It's been a while!

So its totally been too long since I posted.

Not been playing mega ammounts really. I gave up 6 max as a bad job after a couple of horrible weekends where I lost half my bank roll about 6 months back.

I dabled at tournament poker going back to my roots but realised why I gave that up as a bad job.

So where am I now you ask?

The answer I guess is HU (Heads Up) cash poker. Mano o mano. Just you, your opponent and a deck of cards. The main part of HU is of course Psychology as you really can't make hands enough HU to win without pickling your opponents brain. It's the rawest form of poker and you really need to get in your opponents head. I trained up on Full Tilt playing against some real HU pros, however some indescretion regarding my rake back caused me to stop playing there.

So its back to old faithful, the Ongame network. Where I have propably won and lost the most at poker. To be totally truthful, the opposition is very weak, they are exploitable and extremely titlable. I love it.

But I guess that's not it for me, i'm on a journey at the moment. A very important journey. The journey to find life balance and harmony. I have this real bad habit of getting emotionally and psychologically balanced and start playing the best poker of my life. This causes me to play more poker than I should which in turn ruins my life balance. I start playing long sessions, chasing losses, getting unfit and putting on weight. Which ultimately ends up with me losign at poker and getting annoyed with life. Then repeat.

So what am I doing wrong here? I love poker, I love life balance, I love being fit and I love playing the best poker of my life. So what's the answer you ask? I guess the answer is maintaining life balance, not becoming obsessed with one thing. So that is my goal now, attain balance and then retain balance.

How am I going to do this? I'm going to become a great climber (hobby), i'm going to cycle to work (fitness), i'm going to play less poker and go out more (socialise). Sure I will play less poker but the poker I do play will be focused and balanced. The poker I play will be more winning sessions and less losing sessions. This should hopefully turn out to be greater profit and on the path to being a pro.

Life throws curve balls every day. I always think I have everything worked out, but the day you think like that, is the day where life throws you that curve ball. So I guess the attitude to have is that there is always something to learn in every situation and you never have it figured out. Even if you think you do.

I went a bit deep there but I guess it needed to be said. Now for some key hands from tonights session.

The below had opitiomises heads up play, if you have a great read on your opponent the cards don't even matter sometimes. Here I play a standard raise and 2 barrel on a pretty dry flop. I believe after the turn call this guy is performing a standard 2 street float. From what I can tell he is a very straight forward player, not got in any tricky spots yet. When he thinks on the river then pots it I just know he has at best A high and is trying to represent and 8 or T but there is no way he has one. I just go one level higher and represent a 2 barrel T or 8. There is no way he can call here. I then show it and rub it in to see him go on monkey tilt.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3563378

This match was pretty epic and it saw me at one stage go down by 5 buy ins -$250. However I knew I had an edge on this guy and he had been extremely lucky. I will post the final hand below where I take the most standard line ever with a floped straight, fortunately for me he wasn't giving me a lot of credit at the time. A river shove with the second nuts tops off the hand to make it look like I turned it into a bluff, getting called by second pair just made me rofl for such a large pot. GG!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3563404

Let this be the first blog post of many. :)