Ready to go...

I ended up not playing any cash games tonight. Instead hung out with the fam, then ended up hanging out with the girlfriend for a bit too. I feel like my mind is clear and ready to play the $330 live tourny tomorrow. The structure if decent, I wish the blind levels were a little longer, but I guess 30 minutes will do. 7500 starting chips is nice.

Once new thought I had on the tournament last night. When we got down to 2 tables, I had already been pretty aggressive (in Gus mode). Then on top of it I was getting dealt a surplus of good (not great) cards. Alot of weak Aces, big Kings and big Queens. So I was raising to steal blinds even more than I normally would. This was working for a while, but I soon found myself getting played back at more than I would like. I was reminded of things from Gus' book. At times he would fold a pretty good hand in position and not try to steal the blinds, only because he had recently been stealing alot. He said that he did not want people to realize he was completely running them over, because then they would start playing back at him. I think I let myself raise too much just because I was getting good cards, and lost sight of my image at the table. People playing back at me didn't hurt me too bad because I ended up getting it in really good against a 3bet later (AK v A3... even tho I lost), but I think there is an art to running people over, without them realizing it. Last night everyone realized I was running them over, because I had been raising so much. In the future I am going to try to keep better track of my image at the table which should lead to smoother sailing.

Even though I've had some big disapointments in the last few days, I hope I can continue to learn from my experiences and make big improvements in my tournament game. I'll have a report tomorrow on how the live tourny goes, hopefully I don't take a cooler in the first hour.

-Boooom