Got a little loose in the afternoon with a friend yesterday, I was planning to sweat him play online a bit but we decided to go to the cas and uhh, enjoy the christmas spirit a bit more and then play a session.

Started off pretty standard for me, AKs allin preflop vs QQ flop flush draw lose then KK vs AA allin preflop. Just as I was thinking about going home a couple of high stakes guys rolled in and managed to convince the door people to get 5/10 uncapped PLO going, so I sat.

I'm not great at PLO. I feel like I have a decent understanding of the game in that I know implied odds vs reverse implied odds is easily the most important concept, and position is even more important because of the PL aspect. So I'm pretty comfortable messing around playing live and stuff, but I'm no expert.

I usually goof around live but partly because I was in an altered state and partly because it was omaha I actually tried last night, and played probably the tightest I ever have live. I had an incredibly nitty image 3-4 hours in, even though everyone at the cas knows me and knows I'm usually a maniac, they would have just thought I was just completely terrified of getting involved in a game I don't understand that well, which isn't really true I was just actually being patient for a change.

A Singaporean high stakes player was in town and he was trying to run the table, potting preflop probably 30% of the time and c-betting almost every flop. Mostly people were letting him have free reign, but after crafting such a nitty image for a few hours I started getting involved with him.

He folded the first couple of times, but then I played a weird headsup pot with him with 77AK (which was the type of hand I'd usually been folding, but was now playing because I knew I could so credibly bluff at this point). Flop came JT9 rainbow and went check check. Turn I potted a blank as a bluff, and he called. River another blank, check-check, I sheepishly showed 77 and he mucked in shame, visibly upset.

This really improved my image obviously and he started calling me down more in small-medium pots when I was betting the nuts and he had jack high flushes or whatever that he would have folded earlier on. I squeezed him a couple of times too and he was snapcalling and check-folding flops, probably because he assumed I had aces the first time or two and thought he could stack me or something.

Basically he drastically underestimated me and instead of admitting it to himself, he started trying harder and harder to outplay me to prove to himself that his initial read that I was a bad nit was correct.

Then a hand came up where he potted in early position, one caller and I repotted QQKJ diamonds and hearts. Folded around to him and he instantly repotted me. Everyone else got out of the way and I called.

It was something like 200 with 400 or similar with 4Kish behind. This put me in quite a good position because I got to act second and shove over a cbet if I liked the flop at all, which meant that even though he had the initiative, really he was the one who was obliged to find a hand unless I didn't flop any sort of draw at all.

Flop came very interesting - Ad 6h 4d, giving me a queen high flush draw and also a good chance to fold him out as not that many hands love that flop (unless he actually did have aces which is now less likely, or woke up with Kdxd randomly). He potted it, I thought for about 5 seconds and shoved.

He thought for at least 2-3 minutes (obviously as soon as he didn't snapcall I was pretty indifferent to what he did, I guess I rather he folds if he has AKxx or something but there was a decent chance he had worse diamonds to think that long) and eventually he said "ok I call" and flipped up 67dd9T for a 7 high flush draw and pair of sixes, lol. 75/25 for me for $8Kish pot, turn was the 5 of diamonds meaning he only has 2 straight flush outs now, river a blank. Ship ship.

Couple of hands later I coldcalled a utg raise next to act with AAxx, flopped AQ7 and then stacked a poor player with Q7 on turn 7. All of a sudden I was sitting 12K deep, and having a pretty great time. I wound up winning about 8500 at omaha after losing 2Kish at holdem. All in all was a real fun night and I find playing different games or playing live against other good players can really revitalise my psyche in terms of enjoying poker.

It doesn't matter how experienced or successful you are, poker is seriously stressful. I have 1000+ buyins for my main games and absolutely zero risk of ruin, and my bad months I still make more than most people do at their jobs, but it still doesn't matter. To do well you have to maintain discipline, focus, suppress a certain amount of natural emotions, and immerse yourself in a highly competitive and spiteful pursuit day after day.

It's clear that for any sort of longevity in this game you need to take measures to decompress from all of this, and I haven't been doing it enough. I have plenty of things going on in my life, but most of them are pretty intense in one way or another. I think it's very important to spend time merely existing, taking it slow, resting heart rate, clear head, all that stuff. I spend too much time trying to be efficient and not enough time celebrating being alive.

I have been feeling pretty stressed lately, so I took the last couple of days off. It's been a good year, and I just want to relax and enjoy myself for the last couple of weeks of December.

