Monday, October 30: Almost there...

I hate having more than a week break between blog posts, but sometimes it's unavoidable -- in this case, it was because I was getting remaining law school responsibility # 1 of 3 out of the way. Just a paper and an exam left, now, before I'll be required to admit to myself that I've dragged out my education as long as humanly possible, and think about...I dunno...growing up, or something. I typically try and stick with a single theme for blog posts, but sometimes (like this time around), I've just got a miscellaneous collection of thoughts swirlng around so you'll simply have to take this post for what it is: a little bit of rambling poker incoherence.

1. A little twist that helped me out

Here's a very minor, yet very important change I made around 3 months after I left law school and started playing more seriously: I stopped keeping tabs on my results day-to-day (which I had, up until that time, kept in an Excel spreadsheet), and decided instead to only making a note of my wins/losses only at the end of each week. Oh, sure I was aware of whether I was up or down for that week on any given day, but I wouldn't actually enter a final value into my spreadsheet until the end of the week (rather than at the end of each day.) Why did I find this tiny little strategy useful? Well it was nothing more than a psychological ploy, but an important one: I used to hate going negative early in a session and telling myself that I wanted to keep playing at least until I was back in the black. It worked in the other direction too: I could start out hot in a session, and then sometimes cool off and give back all my winnings and (despite having been around the variance block more than a few times in my short life) I would still suffer from some "geez, why didn't I quit when I was up $x" remorse. The point is that when I tracked my profits/losses every single day and was perpetually aware of just where I stood, I lost sight of one of the most important (and in my estimation, poorly understood) principles of long-term randomness / variance: it was like an epiphany when one day I realized that individual winning and losing hands or sessions don't mean a damn thing. Hey, it's nice to go to bed up a few thousand dollars, but once you've played enough hands to have at least a rough conceptualization of your winrate per hand, then it really doesn't matter whether or not you win or lose in a particular session. It's all simply about getting in as many hands as you can without your play deteriorating. But focusing on single winning or losing sessions and getting happy or upset about them has got to be one of the most futile exercises in a game like ours. And keeping daily tabs on wins and losses obscured that point, and it was like a breath of fresh air when I realized how pointless it was to focus on such a short time-frame. Using that time instead to read and practice my game has paid serious dividends.

2. The single most important thing you can do to improve your game

With a header like that, you might think that I was going to reveal some sort of nugget of wisdom that would propel you into the BB/100 stratosphere. Sorry to be a little more pedestrian, but the secret is this: post hand histories on 2+2 for discussion, or if you're too lazy to do that, I'd wager that you can get just as much out of reading other people's HHs. I've just recently rediscovered how incredibly valuable this resource is, after going maybe a year or more without venturing into the strategy forums there. I occasionally get emails asking about what poker books I'd recommend, but the truth of the matter is this bold statement: if you approach them with an open and critical mind, the 2+2 strategy forums are a more valuable resource, and have taught me 10x more about poker than every poker book I have ever read combined. In many respects (and to echo a stand-up comic's commentary about how he felt when he discovered masturbation for the first time): "I really can't believe this is free." Note the "open mind" caveat. I haven't been shy in the past in saying that I think 95%+ of what you read on the forums is complete bullshit, which I still believe to be true. A critical skill you'll need to develop if you're going to get anything out of those forums is the ability to use your own internal BS-meter to parse out the good from the bad. It's an acquired ability, but once you find that sweet-spot, I think you'll realize how much value there is to be found.

What triggered my new love-affair with the strategy forums? Well, despite my successes switching over to NL over the past 6 months or so (which now accounts for around 80% of my play), I still do feel like I'm being flatly outmatched and outplayed by the high-limit NL sharks. It's a new feeling for me, since there are very few limit games where I don't think that I'm the best player at the table...maybe a tad self-assured, but there you have it. But I'm not shy to admit that the sharks at the 10/20 and 25/50 NL games have plenty more moves and tools at their disposal than do I; frankly, I play a pretty straight-forward NL game and it's enough to beat the HSNL tables for 3 - 5 BB/100, but I know that I'm exactly the type of predictable opponent that thinking sharks will eat for dinner, just like I do with decent, but predictable players who sit at my LHE tables.

