By nath on October 27th, 2008 (more posts by author)

Well, I haven't written in an extremely long time, and it's largely because I've been laying low, and partially because it's been a busy/crazy time outside of poker, and I haven't had much chance to play. We survived Hurricane Ike okay, but were without power for five or six days, and I had to miss part of the WCOOP. I came back in time to cash in the final two NL events, including the main. I took a little time off after that.

I've been playing heads-up, trying to pick up more and more hours of it as I rebuild my bankroll. It's been slow going, though. I've been pressing too much and getting myself stuck in bad situations. Getting into the flow of the game is crucial in heads-up; even if you feel a player has enough leaks that you should have an edge against him, so much is dictated by the action / reaction that if you're against the ropes, it's often best to just quit, or at least slow down and get your bearings, rather than press for a situation to make the money back. I've learned that the hard way; I've never been that good at the discipline that takes.

I've also been considering getting a backer for tournaments, playing more of them online, and heading to a few live tournaments as well. The variance is insane, but I'm too good at them to pass up the opportunity. I don't have enough money to play them on the regular right now (certainly not enough to play at the highest stakes where I'm a winning player), and not being able to fade the variance makes it tough to make the correct plays. As much as I prize being able to jump into whatever game is good, and being able to operate on my own schedule, I simply don't have enough money to effectively do that now, anyway. If I can make more getting backed than I can the other way, I owe that to myself.

I have something appearing in Cardplayer soon. I'll let you know when it comes out. I'll also put up a couple links to other things I've written or places I've appeared in the media. I'm pretty bad at self-promotion, but anyone reading this, I figured, would be interested in that sort of thing. (After all, what's a blog where the blogger has too much false modesty to tell you anything about himself, anyway?)

Back to the bankroll grind. I haven't had reason to be optimistic lately, but I'm going to keep trying.