I returned to Austin a couple of days ago, and I haven't been playing poker since. Haven't been reading the forums, really, either, and only occasionally thinking about the game.

I decided to give my head a rest, both chemically and from the stresses of poker. I think giving myself some time and maintenance will clear out bad thought processes and mistakes I've been making. I've had too much negativity around my poker playing lately. It's a game! It's supposed to be fun! It certainly isn't meaningful or productive enough to be playing if it makes me miserable.

So I think when I'm done with this little break, I'm going to drop down really low, like NL100, because I won't stress over dropping a few buyins, and I can afford to take the swings that come with playing what I feel is properly aggressive. I feel like the pressure to win lately has made me afraid to put money at risk, and I need to undo that, because you can't make money without risking it.

Oh, and just so this isn't completely without content, there's something I want to quote for you that explains very well how I think about tournaments and why I do things differently than so many of the forum regulars. Nat Arem ("N 82 50 24" on 2+2), who you may know best as the

Anyway, in a response to a question from Bond about who he thinks the best tournament players are and what separates them from the pack, he said this:

"They're all really really good at winning lots of pots without showing down. I hate the concept of tourney life for the most part, but there is some merit to winning small pots and figuring out how and when people are most likely to fold. Becoming a big winner by playing a solid tourney game with a few late position steals is a thing of the past IMO. Some people seem to be afraid to look stupid or put their chips in bad and that's a huge handicap for them. Assuming you've played a lot of hands, I feel like going with your instincts will get you more tourney success than anything else."

And in eighteen months, I've been trying to tell everyone this, and never gotten it quite right. But it's simply: Winning pots without showdown, and knowing when people will fold and how to make then fold, is the single most important skill that will improve your tournament results. And the only way to sharpen your instincts for when those spots are right is to practice and try and take risks sometimes and fail sometimes.

Lots of marginally winning players complain about the {lucky / terrible / spewy} {clowns / donkeys / fish} that seem to win everything in sight. How they "always suck out {at a final table / in a big pot}". And it's true, they do. But the reason they suck out is because they've been slamming at every pot, pushing everyone off them, piling up chips without showdown (because, remember, if you win without showdown, you are 100% to get the pot). And they don't slow down when they get played back at, and sometimes they get caught moving on a draw or a weak-ish hand. When they suck out there, or they win their races, they win the tournaments. It's a style that requires you to get lucky at the key times, but it requires you to get lucky a hell of a lot less often. And success in this game is found by understanding and minimizing luck's role in it, is it not?

I didn't cash in the WCOOP main event, and as I've been saying for some time, I'm quitting tournaments for a while.

I just haven't been having fun playing tournaments lately. Instead, I've been feeling pressure to win, expectations of winning, and failure and disappointment as a result, not the fun, free-wheeling gambler's mentality you need to be successful in tournaments-- the ability to just roll with the punches and get your money in and try to push people out of pots-- and most importantly, not be afraid to lose.

Until I can start playing tournaments like that again, I'm not going to play them for a while. Instead, I'm going to try a steady grind at shorthanded and heads-up cash games. My expenses are low right now because I'm not travelling anywhere (at least not expectedly), so I'm just gonna move down to some lower-stakes games where I can regain my confidence, have fun, and not be afraid to play the way I need to play to win.

Reports from the journey forthcoming.

I've been dealing with some personal stuff this week. I'm in Louisiana right now and probably won't play anything until the main event. When I'm done with all this, I'll have a report of the main event, put up a couple histories from tournaments I thought I played well recently, and finally get around to answering Bond's review of my hand history.

Another cash in today's WCOOP (#9 - the $200 rebuy). I finished like 143 out of 2600 and some. Not especially interesting or worth the time (I played nearly 10 hours to cash for slightly more than 2x what I spent) but it does make me 2-for-2 cashing in WCOOP events so far, and I'm optimistic about that.

You may have seen Bond18 post a review of my hand history from the 50k win. I will be answering those questions soon.

I'll put up the hand histories from the last two WCOOP events soon, too. I think I'm playing well in these tournaments.

On a whim-- well, not quite a whim, but a moment of inspiration-- I decided to jet from Austin City Limits early on Day 3 and play the WCOOP event and the FTP $500. I thought I'd try to run up some chips early on, and if that failed, I'd go back to the festival.

I wouldn't have done it for an ordinary Sunday, and I wouldn't have done it for anything I'd never seen before. But something about how the day was going, and my mentality, said it was the right time. So I went with it.

Oddly enough, I did not run up a stack in the WCOOP; in fact, I donked off a bunch early, and I think actually dropped under 3k at one point. I fought back, though-- and even though I hit an occasional cooler, I fought back again.

Meanwhile, I caught a nice run early on Full Tilt, but all in all it was very wild and swingy, as I would win a big pot then lose some of it back on a cooler or other setup. Anyway, it's not important, because i bluffed off 20k at 170/340/25 with a straight draw vs. top set on the turn.

On Stars, however, I was winning all my races and major showdowns. I won some critical pots at the right time, and the structure afforded me the luxury of patience. With a couple of critical big pots where I eliminated people with AKo > A9s and QQ > AKs, I had jumped up to 625k at 3k/6k/600. I took a hit from there, but I was having a relatively easy time chipping it back with small pots. Then a couple of nice river value bets and I cleared 1 million for the first time, at 5k/10k/1k.

Then I started losing my focus. I made a call in a blind battle that in retrospect I think is poor (I had top pair, but my opponent was exhibiting extreme strength and was an unknown who'd shown nothing but straightforwardness). I chipped back up after losing something like 40% of my stack there. Then I hit a stretch of mediocre cards and my table started reraising me frequently. My spots weren't as good. I was getting my money in behind. Then I finally made a bad shove with AQ over a raise (a few hands after I'd doubled up) and lost to AA to bust in 57th.

I have a bad tendency to bust immediately after getting the double-up that puts me back in contention. It happened last Sunday, too.

Still, 57th is about $6,000, which will help. I'm gonna try to play more of the WCOOP events, but I'm not sure which ones. I need a good night's sleep before I make any decisions like that.

There were a lot of interesting hands and decisions from this one. I may post some of the hands here or on 2+2, or put up a hand history for viewing.