So the video above, I posted in my other blog some time back and used it as an illustration of peace and harmony at work. Ie, if my Dog, descended from Wolves, could happily co-exist and indeed enjoy a fine meal with my rabbit friends, who of course by natural law are supposed to be terrified of such carnivorous beings, then there's hope for peace everywhere.

That was before today when Nic came across the Dog dragging the black rabbit around the garden by her ear........ She's ok, but the dreamer in me took a hit today

So the main reason I'm making this blog post is that Matt keeps asking me for a video. First some recent history..... after putting out $20k+ months in virtually every month of 2009, joining Leggo lead to me not winning again for a good 6/8 months or so.

I say Leggo lead to this, of course it wasn't a direct thing. What did start happening though straight after making my first few vids was that I went on a mini downswing..... then I'd get 'lol videomaker' at the tables when shoving rivers with missed GSs etc (which kinda weirdly made me not want to do it), then my AIM list grew to around 30, all regs who I played with who all 'really liked' my videos but were 'surprised' that I gave away so much about my game.

So through probably a 30/70 split of a) people knowing a lot about my game suddenly where before so much of the non standard stuff was shrouded in mystery, and b) utter paranoia on my part in terms of who knew what, I bled around $40k over the 6/8 months (at, like, 200nl and 400nl!).

Apart from the monetary loss, the impact on my confidence was just massive. The way I described it recently was that it felt like it did when I played chess. Ie, I could be staring at the board and be aware of the cards/pieces, players, and some idea that there's strategy involved, but as to what kind of strategy would be effective I had simply had no fucking idea.

So then I started trying to re-learn poker. With Bobbo seemingly retired from most things that aren't either Guitar Hero or fruit picking, I watched a ton of vids from different people trying to build up my confidence and game, almost from scratch.

Now here's the thing. While I often give Rob a ton of credit for turning me into a winner, what I most got out of his book and coaching was PF fundamentals, cbetting strategies, and the realisation that you can be in probably the top 3 percentile of aggressive players and still make money. For the most part, the postflop stuff beyond that came from my own experimentation and experience. In 2009, virtually everything I did postflop was non-standard, almost as a rule (otherwise I viewed the play as reciprocally neutral at best, I was always looking to gain reciprocal edges).

So the moral of that last paragraph is that learning from players with a wholly different style and philosophy to my natural inclinations just didn't work at all for me.

So........... late July or something, I made the decision it was going to be my way or the ol' highway. I read through my old strategy blogs prior to Leggo (grogheadflow.blogspot.com if anyone cares) and realised how much more I once understood about the game. I also started blogging in a separate private blog about developing strategy, and had a core of 10 or so people I trust about poker to read and comment.

September I had my first $20k+ month of 2010. As well as the actual result, I was happy that non-SD winnings made up ~100% of this $25k, as it meant I was more or less back to my fuck-standard style of pre Leggo (as an aside, I still strongly believe, as do others, that a style of winning that comes exclusively from non-sd winnings is much lower variance than the opposite, even though traditionally that style of play would be termed 'high variance') and thus my confidence is back 12 months after it utterly vanished.

Um so back to the video. Matt asked me for a 25nl-100nl one. I recorded some 50nl stuff, I was really happy with it. Then I thought about having to defend the turn overbet that got shoved on to some tool like 'StreamJar' (spot the anagram). Then I imagined having to go through my whole thought process on not cbetting T9o on KK4 (I'd get 'doOOood, you have T hi you got to dOooo the beTTttting').

Then I realised that to explain these spots and do justice to them I'd have to go to the very essence of my current thinking and philosophy about poker.

So you probably know where this going, I don't want to make live play videos any more. Sorry if I come across as a total drama queen, maybe I am, but I'm not a millionaire or even a hundred-thousand-aire (real word?) like most leggo coaches, and with this as my sole source of income for the foreseeable future I can't risk that paranoia factor kicking in again.

Sauce said it best recently a few times where he said that even though he feels he has an edge on player x, a losing session means he quits them forever because if he's correct then he has a small edge on the player (read my leggo fees) and if he's wrong he loses his bankroll (read, my bankroll).

Is all, best check on the animals again........

dan