Now that I've played a few FTOPS events, I feel qualified to comment on what I've observed since my return to tournaments. My conclusions? Well, read the subject line.

I found a few things stood out as noteworthy in my tournament play this week:

1)People are even worse than I remembered.
2)It's really hard to take advantage of that.
3)I don't have the patience to wait around at a nine-handed table for premium hands, if I think making a move will work.

Unfortunately, none of my moves worked, despite my reads frequently being correct. I busted Sunday's event thusly: Opening with a pot-sized raise on the button with AQ, the BB called. He pretty quickly potted the 652 flop, which I took as an obvious sign of weakness. I called to take it away on the next street. The 8 turn came, he thought for a few seconds and potted again. I had a pot-sized shove left over his raise, so I shoved. He called pretty quickly with K6o. As usual, an expert play on every street that gets rewarded because I'm too stupid to know when people can't be bluffed off garbage.

After piling up some chips in last night's FTOPS I lost about half my stack with AA to A4o (brilliant job defending from an UTG raise and making trips, sir), and then the rest when a loose clown with a huge amount of chips potted 72s PF and I flat called on the button with QQ (due mostly to stack sizes and setting up a good postflop pot size for an overpair). He pot/called the 754 flop and turned a 2.

Sweet.

I busted the 100r event on Saturday by losing three consecutive races, two as the favorite and one as the slight dog (to somebody who called PF with 42s and open jammed two pair on the flop-- I had AKdd on a 542dd flop).

It's just really frustrating playing tournaments. People make so many egregious mistakes, and I seem to have forgotten how to take advantage of them. Either I bluff people who can't be bluffed, or I get outdrawn or lose races. The nature of what it takes to win a tournament is so capricious that I'm not sure I can ever really move back into them. When I'm playing heads-up, I can get inside my opponent's thought process, figure out what he's doing, what his moves represent, and how to take advantage of that on every single hand. In a tournament, I have to cross my fingers and hope I can get in a pot with a donkey, and then hope the donkey puts his money in bad, and that my hand holds when he does. If it doesn't, that's it. I don't get to reload; I don't get another chance at those chips. If I didn't bust out, I have fewer chips to use as a tool, which means my relative EV has gone down too.

I do have one funny bustout story, only funny because of how it happened. I was grinding some heads-up cash and entered the Full Tilt Mulligan on Sunday because I hadn't quite gotten my tournament jones out of my system. I draw a pretty tough table to start so I decide to not get too fancy and wait for a hand. So I'm patiently folding, concentrating on cash, and then I look up and see that I have 2700 chips in the SB, a raise and reraise, 3 cold callers, and AK. So I just said to myself "Well, I'm gonna bust here, but this is standard tournament play, LOL donkaments," and shoved.

The actual action in the hand: shaniac UTG opened for a minraise to 60, and UTG+1 made it 225. SirWatts cold called in MP; two other people called as well. So by the time it got to me, despite two people taking very strong lines, I see a big pot and AK and even if I'm assured to be called I'm getting like 1.6:1 on my money to shove it in here, so I do.

UTG+1 re-shoves pretty quickly, at which point I figure I'm toast, because he must have a big pair and even if I have outs I'm just not gonna get there, because I don't get there. Action goes back to SirWatts who tanks for a long time and then finally calls all-in. The button also calls all-in.

Imagine my surprise when UTG+1 turns over AQs. Watts, as it turns out, was tanking forever with Kings (!), which makes me wonder what would have happened if he actually laid it down. The button has 87s, and given the odds he was getting to go big or go home, I like his play better than the AQs play, anyway. So of course I have two outs and miss and that's that.

I still found the hand funny, which at least, made that the best tournament I've played this month. Unfortunately, I don't play tournaments for amusing bustout stories, so if things don't pick up soon, I might re-retire from them.

We'll see how some more FTOPS events go. I'm skipping Wednesday and Thursday's events, because I put live music over poker, but I should still have time to play a few more and try for that second big score I've been dreaming of.

