Wow, so I haven't done one of these in over two months. That was predictable.

So, this month has been a little bit of a wake up call for me. I've been one of the biggest winners (I think) at 400NL for a while. It took me a few months but I think I've carved out kind of a niche in the games on the site a play at where I make a lot of money taking advantage of my opponents' inability to play effectively in multiway pots among other things. So I was starting to get pretty comfortable with my game.

Well, then I moved up to 5/10, and chomped down on a fresh, delicious slice of humble pie.



Obviously this sample is nowhere near definitive but I think the graph's sort of amusing. The important thing is that within 5k hands I was uncovering leaks I didn't know I had, and running into all kinds of spots I've never encountered at lower stakes. It's been good because it's forced me to reexamine my game and think much more intensely about situations I've taken for granted for months. At the same time, $17k is my biggest downswing ever by a long shot and my confidence was more than a little shaken.

Naturally I responded by tilt cashing out a bunch of money to buy a (sort of) fancy car. It's amazing how easy it can be to rationalize spending large sums of money on superficial crap when you start to encounter swings like this. I mean, on one hand, I feel like kind of a moron, but then again to this point in my "career" (and my life, honestly) I've never bought myself anything nice ever. So I mean, I'm not proud of it necessarily but hopefully by doing this I've gotten it out of my system. A great example of my approach to life- complete ambivalence towards practically everything. Healthy.

Anyway. Confidence destroyed, I did a HH review with SEABEAST last night, which I haven't done since like April. Basically served as a reassurance that I'm not getting run over as much as I'd thought, but also brought into focus the fact that I really need to work on building reads and making read-based plays. Which sounds completely trite, but becomes really meaningful at 5/10+ in a way that simply doesn't apply nearly as much to lower stakes. I believe I remember a 2p2 post by irockhoes to that effect, which I didn't understand at the time, but now I do. Sort of.

But man, I really am amazed by my own complacency. In July of last year I had $5k to my name and was a rakeback pro at .5/1. I was hungry, determined to make something of myself. Now I talk blithely about making $20k in a weekend and buying a car on impulse like some ****ing trustfund brat. I mean I'm no aejones by any stretch but it's still crazy to think about, not only the way that poker has changed me financially, but personally as well.

I guess I'm going off on a tangent now but I feel myself incrementally turning into kind of a douchebag. That was certainly not my goal when I started this, but all of a sudden I find myself going out with friends, making a point to drop a grand on strippers in two hours just because I can, all the while acting like an *******. I haven't earned the right to display this kind of braggadocio. I'm a midstakes grinder with an extremely modest amount of success, albeit complemented by a highly immodest vocabulary (see last sentence). I mean I'm not saying there's some threshold of success which grants you special douchebag privileges, just in my case especially I have done nothing to warrant it. I feel like I've slipped into this trap where I've gotten more and more of this sense of entitlement and lack of appreciation for the gifts poker has given me, and it's seeped into my approach to the game as well. A good example of this lapse in focus is this hand I included in the HH review with SEABEAST, which if I had taken two seconds to really think it through, I would have realized was embarrassingly trivial, both on the table and off. I need to remember that my goal in poker is not to buy flashy **** and wave my cock at people, but to capitalize on a rare opportunity to achieve some degree of financial independence at a young age.

So to that end my immediate goal is to drop down to 2/4 for a while and just get some confidence back and sharpen my focus. Then I guess the plan is to do a sweat session with SEABEAST at 5/10 and try to really focus on making solid reads and adjusting, and make another serious run at it after I make $10k or so at 2/4.

GL to you all.