An Enlightening Night with 3 deep MTT runs! tl;dr

I just finished 24th in the FTOPS 17 300 rebuy 1 Million guaranteed and FT'd my two favorite tournaments on the internet (the stars 55r turbo with big antes and the fulltilt super turbo) for a 3rd and a 9th. I would bet ALOT of money on 9th and 3rd being my two most common final table placements, so thats kind of funny. My heart hasn't sped up from poker in a really long time, and during the FTOPS it did every time I was in an important spot, I really enjoyed it and it took me back to when I moved up to the $5, $11, $22 buyin sngs for the first time. I remember shortly after I first moved up to the $33s, I went 33 straight without cashing and had to make down. Its hilarious to think of how bad I must have run over those sngs BACK THEN to do that, but Im getting offtopic in the first paragraph!

Winning would have been crazy for me tonight for tons of reasons. Before tonight's sesh I was literally woken up to 6 missed calls from a friend who I split raptors season tickets with. We had done a draft at the beginning of the year for all the games and I picked tonights game since it was on a Wednesday vs a solid team. Most raps games are on sundays so I had to draft strategically, at the time I had no way to know there would be an FTOPS! I decided to not waste any basketball tickets this year, so if no one wanted to go I would have went to the game and forgot about tournies. After shipping him the tickets, I frantically started preparing for tourneys, maxing out my USD credit card because I didn't want to have to bother a friend asking for a petty amount to be loaned. Before you worry about my financial situation, I will just pay the bill off when it comes in the mail, Im not swimming in debt! ..... yet!

There were some ABSURD hands in this tournament. One that comes to mind off the top of my head is a shove I made the only time I was short enough to just jam pf, and luckily I doubled it right up.


Blinds may have been 250-500 or something similar and I shipped K9 from the CO. The sb (big fish) tanked and tanked and called with 69hh. This was WELL into the tournament but def not @ or around the money bubble just yet. He flopped two hearts and I faded. A couple other times people made calls on river value bets, one of them when I had bet 3 streets, thinking I was bluffing. Alot of stuff went right for me. There were a couple races where I binked my ace on the river , but I cannot recall getting my chips in worse than a flip ever, and no one sucked out. My table was absolutely insane for a long time with tfund on my direct left, ajkhoosier to his left, chicagocards to his left, and tons of others coming and going. Every pot I played w chicagocards was insanely tilting, boards would run out in the stupidest of ways, and he was really agro which made it hard to play him. Tfund also kept messing with me (or waking up with legit hands) pf. After 8 hours I was admittedly finding it hard to keep emotions in check while playing these huge pots and talking with friends about being tilted actually helped to calm me down a ton. As I watched the animation of being 3bet or a wet card dropped and someone hammered the pot forcing me to fold, I could feel it bugging me, but I wasn't letting it affect my decisions. Despite the struggles at that death table I actually moved to a new one. Happy to still have a manageable stack and all was fine, until I busted to a jerry yang/darvin moon type of player who tarped me with pocket kings! So funny how things work after being at at a table of legends for hours. Its also funny how people say things like 'oh my god how do I bust but that fish makes it deep!' Well, the reason poker is profitable is because those fish make it deep and remember those runs, and not the 90% of the time they don't off stacks early. Everyone needs to love these players!

Also worth mentioning is that tonight I had 60% of myself sold off, the highest percentage Ive ever had out. Tonight was the first night I sold 60% instead of 50%, and it would have been a $30k decision had I won.

To 'go on,' another uncharacteristic aspect of this evening in addition to me fading draws is that I played a big mtt sesh alone. I usually play them with the same few buddies and we crush bags nonstop, but tonight I hardly smoked @ all. To be specific, I had a bowl packed from the night before that I didnt spark until @ least 2 synchronized brakes into the session. It took me a couple more sync breaks to get through it and pack a fresh one, and I remember that bowl sitting there for close to an hour before it got punished. I was also still in the tournament @ 4:20, where a poker players comment suggested I was obliged to smoke, and I passed up on the opportunity. It wasnt even a conscious decision to not do it, I would describe it more as the desire to do it wasnt taking over. I think its really time for me to start using smoking as a reward in my life more than a crutch or mainstay. I can also invest the money I would have spent on drugs into my bankroll (haha this is a joke for anyone thinking I have that out of control of a habit!)

