Well, most of you already know what I'm going to say. I don't have the exact numbers at the moment, but all told, I'm down about $933 net for January. Factors that went into this:

1. Playing tournaments above my bankroll. Two Sunday Mils + Nightly $100k adds up to nearly $600 in entry fees. I could have saved a lot by simply playing more satellites and refusing to but in direct.
2. Catching a bad run of cards. This always adds to a losing streak. I got cold-decked pretty bad in most of the main games I play, and lost out on many profitable situations when my opponents didn't have anything (flopped a set in a 4-way pot twice and my flop bet forced everyone out). Omaha,I saw some of the worst coolers of my life, getting rivered so many times for half, 3/4, or the whole pot. It was quite sick.
3. I played bad. No, seriously, I did. I know sometimes my head was not working on all cylinders, and I shouldn't have been playing at that point. Mostly I played bad because I was "going...

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2nd/1700...Deal heads up for $13,100.

Sick result, I played my usual mtt game again like last time and things just fall my way I guess. Not that I was winning all ins, or races, but just that I was the "dictator" if you like. Even if I got caught bluffing or stealing , I would recover , bounce back and amass more chips.

These past 2 tournaments I have been playing at a very high standard, I think I am at the point where I dont really play my cards so much as I play my opponents...sure sometimes im horribly wrong and I am gonna lose chips where regular ABC players won't but I am begining to realise how much I accumulate from pre flop AND post flop agression. Its mind boggling, Its like I found a secret or something in this game lol. I had 1.5million chips when we reached final table and that was me in 2nd place, 1st place was in really strong shape with like 4.5 million or something but he was getting ,AA,AA,QQ,KK etc and getting paid. I won;t lie i had QQ and AA tonight..The QQ...

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Ok so last night i was supposed to get up to 40 turbos, but before i embarked on that i decided to give a $10 mtt a pop, My strategy was to gamble in the first hour to get chips or busto - i'd quite happily have gone on a turbo rampage. As it happens i didnt need to gamble, i hit J5 from the sb and AJ and JQ paid me off in full. That put me on about 4k with the blinds at 50 100, then i had AK in ep... and i limp re raised all in and was up against QQ and i won that too up to 9kish by the first break.
The next few levels were pretty unremarkable, i had no real good hands and i stole a few pots to keep my stack alive. Then i noticed we were down to 60 people and i was in the top 15. No hands and the whole table taking it in turns to raise from early position made me a short stack by the time we were down to 27. And i decided to change gears, i had about 50k and blinds were 2k 4k. That didn work either as evry time i raised the somebody obviosly found some kind of hand and re raised all...

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I'm up about 2.5 buy-ins so far at 50PLO; as I noted before, the main difference so far is that players are more aggressive than at 25PLO. More pots are getting raised preflop (though still not a ton of 3-betting), and players are a little less prone to getting bullied when they have position. That said, the game is still fairly easy, as a lot of people are overplaying their hands (especially Aces), and overvaluing hands at the wrong time, drawing to straights and flushes on paired boards, etc.

Had a few good turns of luck today. On a T-9-7 board, I bet with a set of 9's after it got checked to me. One guy called, and I checked behind him when a 5 came on the turn. The river was the glorious 9, and he bet pot into me. We got all the money in, and I saw that I one outted his TTxx. Still, if the 9 doesn't come on the river, I probably don't get ALL the money in.

Also made a quads on two additional instances (though not needed either time), and I rivered a straight flush against...

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I think I'm much better at Poker than I was 6 months ago, and I am miles ahead of where I was a year ago. But the fact is, I'm still not that good. And I say that even though I'm a winning player... I thought about it a lot ever since someone (I think it was Dave B) posted on the main forum something about "if you had the BR, could you play in the big limit games?" And the truth is, I definitely could not. I am currently making most of my money because my opponents play poorly, not because I play well (although I do think I play well a decent portion of the time). But I'm determined to get better, and I want to push myself to do better, while still staying within my bankroll. I have started playing more tournaments, as I wanted (I've been doing mostly miserable in them), and I've started playing $5/$10 when I play limit (which has made me better already). Hopefully, one good score in a tournament will wipe out all the shenanigans.

I recently bought The Professor, the Banker, and...

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