So for the 5th straight week I am ranked 3rd in New Jersey, but it's looking like I might fall out of that soon, as Mike Lav has been on a heater that puts my January to shame. He's moved from the low 2300s to 2712, just 12 ranking points behind me, and he took 2nd in the $535 on Party last night which will be another 80 or so points that have yet to be counted. JohnnyDrama, another Mike, took 3rd and 4th in the WSOP and Party 10Ks last night so he could be making moves soon, and Dan Buzgon has been grinding hard as well. I'm starting to realize how silly it is to concern myself too much with these rankings but it is still a fun way to keep up the motivation to put volume in. It's nice to still be 3rd after really having a tough time the last few weeks putting the volume in that I'd like to.

I've also moved back to 8th in the USA, tied for my highest, and 816 in the world, which is my highest ever. A complete list of NJ's top 10 is below, and with Jake sneaking into 10th there we've got 4 of our teammates from that GSSS competition up there:



It appears I will be picking up my dad today, which is great news, but also means I might not get a session in. I'll have to wait for the call and then I'll drive to New York to get them and back.

I went to get my taxes done yesterday and the accountant suggested I open up and IRA. It was a relief to finally have someone suggest something like that to me. I've known that I want to invest my money in something for a while now but I just didn't know exactly what I should invest it in, so this was a great idea for me to hear. Unfortunately between that money, the extra I owed for last year's taxes, and the money I owe for this quarter's taxes, my bank account got significantly lighter! Fortunately I have enough sense to save a lot so while it is a nuisance to let that money go, it's nothing I can't handle.

March Wrap Up

So after a month focused much more on my personal life than on poker, I winded up with my 3rd biggest month of profit ever, only behind this year's massive January and just a shade behind last year's October, which was almost entirely profit from taking 5th in the GSSS 1K. March's profit was $9009 with about $600 of it coming from cash games and $400 coming from bonuses.

Total Buy Ins: $20,707
Total Returns: $28,696
Total Profit: $7989

The last 2 days of March went well. I made $250 playing 1/2 on stream with JCarver and then recorded quite a few results in tournaments, without actually finishing any of them. I've had some success in the $250 progressive KO Stars has been running each night, I won the $30 morning tourney on WSOP and then rounded it out with a 5th in the WSOP 10K for about $500 total profit in MTTs. The next day I went to pick up my parents (for real this time) and when I got home I just felt exhausted and decided I would one table while watching TV with the fam. Five hours later I'd won the tournament I was playing on Stars to finish the day up over $700.

Big tournament schedule today, ready to get the April grind going.

fans looking for updates

Way Overdue for an Update

As pokerished said it has been way too long since my last post here! As usual, the lack of content here is probably due to the downswing I have been on. That being said, I've felt less of an urge to come and "brag" about any success I've had on this forum lately, and I think that's a good thing. I want to update regularly but I don't want to get so amped up about a win that I feel it's necessary to get on here and spread the news instantly.

The Good News

It hasn't been all bad in April though. First and foremost, my dad is doing well. I'd give all the money in the world away for that to be the case. It seems that we are past the worst of it and, God willing that the cancer does not return, I think it should be uphill from here.

I've been running again. My girlfriend has been doing an amazing job of running 6 days a week for almost a month now and it has inspired me to get going as well. I ran Monday-Friday last week and then ran a 5K on Sunday. Going into the race my mindset was that I'd be content breaking 20:00, happy breaking 19:30, and ecstatic breaking 19:00. I went 19:33, but based on how the race shaped up I was quite happy with how I did:



Kelsey kicked ass and ran 23:00, which is exactly what her goal was, but unfortunately the timing system for the race was terrible and they got it wrong on the results. That being said, she finished 11th of 84 runners and was the 2nd place female and I am very proud of her. Unfortunately, they only gave out prizes to the top male and female, so I was the only one of us to get the $25 gift card and little medal

Downswing Details

I'm down a shade under $5000 on the month in MTTs now. I was lucky enough to win $1100 from Pokerstars in a promo they had where, if you played the $200 50K on a certain Sunday, you'd be awarded a 5K freeroll ticket, and if you correctly picked the Villanova-UNC winner, you'd be awarded an additional 10K freeroll ticket. Both were all in heads up shootouts, and I cashed for $1000 in the 10K and $100 in the 5K. Added to the other bonuses I've been receiving and cash games and I'm only down $3200 or so on the month. Two days ago was my 2nd biggest winning day of the month and I won $395 .

