Well I made it, sleeping 31 hours in 2 days along the way.

Have been staying at a hotel in Venice Beach the past two nights - it's a nice little hotel, and Venice is suitably bizarre.

After all the rest and with none of the other guys wanting to do much today as they're all low on money I couldn't help myself but play a bunch of poker.

Obviously I was chipleader from 200 left until 35 left in the Quarter Million ($55K for first) and then lost a 110bb flip vs agriffod who was 3rd in chips (97hh on T65hh vs AT in sb vs bb).

So gross, so much ****ing tournament equity in that pot.

125bb and double second place chips with 33 left, what's that worth, 20K USD? More? FFS

Played PLO most of the rest of the day.

I've made a few breakthroughs recently and am feeling good about working on my game.

I won 4 buyins today over 2000 hands at mostly 200PLO some 400PLO.

I am feeling both determined to crush the game as well as humble enough to accept being patient and slowly and methodically beating all levels from 200 up.

It is hard when you have won large amounts of money at other games to be humble when playing a new game, especially one as visibly soft as PLO.

But I have always maintained that egolessness and respect for the game when on the felt is a huge part of winning at poker, so it's very important for me to feel that coming back in to the way I look at the game (ie. I'm not just racing to try and win dollars, which is what tournaments teach you - play until you run hot and do whatever you have to to chase big scores).

Another thing I have always believed in is the power of the unconscious - the difference between knowing and thinking, sort of.

I am pretty intuitive, as are many poker players (even if they weren't before playing poker) and I know that for myself, whether it's in poker or in something else, whenever I get an unconscious, non-deliberate feeling suddenly that something is so - a revelation, it is pretty much never ever wrong.

It's sick the amount of times I call my opponents unlikely hand mentally as I'm calling a river bet that I know I "have to call".

Or even more sickeningly than that, on the turn I know my opponent has a certain hand, specifically, like, 100% he has it, due to timing tells and just *that feeling*, yet when the river peels off his card I still can't bring myself to check/fold as "my hand beats everything else"...

Anyway I read a really great book on the plane called "Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking" (Malcolm Gladwell), about the importance of harnessing this ability (that we all have), and it was great reading.

All stuff I already knew but he uses awesome stories as anecdotes and it's a real pleasure to read (I read it cover to cover on the one flight).

I brought two notebooks on the trip, one for poker and one for life, and I'm going to work on my PLO game as much as I can during my time here, both through grinding in cafes and writing down ideas.

The other book I brought on the trip is "The Mathematics Of Poker".

I really want to work on my math precision, there's so many spots that I could only guesstimate within like 5% what is correct, and when you think about it 5% is huge.

So I guess my plan is to inform my subconscious by working on the math, and then utilise my adaptive unconscious to play better in-game

Anyway those are my thoughts for the day.

We have rehearsal tomorrow then first show here in LA on Friday, should be fun...