I haven’t been blogging much lately, mostly because I’ve been truly grinding – I’ve put in more hands this month than any other month and it’s not even half way through.

That’s obviously due to my laziness when it comes to putting in long sessions but for whatever reason, I feel like playing for hours everyday.

It’s been maddening, however.  The swings are pretty tough this month, including a -8k day and a +10k day at cash, and I’m just up a couple K over 30k hands.   I’ve been trying to play as much 5/10 as possible and the variance is truly sick.

I’ve also had a frustrating time with tournaments, finishing in the last two tables of four tournaments with a first prizes of $60k, $25k, $11k and $12k.  However, I broke through that barrier on this past Sunday with a win in this tournament:

It feels great to finally win one.  I’ve had awful luck near the end of  any tournament with a decent first prize the past couple years and I ran well overall, had people do some donkey ass hit when I held hands like a straight flush, and played very well (conserving my stack and going all-in at the right times) to take it down.

The feeling of winning a tournament is awesome and probably the best emotion you can get from poker.  Of course, when you play a tournament, doing anything other than winning usually leads to disappoint and you will obviously feel this a lot leading up to any victories.

But that rush of a final table and the feeling of taking it down reminds me of why I occasionally put myself through the torture of coin-flipping for thousands of dollars.

It’s my first big score on a Sunday donkament day in.. 3 years I think when I got 10^th in a big Party Sunday.  Back them I won $9k for 10^th.. which was bittersweet, but it basically doubled my roll at the time.  Sundays have been pretty cruel and I’m no doubt still down money at them but this was a nice victory.

I’ve also won a seat to the LAPT in Uruguay.. it’s not a huge buy-in, a $2,500 tournament, but it should be fun and full of donkeys.   I’ll also be stopping by Buenos Aires for a few days to check out the city and see if I want to live there when my summer stop in Montreal is up.

It’s funny though, I actually only have 25% of myself in this tournament.  Me and three of my buddies were bored one night and decided to shortstack 25/50 with a $1k buy-in, since the newish fish AlexandraPaul was playing.

I doubled up off Ansky fairly quickly and APaul left.  We then took the profit of $1200 to a $1100 turbo SNG.  We got third and now had $2,000 of freeroll money to play with for the corporation.

There was a $2,100 Step 6 to the LAPT about to be filled on Poker Stars.   We sharkscoped the competition and they were almost all complete donkeys.   It was too good to pass up so we played it on my account, and we ended up winning a seat.

It’s kinda weird to take such a big trip for just what is essentially a $650 tournament for me, so I’m trying to make a real vacation out of it.   I am considering a stop in New York since I have never been there and I’ve heard it’s an amazing place.

Hopefully I can motivate myself to blog a little more often.   It definitely helps when I’m winning lots of money!