My mental game has not been good. I've been feeling like everything is going against me and I've been focusing too much on the things I cannot control. I decided to buy an elite RunItOnce subscription for $100/month and I will at least try it out for this month. The videos are good and are going to get me thinking straight again. The last few days I've played I really feel like I am thinking things through and not letting the negative stuff get to me the way it was to start the month.

I think the financial burden of paying off an absurd amount of taxes and sticking a big chunk into an IRA made me feel stressed about having a smaller bankroll than I'd had after the blazing fast start to the year. So when the first couple weeks didn't go the way I'd hoped I started feeling stressed. After taking a few days off to clear my head I realized how ridiculous it was to feel stressed right now. Financially, I'm fine. I want more money in savings and invested and all that when I think about the future and starting a family and all that good stuff, but for me individually I'm totally fine right now. I want my bankroll to build but while it stays dormant or goes down I really am not in bad shape.

The Plan

I'm just going to keep grinding. Fridays and Saturdays off as usual, and I think I'm going to be putting less volume in on Pokerstars. I was so excited about the launch that I think I put too much effort into getting volume in on there. In reality, the 10K on Stars ends up with the smallest 1st place prize of the 3 sites on a daily basis. There aren't any exceptional tourneys going on there. The 10K is worth it and I enjoy the $50 6 max they have. Other than that nothing seems like exceptional value. I'm going to continue focusing on playing the big tourneys on all sites while also getting the good smaller buy in value stuff on WSOP.

I will also continue running. Got six miles in today in 43:26 on the beautiful paths that run through Saddle Brook, Paramus, Fair Lawn, Glen Rock, and Ridgewood. Six is my longest run in a long time and I was very relaxed, splitting something like 7:21 - 7:16 - 7:14 - 7:20 - 7:12 - 7:01 for each mile. I find that starting slower has me feeling way better at the end than I would otherwise. I guess this is common sense but sometimes I get too wrapped up in going fast throughout the run and it hurts me.

I'll end the post with a pic of the medal I won. I told my mom I won a 5K and her eyes lit up in excitement and I realized she thought I won 5K. Had to explain to her it was a race and not cold hard cash . She was still happy though lol

No Poker Since Last Update

So after my motivated last post my roommate convinced me to skip Thursday night to go to the bar and hang out. Whoops. Had a good time though. Sometimes I think taking a day like that now and then is just the best play even if it costs some money longterm. Staying happy and feeling good, especially during a downswing, has to be good.

Back to More 5K Wins Than Tournaments in April

Went and ran another 5K with Kelsey yesterday. This time we both took the gold though our times weren't much different from last week; I was 9 seconds faster while Kelsey was 15 seconds slower. I told her several times though that in a race, if you have the option to run for the win or run for a time, always try to win first. So I think she went out slower and actually tracked girls down before winning by a really large margin. It was more of the same for me, taking the lead at a quarter mile and never really getting challenged. I checked my shoulder at the 2 mile mark and was surprised that I could see someone behind me but it must have been a bigger margin than I thought since I ended up winning by 48 seconds. My splits were almost exactly the same as last week except I did not have a lapse on the 2nd mile, with all miles being between 6:15 and 6:21. Here's the results:



Today I will indeed be playing poker. I'm going to construct my schedule before starting instead of just ripping things on the fly. The two big question marks are whether or not to play the $500s on each site running them today (WSOP and Stars). I'll try to satty into Stars but WSOP has already started and will be open until 6:30. During downswings I sometimes chop out the bigger stuff but maybe I should just rip it so that a win gets me right out of that downer? Or is that just my inner degen talking . I'll try to post some results tomorrow.