So that's when I started wading back into the NL strategy forums. And they're a goldmine. And as I wrote before: I'm a lazy guy and typically don't post hands of my own, but just browsing through all the other HH posts has been extremely worthwhile. I haven't changed my tune about 95%+ being complete BS or otherwise unhelpful. But as long as you know that going in, you should be OK. Sure, 7 out of 10 comments on any HH are of the "This is such an easy raise, stoopid. The end." variety, but every once in a while you'll get a really well-thought-out reply that will really get you thinking not so much about what to do, but why you're doing it. That is, without a doubt, the single biggest difference between the LHE and NL games. You can put me in any LHE game, and even when I'm tired or hungover, I can pretty much just turn on auto-pilot, because it's such a mathematically-oriented game (at least up through 30/60). You can get away with never having to engage in any 2nd-level thinking (or higher). But God help you if you think that'll get you anywhere in the higher-stakes NL game. With every move, you've got to be thinking not only about what you have, but what you're representing, and what your opponent might have / is representing. This is of course all very elementary to seasoned NL vets, but it's been somewhat refreshing to re-enter the role of "student" (which was more or less foreign to me since I felt like my LHE game had reached a tedious, albeit profitable, ceiling) and pretty exciting to watch as my game has grown. I know that's a boring answer to "how do I take my game to the next level," and most people reading this would prefer to hear some sort of magic-bullet reply, but it's the most honest assessment I can give. A lot of people, unfortunately, see playing poker as a ticket to easy-street. Sorry to dispel that rumor, but clawing your way to the top requires a lot of reading, hard work, and practice. OK, off my soapbox for now.

I've got a few more misc things to say, but this post is long enough for now, and I've sadly got to get back to take care of business re: my last 2 academic obligations for the rest of my life. When you hear from me next, I'll no longer be the law school dropout, but more accurately the law-school-dropout-cum-re-enrollee-graduate.

Saturday, October 21: The Future, Conan?

I guess the early returns are beginning to trickle in from the US poker legislation, and things -- while not calamitous -- aren't all that rosy. The Party games are pretty atrocious (don't worry, my Yankee friends, you're not missing much at all), and traffic to the poker sites is down across the board. Can you still find juicy games? Sure, but the days of dropping your lure off either side of the fishing boat and being immediately swarmed by schools of 16-pound marlin are over...or at least on indefinite hold. Fact of the matter is that things are going to be very much decentralized for the foreseeable future, meaning that -- especially for people like me who pray at the altar of the datamining / table-selection Gods -- it's going to take considerably more legwork to grind out profits. I'm even trying to look at it as an opportunity to play against somewhat tougher lineups, which I'm hoping will help me keep growing as a player. Sure, I've got one of the higher winrates around but as I've pointed out several times, I don't think there are many people on the planet more careful about table-selection than me, and my BB/100 is only a function of the juicy games in which I elect to sit. I think it'll be interesting to see how I manage in this environment of somewhat tougher games.

It's also been interesting, even (tongue firmly planted in cheek) tragic, to follow the saga of the thousands of 16-to-22 year olds who dropped out of college, thinking that all they'd ever need in life was an internet connection and PAHUD. I don't for a minute pretend that someone with a blog title like mine is in any position to get all preachy. (But frankly, a graduate degree just isn't a necessity in today's economy in the same sense as is an undergrad diploma.) I just hope that if nothing else, the legislative demantling of the online poker industry is a major reality check for a lot of these kids, as it has been for me. Not that I ever took this golden goose for granted, but it's still disconcerting to see one's entire income stream flicker before your eyes...even more so, I'm sure, for the hundreds of college kids who likely dropped out of school for poker in the weeks leading up to the day when the hammer finally fell.

