Swingers

Seems like everyone I know has been downswinging of late: well, Big Mick and Dagunman at least, and I've been battling with my own. After last Sunday's bounce thanks to winning the Ipoker $4K gtd, it was normal service resumed at the start of the week. Not that I was doing my bollocks or anything, more a case of putting in a lot of hours for little or no profit and having sudden moments of panic around 3 AM every night asking myself where it all went wrong and why bother continuing just to break even every day.

Tuesday: took a break from online (well, only played 3 or 4 hours), ran the socks off a certain young poker legend, who then accompanied me to the Westbury monthly. Recorded another Irish Poker Radio there with Iain, which I think went very well, probably my favourite show so far. The sound of my own voice still tilts me like nothing else on earth (can only imagine how bad the Doke drone must be for the rest of you), but Rob rabbiting about the WSOP FT was quality and John's interview was really good.

Tournament itself was meh for moi. Played pretty well overall although the hand that crippled me on the cusp of the final table was marginal to say the least. Basically I shipped (or rather committed myself to calling my opponent's ship) with an overcard and an openender after he donk led from the blinds. He had shown himself to be an opposite bettor throughout the night, checking the goods and betting when unsure, so I interpreted the donk lead as a weakish one pair hand. Unfortunately he had two pair and just didn't like the draws, and he went with it. I also made a mistake relating to his stack size. Before I raised, I counted about 30K in his stack (I was playing 60K), but when he shipped, three 5K chips emerged from behind. I still had to call, but now it was for 75% of my stack rather than half.

Rest of the week was back to the grind and the corner was turned on the downswing. Friday was a good day and Saturday even better. In his interview, John pointed out these are always the best evenings to catch the weekender mackerel: something I figured out almost as soon as I started playing poker, but also something I'd somehow forgotten. Cleared almost $2K profit today, easily my best day in a long while online. I've been paying more attention to game selection. Rather than just blindly grinding $50 stts across the three sites, I've been jumping in when I see value. During the week, that sometimes means going down to the $20 or $30 games: today, there were a few $100s that were fishier than a convention of fishmongers.

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