I feel a need to get back home. I've had enough of poker and enough living in a casino.

I didn't really even get to see Los Angeles-- just like last year. And while I played well early, I felt my game slipping as it became more and more difficult to eat right and exercise. I can already feel the effects after not even ten days.

I realized just how much better I feel when I'm living right. It's damn near impossible to do on the road. I need a consortium of likeminded players who seek to stay healthy and active while they're traveling the circuit.

Anyway, I need to get back to that. The 10/20 did not treat me well; I did not play well. No más.

Most of them think I played it fine. I disagree, because my initial instinct was to squeeze preflop, and I strive to always trust that first. But it is a good reassurance that the mistakes I made this trip weren't big mistakes-- either small pots or close, tough decisions.

Life has been busy lately; I've been looking for a new place to live and been bouncing around a little as a result. I've managed to play some poker; oddly enough, I've had my best sessions in late nights or hanging around other people. My worst are when I'm focused and commit to grinding. This makes me worried, because I'm obviously going to spend more time playing online when I'm by myself than with other people. I think I encounter severe tilt problems when I'm alone and hit a bad streak.

This is a huge problem because I end up dusting off tons of money after hot streaks when I put in one bad day where I shouldn't play, but do anyway, and don't make myself quit. Three times this calendar year already I've had a winning streak abruptly crushed by one terrible day.

The days where I work out and take care of myself I do well. The days I just play poker and don't have a life I do poorly. Seems like an easy correlation and one that's easy to manage. The problem is weeks like these, visiting family, by myself all the time, bored... not much to do. And you think "Oh, perfect time to put in some serious grinding hours." But it never works-- you run worse then you play worse then you press and chase losses.

There's no excuse. The money is the money. There are no mulligans for mental mistakes. You don't get part of your money refunded if you lost it on tilt. You don't get to spirit that away from your winrate.

Must play well all the time. Must get back into the form I had when I was a consistent winner. Seems like so long ago.

I've been playing tournaments more lately in preparation for the LAPC. I haven't done anything in them although I feel like I mostly played well. Just that I get unfocused and mentally tired sometimes, and I miss opportunities or screw up decisions. I'm not sure what I can do to keep myself playing at my A level as much as humanly possible.

I keep forgetting to write entries. Well-- not forgetting, per se; rather, it's more like, after I've done something in poker that merits an entry, I'm usually mentally drained and don't want to think about poker for a while. The procrastination snowballs and today I am writing the entry I meant to write after my Sunday donkaments.

BTW in the first two FTOPS events I played I got in huge, huge pots ahead and lost. Just a reinforcement that tournaments are stupid, frustrating, and arbitrary, and there's nothing you can do about that.

This probably should be edited before publication, but I decided to just write it out and deal with it later instead of hanging onto it. I'm not producing enough content by waiting until my writing is perfect. And besides, this is a blog, not the New Yorker.

Leaving for L.A. on Monday. Here's hoping for a nice tournament score, some cash success... something. Oh, and here's hoping I can finish selling that action by then.

I'd been really pushing myself to play a lot this week, and as a result, when I finished a session, I didn't always want to think, talk, or write about poker right away. (Or, at least a few times, I was venting to someone about the bad run I was having.)

I did run pretty badly this week by, I think, about any measure. But I also played a lot and put in a lot of hands, and so even though I ran badly, I feel like I learned a lot from them, that getting back into the mix shook the rust off my brain a little. Now that I was playing regularly, what people were doing and why clicked much faster with me.

Just looking at my stats now, I put in a shade over 12k hands and all of my profit came at HU. I was a slight loser overall at 6-max, but I put in solid winrates at 1/2 and 2/4 HU. Of course, it's only one week; my 6-max results were partly due to bad luck, and partly because I probably tilted some off (though I can't think of any specific hand I played badly right now). I'm addressing the tilt issues; I think after I get them resolved I am poised to do very, very well on my next good run.

I'm considering attending the L.A. Poker Classic-- possibly flying to Los Angeles a couple weeks from now, hitting a few of the preliminary tournaments, the main event, and possibly playing some of the cash games on the side. I've got a few details to work out, but some concrete plans are forming, so where I had this as an idea for a while, it's now starting to look like a real possibility.

More next time. Doubt I'll play Sunday, but this week should leave me with some free time.

I put in over 4,000 hands on Monday. I rarely do anything like that, but I was feeling the need to work, and I decided to just stay home all day, buckle down, and multitable. Playing mostly 6-max and mixing in HU matches when a good one was available, I came out a small winner. I ran pretty badly (there's a funny stretch in PokerEV where you can see me break even on "Sklansky bucks" for 200 hands and drop something like 5 BI in showdown winngs), but even so, I played my B-C game for the last 1000 hands or so, and I definitely spewed a couple buyins in bad spots. So, running badly or not, I have much work to do.

But I did feel good about the fact that I stuck to it and put in 4000 hands. Not that I plan to do that frequently (and obviously, it's bad to do that if I'm playing my B-C game), but knowing that I'm capable of it when I need to be was a big boost of confidence. (And if I'd quit when my play slipped, I'd have made about 8 BI in 3000 hands, which is a pretty good day, all in all.) It takes a certain amount of mental fortitude, and in the past, I'd certainly questioned whether or not I had it; I feel this represents a big and tangible step in my attempts to become a cash pro.

So I had an idea for a post about the proper mentality to keep while playing poker, and I had an example I wanted to use that involved LaDanian Tomlinson, but after the Chargers lost Sunday while he was on the bench, the public perception of him isn't exactly the one I want to evoke when I talk about staying mentally strong through tough times.

But I'm going to do it anyway. Allow me to cite this Michael Silver article which mentions a speech Tomlinson made in the locker room back when the team was 5-5:

In the players only meeting, which took place five days after the Nov. 18 defeat to the Jaguars, Tomlinson challenged his teammates to become more accountable. The first part of LT's message, according to several players, centered on the widely held views that Turner (as the offensive play-caller) and defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell were hurting the team from a strategic standpoint, especially when compared to popular predecessors Cam Cameron and Wade Phillips. Tomlinson not only acknowledged the complaints, but he also copped to having shared some of the same feelings. That gave him even more credibility when he told his teammates, "It's not about the coaches. Between 1 and 4:15 on Sundays, we're the ones who decide our fate. Don't buy into this 'Norv's not a leader' stuff. If we do that, we're gonna finish 7-9, and we'll be the ones who suffer. This division is there for the taking, and we have to decide right now whether we're going to take it."
(bold emphasis mine)

It's something I've been trying to keep in mind when I get frustrated at a bad run of cards, or start verbally exhibiting my contempt for my opponents (which is horrible and, for various reasons, is strong when I play online; when I play live, it almost never ever happens). And that is: Guess what? I can use a bad run as an excuse for bad play, or I can tilt and blame it on my frustration, but in the end, I'm the one who suffers for it. I'm the one who will continue to have mediocre results and not grow as a player. The money is there for the taking, and I have to decide whether or not I'm going to take it.

That's what being a professional means.