Cool thread. I'm also located in NJ. Just started playing on pokerstars here what do you think about cash games/MTT's on pokerstars compared to partypoker/borgata?

Something I've noticed so far, and it's possible I've only seen a small sample or something else is throwing off my perception, but it seems that the players on Stars are much much much more aggressive pre than on the other sites. It almost reminds me a little of pre black friday. On other sites when I get 3b with AQ I'm really not thrilled with it; on Stars it's often a 4b for value. I've only played MTTs recently fwiw.

April Wrap-Up

April was my worst month, dollar-wise, in my life thusfar. I lost $3600 last July, but this April I lost $6400 in MTTs. Luckily I made quite a bit in bonuses, including the $1100 from the all in shootouts and a bunch from deposit bonuses, so the total damage came in at -$4600. April taught me a few things, one of which was that I am still not capable of handling downswings properly. I handled it better than I have in the past but I got lazy. I did not put in the right amount of volume. I had negative feelings before, during, and after sessions. That feeling of invulnerability from January was completely gone and replaced by a feeling of impending doom. I ran like ass, don't get me wrong, but the run bad definitely led to me shying away from spots at times and playing suboptimally.

It's an interesting distinction that you begin to realize as you play more and improve; my leaks were not glaring. I wasn't calling off shoves with weaker holdings because I was mad. That was not what this tilt was. This tilt was about not 3 betting someone light because I feel "they're just going to have it anyway." This tilt was about not making a fold with TT against a nit's aggressive action so that subconsciously I could say "see? They always have it and you really just are that unlucky that 10s are no good here." This tilt was about using ICM as an excuse to make too tight folds rather than really trying to win tournaments. All of these things add up and take away from your overall win rate though, and if you want to be a pro and be good at it, they are things you must avoid.

April also taught me more about how downswings work. If you lose 10 flips in a row, do you know what percentage you are to lose the 11th? 50%! And you absolutely will lose that next flip half the time. It's torturous in the middle of it but you have to find your own way of dealing with it properly.

I also learned just how difficult it is to win a tournament. It's hard to really grasp all of the things that must happen to win a tournament until you've really gone through multiple downswings and upswings. Win a few tournaments and it feels like as long as you play well you will win! Simple enough! Then hit a downswing and you start to see that playing well simply won't do it. Hit another upswing and you start to really be able to recognize which spots you are winning that lead to your success, but you also still have that feeling of deservedness since you were the one putting yourself in those good spots. This downswing has come after I've hit all those stages, and all of the different spots you must win to gather that momentum and collect all of the chips becomes clearer and clearer. It's nice to "run over" a final table but guess what you need to do so? The obvious answer is a card rush at that final table, but the more you play the more you start to be able to identify all of the little things that have to go right even early in a tournament to have a shot at the final table at all.

That random spaz has to punt a stack to you in level 3. If that bluff you ran in level 7 happened to run into the top of villain's range you'd have been crippled but it didn't and he folded. Great play right! Variance dictates that it won't always work and in your downswings you WILL be eliminated right then and there. You got QQ in as you should in level 11 but ran into KK. Lucky for you the Q high flop led to a double. You hero called for you entire stack in level 15 on a wet river with just top pair and villain was bluffing. Well done! SOMETIMES HE HAS IT THOUGH AND IN YOUR DOWNSWINGS HE SIMPLY WILL!!! And all of those things needed to go right just to get you to that final table, where a huge percentage of the time you will bust before the top 3 anyway!! The variance of tournament poker is incredible. It is hard to grasp and despite how much I've played I doubt I truly grasp how much variance there really is. The more I play the less respect I feel for those who have gained fame by winning 1 or 2 large live MTTs. How much volume did they put in to win those tournaments?? Undoubtedly they COULD be good at poker, but there is a very good chance it was just their tournament and now their names are up in lights. Oftentimes though, those who are truly poor at the game show their true colors by dusting their winnings off and having no means of gaining it back.

