So I guess I'm 1/24 now, and have one less thing to complain about.

It was a pretty epic couple of days.

I always felt like when I finally cashed I would make a deep run.

It's always been that way for me, dating back to M:TG.

A disproportionate amount of the time I would either lose the first two rounds and drop from the tournament, or I would come 1st.

Poker has been quite similar, although it didn't work out exactly like that this time as while I did get a deep run from my first cash, I wound up finishing an ultimately disappointing 9th, for a touch under $40,000.

I feel really good about the experience overall.

Day two was the most exciting and mentally stimulating day for me in recent memory.

12 hours of dynamic short-handed poker, vs a mixture of opponents who were mostly winning players, on a stage of sorts, for a lot of money and pride.

It was awesome, and reminded me why I started playing poker in the first place.

Obviously part of me is a little sad at having gotten close to so much money and a bracelet and so on.

And there were a couple of hands that will haunt me a bit.

But overall I think I played pretty goddamn good, and I am proud of my efforts, all things considered.

If nothing else I can hold my head up high this time and say I put everything into it that I could.

So anyway yeah, I guess a $40k cash would seem nicer if I hadn't paid that much to enter a tournament two weeks ago.

Plus it's a bit harsh to have gotten 11th in the Monte Carlo 6-max where 1st was $400kish and now 9th in this where 1st was $550k, both times having to navigate through a strong field to get that deep in the first place.

But I enjoyed myself, and I feel I am hitting my strides again.

It's going to be a little weird to go back to 1500s now after playing the whole of day 1 of the $5k vs a field of sickos, then sleeping for a day, and then playing 3 days in the 6-handed event - which was obviously way more comfortable with only 6 people per table as well as way more hands per hour/interesting spots per hand, because of being shorthanded.

But I'll get back into the swing of things I think.

I really do like live poker at the moment, I'm quite determined to master it.

There aren't that many great events left in the series (god I need to learn mixed games, WSOP NL is so dominated by 1500-2ks now that it's just ridiculous) but I am aspiring to do some sicko stuff on the live front at some point this year, whether it's WSOP, WSOPE, Macau, wherever.

That's my new goal I guess, one-up this finish :-)