Earlier this year I bought an inner-city apartment and I have been living in it for 6-7 months. The complex is well sealed off from the outside world, but the acoustics inside are pretty bad and noise carries a lot. I am one of those people who just cannot stand human noise, and I've come to realise that it just wouldn't matter how nice an apartment was, I still wouldn't be happy. I need space, I need quiet, I need a house.

So I spent the past couple of weeks looking around at places in Mount Lawley, which is probably my favourite suburb of Perth - it's sort of the late night/student/music scene/art wanker/hippie area with video/bookstore open til midnight, coffee shops open real late, 24 hr supermarket etc. I spend half my social time there anyway but have never actually lived there, and there are tons of nice old houses, clean streets full of trees, etc. Open spaces, clean air, but stuff happening too.

On Monday I found a really nice house hidden away behind another house, really close to the main strip, 2 bedrooms and a study upstairs, loungeroom downstairs, space outside to sit and relax... pretty much perfect, and I applied for it and found out yesterday I was successful. I will be renting out my apartment and living there, and hopefully it will be nice and quiet so I can relax a lot more than I have been the past few months.

There was a 2+2 thread recently where SlowHabit made a post about time being the true currency of life, and the reward of doing well at poker not being the money itself, but what that money affords us - which is having more time to do the things we REALLY want to be doing. For a lot of you sickos that is probably poker anyway, but for me it isn't.

So the next couple of weeks are devoted to Super Mario Galaxy, going to see friends bands, sitting around playing acoustic guitar, reading the paper, enjoying existence, and instead of thinking about how I could be doing even better than I am, celebrating having done so well the past 2 years and giving myself a real headstart when it comes to the currency of time.

One of my few true heroes, and one of the few worthy role models in the gambling community.

Notable for being smart enough to beat the game for more than anyone over numerous decades, but also a well rounded enough person to prioritise the rest of his life ahead of the game despite the fact that he was so good at it.

I loved listening to the two-part Circuit interview he did last year and it's sad that so many great stories that he might have gotten around to telling in time are going to the grave with him, but the way he lived such a full life despite being so successful at such a consuming profession is an inspiration.

I was forced to endure the double whammy this weekend: live/tournaments... which is usually painful but sometimes fun. I actually have a pretty decent record in tourneys lifetime, and would probably play online MTTs more often if the weekly gtds didn't start at 4am here.

Yesterday was the first day of a 2-day $1100 buyin 120 player tourney at my local casino. I slept in Phil Hellmuth style and missed the first hour, cos I'm just that baller. Nah, really I was exhausted from the night before, where against my better judgment I played in the $330 tourney they were running, with 55 players.

I came 5th for $1300. I think I played really well up until deciding K2o was a good hand for restealing and getting snapcalled by A8. It was a good/standard call by him but I'm used to being able to run over live players even if my table image isn't great. I should have given this guy more credit than that as he was a cashgame fish which usually means good tournament player, so that was definitely a mistake.

Got home from that at around 2am, passed out watching a dvd on the couch and woke up at 1pm an hour late for the "main event". My first table didn't have a single competent player on it so sleeping in was a bigger mistake than it would usually have been. I didn't really find any cards but I still ground up from the 9K chips I had left to about 17K before I got moved to a much tougher table, with a young guy who plays 50/100 online to my left, and a bunch of nits.

I ran pretty bad in boring small/medium pots and basically didn't win a hand for the next hour or two, so with the blinds going up and slow dealing I was in the shovezone before too long. I had shoved over one particular player's limps twice in late position because he was still limping far too many hands. Both times he tanked and folded. Then once more he limped at 300/600, I had 9K. Looked down at A6 in the cutoff, shoved pretty quickly. He asked for a countout, and tanked for quite a long time before finally calling with kings. lol donkaments... board ran out blank of course.

Really it was ok though because later that night my band was playing a house party anyway and not having to play the next day meant I could really let loose. I was already pretty damn trashed when we were playing but then after we played I decided skulling gin from the bottle was a good idea and I was basically a writeoff from that point on. That was my other misplay for the weekend for sure. There were a ton of people there and the show was pretty nuts. I had a real good time and was lucky to have my gf and couple other people looking after me when it got late, because I was in a pretty bad state. I slept through most of today, or tried to, feel pretty awful. But anyway, good cathartic weekend and back to the grind tomorrow.