The Start of May

As is usual, when I'm downswinging I have a tough time updating this blog and something has to snap me out of it. This time is no different, as I won the Party 10K last night for $2800, leading to a +$2400 start to May. Sunday was May 1st and I almost had a big start then but lost a flip with 25 or so left in the Party 50K. I did however win a VIP package to the Run It Up Resorts Rumble for just 150 stars coins (worth about $1.50). The package includes 2 tickets to the event ($10 value), $200 cash, and 2 nights stay at Resorts. I'm pretty pumped about that to be honest since those are Friday and Saturday night rooms on a boardwalk hotel in Atlantic City, which often go for OBSCENE prices.

I just typed in the dates on the Resorts website and after taxes and fees the prices comes out to over $500. Give me a ****ing break. But I won't complain if I get them free! The event seems pretty interesting, with several Stars pros to be in attendance (Somerville, Boeree, Moneymaker, and others). There will be an "onlive" tournament in which you play on your device but must be physically located in a room in Resorts. And around 7:30 there's a "VIP Party" at Landshark Bar and Grill. Should be a good time. If you'll be there and are interested in meeting me let me know!

Running

I ran another 5K this Sunday, finally ending my winning streak, but that was completely expected since the race would have about 500 people in it this time and there was some incentive for good runners to come try to win ($100 up top). I did run the fastest of the 3 races I've ran these past weeks, coming in at 19:07 to finish 10th. I looked at past results and it seemed like most years 9 people would break 19:00 and 10th would be under 19:10, so I made my goal to be top 10 and break 19:00. Got close but missed by 7 seconds. Next time.

The race went pretty much exactly as I planned it aside from a slower than I'd hoped for 3rd mile. Unfortunately it was rainy and cold to make waiting around at the start really awful, but once you get running it doesn't make much of a difference. At the quarter mile mark I was probably in 50th place; the masses seem to have no idea how to run a 5K properly, or it's even possible they just don't care and want to feel the fun of running as hard as they can for a little while. By the mile I was in 15th and had caught the back of a small pack that had formed, which interestingly enough had 2 girls in it. I checked my watch to see I was at 6:04 and I felt very very relaxed as I was passing the 30 or so people that were huffing and puffing before even hitting the mile. I caught the first girl who had started to fall off the pack, and when I caught the other 4 runners in it I could tell I didn't want to settle in since it seemed it was really slowing down. I moved to the front next to a kid in a hoodie who sounded like he was completely dying. He fought to stay with me for about 30 seconds before fading and I was now on my own with the next runner a good 20-30 seconds ahead of me.

When I crossed the 2 mile mark my watch told me I'd hit 6:07, so I was at 12:11 with 1.1 miles to go. To break 19:00 you can run 24 seconds slower than 6:00 pace, so I realized I'd just need to run 6:13 or faster for the 3rd mile and then have a decent kick. For the entirety of the rest of the race I passed spectators who would say, "Good job! Oh, hey look, first girl coming!" so that's always funny to have as an incentive to run fast. The last 300 meters were on a track and as I crossed the 3 mile mark I checked to see I'd slowed to 6:16 for the 3rd mile and would not break my goal time. It's unfortunate but even in this 453 person race I ended up running half of it completely on my own; the girl behind me was never really close enough to give me an extra push. Overall I was happy with my race but I do wish I could have found it in me to tighten up that 3rd mile. Something to be noted is that this course had a good amount of hills (it was in Waldwick, NJ), where as the first 2 courses were almost completely flat. Dropping 17 seconds from the week before, and doing it in bad weather, doesn't completely disappoint me.

