APRIL WRAP

After tilting off most of my profits in the cash games, I didn't play much for the next few days. The weather was beautiful so I took the family camping over the weekend in Santa Barbara with another family. I got myself a suntan while tossing the football around and draining a bottle of bourbon on the beach with my homies. I also bought Mason and myself some golf gack and spent some time at the driving range. I've never been all that into golf, but Mason is showing interest and since he hasn't taken to any of my interests, I figured I'd meet him on one of his. He's got a heart condition which keeps him from competitive sports, but golf could be just his thing. I got an automatic ball return thingamajig from Target so now we can practice putting in the living room together.

The cool Pacific air was great but it didn't completely erase the cobwebs from my mind. After three days away from the tables, I got into a cash game, only to find that I was still on tilt. I began wondering if it would be in my best interest to take the entire month of May off, reread all my poker books with a highlighter at the ready, and try to reboot my poker knowledge. Then I thought, screw that, I already have all the knowledge, what I'm lacking is the discipline to always execute the mathematically proper play in every situation.

So, I just did a mental reboot, then won a tournament that night. I started out playing four events, but three of them went not so well, while the fourth found me at the final table. It was taking forever to eliminate players, so when it got down to three, I requested a deal but there was one holdout. We finally got to heads-up and the holdout was now ready to split it up. It was 3AM for me and it was already morning for him in Brazil. I got somewhere close to $3820 while he took $3500.

So, suddenly, I went from being in the red, to being back to halfway towards my goal for the month of $5k. On the final day of the month, I furiously played tourney after tourney to try to catapult me over the goal line, but it was not to be. I finished the month up $2376 and you saw it happen - I played well out of the gate, got up $4k, got bored and played Omaha for awhile, came back to Hold'em, hit a cold streak, went on tilt, lost it all, only to get it together at the very last minute to post a small profit. That's me in a nutshell. I play like I'm bi-polar. If I can get firmer control of my temperament, then I think I've got the skills to make some magic happen.

Well, now it's May, and I feel I've got my head on straight going into the month. I don't think I can keep up the pace of daily posts, but I'll keep notes and try for weekly updates this month. It was good to have an audience to my craziness because it made me accountable for it. Now, I'll see if I can keep the crazies away for the next four weeks and reach that $5k goal for May.