Its been a little bit since I wrote so it felt like time. I think it was mostly frustration, but not really sure. The last time we talked I had just finished tossing a lot of bricks and was pretty frustrated. I have been contemplating taking a break from NLHE and really working in re-structuring my game and rebuilding because I have been frustrated with a perceived lack of success on my part. I find that I hold myself to very high standards and when I don't meet them I become frustrated and look to do whatever I can to get on track to my goals. I decided this time that I was unclear if I was over-reacting or really broken so I decided to give myself one more shot and see what happened. I took a few days off to settle down and refocus and last night I sat down and cranked a couple of tourneys out. Much to my surprise the results were pretty good. As far as NLHE I played the 6th cent (6c tourney with 1 5c rebuy) and managed to min-cash that bad boy (23rd out of 325) and I played the daily $2 Bounty ($1 Knockout Bounties) and managed a 22nd out of 275 for a min-cash and 5 knockouts. It isn't stellar from the BR perspective as it wasn't big dollars, but for my confidence it was gigantic. It feels really good to sit down in a tourney of a few hundred players and navigate a fast structure to cash. I recognize that the tourney structure forces me to gamble more early and will result in bricks being thrown a lot, but I think I am getting a handle on how to play the structures and how the typical MERGE player reacts and plays so I get the feeling that I may start to become dangerous again.
Second topic for the day is Mixed Games. For those who haven't watched Part 1 of Wein's 8 Game Mixed SCOOP vid, download it, watch it, enjoy it. If you are a player on a smaller network I HIGHLY recommend diversifying your game and start to pick up mixed games. It will greatly open up your options and really force you to focus and think about the game you are playing. For me I have started playing PLO quite regularly (the Daily $2.20 HA is a regular in my schedule now) and have been dabling in Stud and Razz some more so I can feel more comfortable in HORSE tourneys. I have been working on 2-7 Triple Draw after watching at the WSOP since that is a really entertaining and challenging game (it is a lot of fun to play as well). I have also picked up Badugi to capitalize on the $3.30 Daily run on Merge there as well and I have to say it is a lot of fun as well. Not that I am looking for competition in the mixed game tourneys, but as far as Merge goes, they are soft. They seem to be filled with lots of players who have a poor to moderate understanding of the game and are either killing time or lighting money on fire. There can be some really nice opportunities to score a few tourney wins in these and bunchs of them have small GTD's so you can take advantage of overlay and really help with NLHE variance if you get good. Anyway enough on the soapbox, enjoy the mixed game vid it is pretty cool.
Don't forget ESPN is covering the WSOP ME Day 3 Live tonight (7pm EST) so tune in and see if you can see Hagbard, Halowax or Wein smiling on the TV! GL to all still in the ME. This is the Gman signing out!