No 5Ks for a while now since I'll be busy the next few weekends, but I'll continue training. An interesting side note is that I took yesterday off and then won the 10K. I started running hard again in April and had a big downswing. The last time I ran hard was in December, which also was my last losing month. I'll have to continue monitoring this as it is possible that tiring myself out with distance running in the day is leading to me playing poorly at night. I really want to stay healthy and in shape though so I think I will continue running and hope to get used to that level of exhaustion while simultaneously being able to play optimally.

Nice read and start to May, Dan!

Good luck the rest of the month!

Thanks Stella appreciate it!

Going through some tough times in my personal life so haven't had a lot of impetus to write on this blog. The updates will come more consistently soon but for now you'll just have to deal with these pretty spread out posts.

May started quite well with a win in the Party 10K on the 2nd and then a runner up finish on the 5th. I actually got the money in as a pretty good favorite (Q6 vs Ac4d on Q65ccc) but couldn't fade a club river for 90% of the chips to lose. It was one of the softest final tables I've seen in a while and finishing 2nd was actually pretty nice given I was in last for a large chunk of that final table.

Yesterday was pretty brutal, playing $700 worth of tourneys and cashing for zippo. I thought about all the ways I busted and realized that there were just a ton of flips that didn't go my way and I'm actually fine with how I played. I probably missed some spots but all of my bust outs were standard. The Party 10K was especially brutal after getting my stack to over 40K early. I ran KK into AA (and I flatted pre hoping to find a squeeze from the active blinds, leading to an ace high flop and me losing the minimum after the AA guy tried to slow play). I then found AK and opened only to have a 10bb stack flat, along with the BB. I bet the K93 flop, shorty shoved and had...AA. This left me with 13K at 1K BB, it folded to a loose passive button who limped, I jammed A6s in the SB and he called with A8o. The 8 played and I was busto. Just another day in the life of a tourney pro.

Tomorrow I will be playing the Parx $550. I went home a couple days ago to be with my family (my dad is doing quite well thank God, but I'm struggling with a different aspect of life right now) so the trip to Parx will be a short one. I'm so lucky to have the parents that I do, they find a way to help me and give me good advice no matter what's going on with me. I was going to just rip the tourney on my own but decided to see if there was any interest in buying action on Twitter. Someone simply replied "all" so I let him know it'd be $660 for 50% of 2 bullets, and it seems that he is interested. So it'll really be a financial relief to play knowing worst case scenario is a $440 loss. I'm just gonna run pure and play great and bag heaps on bullet one though so that won't even be an issue.

I've only ran once in the last week. When I start feeling depressed like this I have little energy and don't feel any urge to try to manufacture it by getting myself out there. I just feel utterly miserable and I'm still not confident that some decisions I've made have been the right ones. It's not a fun feeling. I'll be more specific with it all if and when I decide I'm comfortable with what's gone on.

This weekend I'll be attending the Run It Up Resorts Rumble which should be fun. Two nights stay at Resorts might make me feel a bit better. It's always interesting to meet people you play with a lot online so that should be a good time.

Like I said I plan on getting this blog back and rolling as soon as I can but until then this will just have to do! I'm up about $3000 on the month so far but haven't put in a ton of volume, missing Friday through Monday of this past week (including Sunday). The last time I played the good news was that I was 8 tabling and feeling really confident with my decisions and mindset. When I multi table it makes it easier for me to continue to grind through the negative variance, whereas I always feel like quitting when I'm only playing a few games and things start going wrong. I think I'm going to want to buy a 2nd monitor now that I've finally bought a wireless keyboard. Eventually I'll have to buy a proper CPU but for now my laptop will have to do. That being said, 2 bigger monitors instead of trying to leave my clumpy laptop on my desk, which takes up tons of space, would be much more useful. Parx tomorrow, I could really use a big live run right about now.