Was out of town for four or five days there so I didn't get a chance to play or write -- I was hardly ever at a computer.

However, the FTOPS is starting today, and while I won't be playing tonight's event, I will be playing some of them later on, for my first tourney action since the WCOOP. I'm not going back permanently-- I'm still playing HU cash-- but this seems like a good time to give tournaments a shot on the side in hopes of a big score.

I'll probably have something to say about what I observe returning to the tournament game; I have a hypothesis that people get too wrapped up in current trends on how to play, and forget how to simply play well. I plan to test that and report the results.

I have a couple of ideas for strategy posts; to be honest, I'm kinda waiting to play hands that illustrate them well.

And I'll have, as requested, a bit of a report on Austin, what I like about it, and why I live here now.

It's been a while since I wrote, but to be honest, there isn't a whole lot to talk about. I'm still grinding that heads-up; I played less last week than the one before, but a long session yesterday made up for it-- I got in around 3,000 hands, which is a huge number at heads up, especially for me, who doesn't exactly put in lots of hours.

Anyway, let me update you on a few things:

-I got a new desktop! For the first time since I started my poker career I have a real home setup. This has made it easier to put in longer sessions of more tables, among other things.

-In addition to this, I'm going to look into the possibility of recording a video or two. I'm not sure what their nature will be, exactly, if it will be instructional, or commentary, or my own sessions, or otherwise. But I'm gonna tinker around with it some and see what I come up with.

-I'm not going to travel anywhere else the rest of the year, but I may go to one of the big January tournaments (the PCA or the Aussie Millions). I'm trying to lead a balanced life here, the life I want to live, and there are just too many things about the tournament lifestyle that leave me dissatisfied. As if the long dry spells between cashes weren't enough, there's a lot of encouraged excess and spending. It's hard to make a living playing tournaments if you burn through your big scores when you do finally have them. It's hard to live out of hotels. It's hard to go that long without new people or a change of pace.

Last, I wanted to say I haven't been writing much not because I don't care, but because there isn't much to talk about. Since I'm not traveling the circuit, I don't have tournament stories or crazy hands to post. I could talk about life in Austin, I suppose, but there's not much poker content there. Anyway, I'm hoping these next couple of things I'll be working on should provide some interesting content, and in addition, I'll start looking for spots where I can analyze the game from a theoretical perspective, outline some ideas I have about it that I don't think people explore enough.

Played close to 7,000 hands at $1/$2 and made ~$5100. Ran about 18 PTBB/100. I have no idea if that's an indication of running really hot, or just the massive skill difference between me and my competition. (After all, this is a much smaller game than I'm accustomed to, and I'm pretty tight about my game selection.)

I did plug the stats into PokerEV and it turns out I actually ran badly in all-in situations, to the tune of $900 below expectation or so. Obviously this doesn't affect me in heads-up as much because I'm winning so many pots without showdown, but it was neat to see the graph and see a 5,000 hand breakeven stretch in "Sklansky Bucks" where I actually LOST $1500 at showdown, but still made $1500 overall.

So I feel really positive about these results. Gonna keep plugging away and move up after I've logged some more significant time. I have no real idea what expected volume or winrates are for HU players, but if this is sustainable you'll see me at it for a good while.

My car's in need of repairs, so I spent most of the day at home. Luckily for me, I decided to put in some hands at $1/$2 heads up.

I had a really, really good day and I feel like I played really, really well. Dropping down has helped my confidence a ton, since I feel I'm clearly better than the opponents I face, and I don't mind losing a buyin if I get caught doing something crazy.

There isn't a whole lot interesting to report handwise, although I did have a fun spot where after I check-raise bluffed a chronic minbetter on the turn and bet again on the river and showed four high after he folded, I stacked him two hands later when he called my river shove with the nut straight with... queen high.

I just feel like at these stakes I'm playing much more fearlessly, and not worrying about the variance really opens up my game and lets me run over my opponents. I'm hoping that I can keep this consistent. I won't make this much every day, but if I play this well, I have no doubt I'll show big consistent results.