The source of my introspection comes from a new perspective I was given this week. A friend of mine who is studying anthropology had a paper due, and the subject she chose was her poker playing friends. She came over while we were playing a sunday sesh and recorded/took notes on us and our behaviour as we played tournaments, watched sports, smoked, ordered food, etc. She took notes in addition to recording, and used playback from her tapes to transcribe everything, similar to a script in a play. It was due today, and lastnight she needed help with some of our slang and poker discussion so I relived our brutal sunday (2/3 of us went 0fer) and observed a few hours of my own behaviour with a couple of my best friends. It was interesting and eye opening to say the least, and I really believe that the experience of 'observing myself' high while I was sober had the subconscious effect of making me want to smoke less tonight.

None of those who read my blogs are strangers to my odd sleep schedule, and tonight was not an exception. As I mentioned earlier I woke up with little time to spare before the mtts started and no real plan of where I was even playing them! My 'day' consisted of waking up to a ringing cellphone and the messages flashing on my computer screen, making breakfast while reading my friends paper, and clamoring to sell off percentages and get the right amount of money on the various pokersites. During this whirlwind of activity, I was picturing myself watching a recording of these events and just shaking my head laughing at how I resembled a chicken with his head cut off. It is as close to an 'out of body experience' as I can recall having.

I remember thinking during this experience that I used to be really active and super organized both financially and with my schedule. When I moved up to the higher/highest stakes I suppose I slowly morphed into a guy who just does everything at the last minute when he takes brief breaks from tiring hours of being lazy. While I might be exaggerating slightly, its good to be hard on yourself sometimes :)

Fastforward to my tournament results tonight. Instead my regular sighing and moaning regarding the bad luck responsible for more 'close calls', I felt that tonight was a blessing in disguise because of the inspirational dissatisfaction Ive developed. There is no way I shouldnt be rolled online for these games, and its only because for a YEAR I was lazy and didnt grind anything other than sundays and random other stuff with no schedule or plan to generate income. Yet I would whine to my friends all the time about never winning! Weekends used to be the time I grinded the hardest because the games were full of recreational players, and for a year its only been hungover on sundays that I have played vs the weekend players.

I had the vision of myself going deep in a huge tournament months or years down the road with all of action and reflecting back on this evening as the catalyst in my life. I was sitting at the table feeling great about being there and happy that I ended the year of 2009 with the goal of no longer being so complacent! I think the Scott from highschool would kick my ass for being as lazy as Ive been, and the Scott who played sngs would kick my ass for coasting through life with the money he made! Luckily there will never be a Scott kicking a Scotts ass about going broke due to prolonged laziness, because he stopped it at just one year!

The goal of building up a big online BR again starting NOW is def the strongest motivation Ive had to grind since before I can remember. More important than just thinking it is the way that I feel towards thinking it. Ive set tons of goals that I havent stuck to and really got in the habit of going through the motions with them. When I set this goal in my mind, and even typing it now, every breath I inhale and exhale feels 'cleaner' than the breaths Ive taken in the last few months. It sounds as corny as it possibly could, but I felt like posting it because I think it will give me more than just a sense of direction but also words I have to back up :)

Ive played 20k hands of cash this month and prob between 20-30k of mtt buyins. Soon Im going to make 20k hands and 30k in buyins look like nothing, but more importantly Im going to approach them with a new outlook that is best for both my sanity and my bottom line.

Two final notes:
1 - I was proofing this post cuz its kind of long and @ the top of the post I said 'just finished 33rd' - actually, I finsihed 24th - but 33rd is where I finsihed in the last two $500 events that I made runs in. Slowly and surely im working my way to the FT!
2- After sunday mtts, Im going to my parents monday and heading to New York City for a couple days with my mom, sister, and a couple close friends from highscool. Really looking forrward to the trip!