Here at Resorts for the NJ Run It Up Rumble, if anyone is also here feel free to say hi! I am wearing a grey Notre Dame hoodie, red shorts, backwards Red Sox cap and am tall

Final tabled the tourney! 3/9 with 20bbs (it's a turbo). Resumes at 3:00 with us sitting battleship style around a poker table with our devices, should be a lot of fun!

I won the tourney! I'll post some pics later. Decided to get some Chinese food at the taj and then will have to decide if I'm up to going to the VIP Club party. It should be a lot of fun so I'll probably end up going even though I'm not feeling completely up to it right now.

Congrats on the score!

Congrats!

Me popping up behind JCarver on stream during a break:



Me busting Jason 10 minutes later on the stone bubble lol:



Final Table of the first "onlive" event at Resorts:



Winner's pic with JCarver, I'm on the right, 2nd place finisher on the left:



I had entirely too much fun with this entire thing haha

Day One of NJ SCOOP

Bought in for $2998 today, probably only the 2nd time I've had over 2K in buy ins for a day, definitely my biggest day in terms of buy ins ever. Had tons of potential but fell short in a few big spots. Fired 3 bullets into a $300 turbo and had the chip lead with 36 left and 18 paying. Busted 24th. 10K up top! Argh. Also came 20th in the Party 50K, 10K up top in that as well. However I did somehow cash 7 of my 13 tourneys (although with re-entries I was probably more like 7 out of 25), ending with a heads up chop in the Stars 10K. I final tabled that tourney for the first time on Friday, coming 4th, and now tonight I pick up $2200 for the chop. I forgot though that Stars makes you play it out so we just went all in every hand and I got 2nd! So not as many P5s points and Stars leaderboard points, grrr. All told I cashed for $4200 today so a $1200 win is nice given I lost $900 on one tournament. I'm captain of a P5s SCOOP contest team so we'll have to see how we did at some point. I cashed 2 SCOOP tourneys but no final tables so my number probably isn't great.

Today got my profit in May to be greater than my losses in April so that's nice to have that washed out. I expect some wild swings in the next 2 weeks with SCOOP though since I intend on going hard at all of those events. It should be a good time!

Damn... So Jcarver moved to NJ?

Congratz on the win btw Your a sicko lol.

2 more years then i can grind online and go to Atlantic City, hopefully the games will still be juicy AF.

JCarver seems to be one of those travelling pros that doesn't really have a full time home. I think he technically lives in Las Vegas but he was in NJ for the first 2 months or so of the launch of PokerStars NJ. Then he headed to Canada for SCOOP before coming back here this weekend for that event. He was back in Canada streaming SCOOP Sunday morning despite being in NJ all day Saturday! And apparently he'll be back in NJ at some point this year as well.

Thanks! I ran absurdly hot. There should be a replay on the Stars NJ client at some point that will show just how many premiums I picked up early. Also went KJ>AK to KO guy in 5th and K2>55 to win heads up (both standard spots but still quite lucky). I did get to beat up on the other high volume NJ reg that was at the table (SLHalper) since I know he's ICM aware and he was in 2nd and on my direct left for a while when we were short handed.

The wait to play poker can be frustrating (I was 19 when Black Friday hit) but my advice to you would be to stay in school if that's still an option. I graduated with a teaching degree last May (it took me longer than intended but I stuck it out). Now if I decide clicking buttons isn't what I want to do anymore I shouldn't have too much of a hard time finding a teaching job, or pursuing something else related to math with my degree. Without that option this would be it, which would be way more stress than it's worth.

Hey man congrats on the win I cashed 4th in the $100k gtd was a good day as well. Pm me your Skype if you ever want to chat. GL at the tables - OhHeyMatty

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Thanks for this

Yeah i feel you i don't want to click buttons forever (like full-time). I just want to do something im passionate/interested in...

