually profitable Sunday, too/includes my second Sunday major FT in a month.

More impressively, congrats to cking on what I'm pretty sure is his first 100K score (6'th in the $2500 FTOPS) and another chip in the WC unbusto fund. They've run so bad at staking for so long that this isn't gonna get them *that* far, but at least it's a good start and a nice lead up to the ME.

Also, P5'er Halfrek won his second FTOPS event and is up 850K...incredibly sick. I don't know the guy, but I've always been impressed by his play and I think I learned a little bit from watching that FT. Nice job.

Rather than slog through FTOPS, most of which wasn't stuff I really wanted to play anyway, I just caught up with some friends on Monday and otherwise relaxed this weekend. The only day I played was Sunday, when I put up some nice volume but didn't get anything to show for it other than a couple of deep runs.

I *am* playing a bunch today, though, probably from the afternoon shift on. In addition, FTP came through and sent me the entire hand history from FTOPS 1, which features me playing in a totally different style that's going to make some awesome videos.

Oh, and I also finally bought the plane tickets for Vegas...meaning I officially leave in 15 days. wheeeee.

Unfortunately, I only had time to play one event in the last two days, FTOPS4 (the 200 PLHE event), which went nowhere after a promising start. Who knew that the triple shootout would sell out 40 minutes ahead of time? I'd have tried the Stud 8 tourney tonight, as well, but some allergy or other that's making my nose itch like crazy also made me cut the day's session short after 5 PM or so (and just as importantly, I'm not nearly as good at S8 as at razz).

Tomorrow's tourneys are a 535 PLO (no way) and a 100r (maybe, if I feel better and find enough other stuff to fill up a screen with.) Sunday is a 530 HU (probably not; I think I'm +EV in a field like that, but not by a huge amount, and its too early for my other tourneys) and a 300 freezeout (definitely); Monday has a 200 PLO8 tourney (maybe, since I don't horribly suck in those) and a 1K (meh, pass.)

While I'm at it, those of you that want to take a close look at variance should check out this MTTC thread, a 'best of FTOPS' competition. The fun part of this is to take everyone's overall results and just look at the # of cashes/entries (keep in mind that in a contest like this everyone plays 80%+ of all events.) Odds are only 2-3 people of those who didn't book a final table will finish with an overall profit, but nevertheless, the ratio of cashes to plays and the overall finish of all of these players will almost certainly be much higher than random.

It's not a great one because I always hate finishing in this area for a little while after I bust, but 40/4100-odd runners for ~2K isn't bad. (Add up another few hundred in CR fees because this has at least 1 vid in it and probably 2...if FT emails me the HH's. Who knew this laptop didn't save those by default?)

I'm incompetent at PLO and will pass on it, but the shootout tonight looks cool.