Two Steps Forward, One Step Back..

That Paula Abdul is a philosopher if nothing else. After several strong runs at the cash games and tourneys the previous week, this week was marred by mediocrity and bad moves. Over confidence can be a detrimental as confidence can be rewarding. My MTT runs were OK. Nothing to really brag about. I took a stab at a $5 PLO MTT w/ 809 players last night only to finish just out of the money. I had been playing pretty well and amassed a nice little cache of chips when a bad beat followed by a bad call put me in the danger zone. Like most players I am not looking to "just cash". So when my "M" gets dangerously low, I go.

When it gets to "bubble" time I see so many players try to ink into the money only to bust shortly after. While something can be said about cashing, something can also be said wasting 3 hours of your time to only get back your buy-in or double your buy-in. This does not make for a good hourly rate. The thing that doesn't frighten me at these points is that the larger chip stacks will most likely call in an attempt to "elminate another player". With this philosophy you are more likely to get called by a mediocre hand and although sometimes behind you are rarely dominated.

In addition, by not playing scared and continuing to attack; you gain a TON of fold-equity from the smaller-medium stacks.

anyway, long story longer; I didn't cash and wasted about 2 hours of my time. I will play another PLO tourney sometime soon as I felt my play was rather solid, but my cards were rather cold. The play was absolutely terrible, which was good considering this was my first PLO tourney.

I left work a few hours early Friday only to come home and lose money sitting at the tables. Good move. I lost about $20 in a four hour session. One was a poorly timed push that I am still trying to convince myself was a good move. It wasn't. Other than that it felt like I was back to where I was about a month ago. Making guesses instead of decisions, cold cards, no action on my solid hands, missing set after set, ill-timed aggression.

I'm debating playing the CP Tourney tomorrow night. It might be just the thing to get me back on track and my tourney play has been rather strong as of late; hell until Friday so was my cash game play. I'll probably try to play a bit tonite to create a "cushion" in my BR to make my decision easier. Not sure what game to play, but I imagine I'll end up sitting at a $10 NL table on Stars. PLO is an option but I need to regain that confidence, get back on the horse if you will.

On a positive note, we are going to start a weekly home game "league" with several very soft players, mixed in with a few solid players. I have never felt uncomfortable playing live and have never had a problem getting a "feel" for the game like I do online. If I could just establish enought to play weekly at the casino............