I have a great idea you should study up on chess and learn it, it's really a great game and would prolly be easy for you given your success with poker + your a teacher so you could teach kids or something at like princeton day school or something lol just a thought

Sad News

Yesterday my girlfriend and I broke up. We'd been together for 3 years and she was the most important thing in my life. I really anticipated marrying her and the thought of that didn't really scare me much at all. We did the best we could to make things work but unfortunately the same issue kept coming much and I finally decided that I wasn't confident enough that we'd ever get past that issue and that after 3 years it was time to make the decision to either deal with that forever or cut it off now. It's one of the most painful things I've ever done and I wrestled with the decision for several weeks. I still love her and I know it's going to take a very long time for that feeling to even start to fade. The worst part of it all is that I know we both tried our hardest to work things out and that if we had been together later in both of our lives I think we would have made it. But with where the two of us are right now I don't think it made sense to continue to try. I'm going to try to continue on with everything the best I can but I know my heart will be heavy for a long long time.

I will continue playing poker the best I can but pretty much everything I do reminds me of her so it's going to be tough. She always encouraged me so well and I was always so happy to tell her about my successes, or have her console me during my tough times. I liked being there to do that for her too, whether it be celebrating a promotion at work or helping her keep her head up after a tough day. The idea of not having that anymore literally makes me feel sick to my stomach. But I think in the back of my mind I know I had to do this. If you ever stumble upon this Kelsey, I love you and I know you're going to go on to do great things and make a lot of people happy. I'm so blessed to have had three years with such an incredible person and I'll miss you always.

I know this all isn't really poker related, but I want this thread to really chronicle my life as a poker professional. This will greatly affect me as a pro. I'm going to have to work extra hard to focus when I will feel distracted by so many little things. I will also now have to rework my schedule, and will have more flexibility for when I play. If the options were to completely work things out with Kelsey or to have more free time to play, it wouldn't even be close. I would have picked figuring things out with her every time. Unfortunately that just isn't possible now. I know that I will start to feel better eventually but I'm hunkered down for now knowing that this is going to hurt for a long time.

Sorry to hear about that dude. Break ups are rough, it'll just take some time to feel better.

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully you can use that energy and redirect it into poker and motivate yourself to become a better person.

Thanks guys I appreciate the kind words. I think part of the process for me is going to be more difficult since I feel a sort of guilt for being the one who finally said he couldn't do it anymore. I know she would never give up on me and I feel like I gave up on her. Luckily I have great roommates and friends who are going to make this easier on me. Hopefully time that feeling of guilt subsides. I think if I can see that she's doing well down the road I'll start to feel better. I just still really care about her and I feel like that is never going to change; I want her to be happy, even though it can't be with me anymore.

On a more positive note, I've played poker each of the last 7 days and haven't had any losing days. Here's a chart of this past week:



So we're up over $4000 in the last week despite SCOOP absolutely kicking the **** out of me. I fired the $150 4 max FIVE times today and I busted 3 of those bullets losing to <20% equity on the river. Fortunately I pured my way to a 2nd place in the WSOP 10K. The last 4 days I've entered the 10Ks on the Jersey sites I've final tabled one every day and twice on Sunday (literally)! Last Friday I came 4th in the Stars 10K, Saturday didn't play 10Ks, Sunday came 6th in the WSOP $100 10K and chopped the Stars 10K heads up, Monday came 4th in the WSOP 10K, yesterday didn't play 10Ks, today 2nd in WSOP 10K. So while I have to be down several thousand in NJ SCOOPs, 6th, 4th, 4th, 2nd, and 1st in the 10Ks have bailed me out. Let's actually check my SCOOP record right now...

Looks like in NJ SCOOPs I've bought in for $3285, 11 tourneys of the 18 that have ran so far (missed event 1 high and low, event 6 low, and events 7 and 8 both high and low). Collectively I've re-entered 17 times (lmao) for a total really of 28 bullets into SCOOP (this does not count the rebuy in each of the 1R1As I played). I've cashed 3 of these 28 bullets for a total of $381.90. So yes, I'm down a little under $3000 in SCOOP events, and am still up over $4K this past week. Tourney poker is wild! Tomorrow is another day.