While I was fortunate enough to get in a couple good rides on the online poker gravy train, I'll point out that I was hit pretty hard by this in a very different way. You see, in August and September I finished work on what had been one of my most exciting and ambitious projects to date. I even dropped a couple hints in the blog, and hoped to announce it here. You see, I've been in the affiliate game for a while now, but really just a small-timer......but I had an idea in the works: something that I thought would be a perfect synergy of the two things in this world that I knew best: law school and poker. And thus, with the help of a few friends, www.lawschoolpoker.com was born. Go ahead, check it out. No, it's not the perfect site, but it was something that was a very long time in the making, and I only just got it off the ground before this legislation dealt it a pretty debilitating blow. It feels a bit like the scene in Jurassic Park after all the dinosaurs had run amok and eaten a bunch of people, where the 2 kids make their way back to the main complex, and find the full gourmet buffet dinner laid out in anticipation of the theme park's first full house of dining guests...but after the havoc of the previous 36 hours, there's nobody there to enjoy it. Kind of like how I feel about LawSchoolPoker -- I was all set to watch this thing take off and hopefully grow, but instead it's like I'm looking at a single balloon lazily descending from the rafters, while I sit at the head table with a party hat wrapped comically tight underneath my chin. And a five-figure bill for a site that's facing an uphill climb if there ever was one, not to mention the embarassingly large amount of money forgone in poker opportunity cost over the 100+ hours it took me to put it all together. Am I throwing in the towel on the whole thing? Far from it -- I'm just bummed that a personal project into which I put so much time, and something I really cared about, not so much as a financial endeavor, but more as a productive intellectual pursuit was so critically wounded by a such a careless and disingenuous piece of legislation.

So what about me, huh? Well, here are my plans for the forseeable future. I am -- believe it or not -- graduating from law school 3 weeks from now. Hard to believe from someone with a blog entitled "The Law School Dropout's Poker Blog", I know, but here we are. I am looking at taking the bar exam in February, too, just about the last thing I ever thought I'd be saying 2 years ago when I traded in my LexisNexis password for a Neteller one.

Sure, you only really need bar accreditation if you're planning on practicing law, and while I've got no inclination whatsoever to do so at this time, I'm also open-minded enough to accept the idea that it might come in handy at some truck-stop along the highway of life. After all, if 3 years ago you'd told me that I'd be sitting in a 25/50 NL game, I would have said that you needed your head examined. And I know that if I don't study for and take the bar exam immediately after law school, chances are good that I'll never come back to it. Besides, going a little easy on the poker games for a month or so will be good for me. I think it's frightening that of the 730 days that make up the past 2 years of my life, the number in which I've played at least some poker is likely north of 650. That's a pretty scary thought...with the quagmire that is the current state of online poker, it might not be the worst time in the world to take a little breather. Analogize this to a poker situation, if you wish: sometimes you take a bad beat, but console yourself with the reassurance that you made the "right" move...well, I feel confident that this is the right life move, even if the dividends aren't immediately apparent.

After that? Wow, pretty big question mark; I've really drawn this school thing out as long as possible -- 4 years undergrad, 2 working, 3(+1/2) more of grad school. I was even toying with the idea of enrolling in an MBA program to extend the endless summer that has been my life, of late, but I don't think that's quite the right move for me at this time. Right now, priority #1 is to just ride out the remainder of my Australian adventure. Then it's back to the land of hockey pucks and maple syrup to begin a new chapter.

Saturday, October 14: Mind the Gap

Something has been on my mind of late: it's one of those things that you don't really notice as you're taking baby steps up the rungs of the poker ladder, until you get really high up and see how much distance you've put between yourself and the 'masses'. I'm not referring to poker skill or the like, but rather to the incredibly warped perception of personal finances I've developed, as compared to the general public. I mean, the chasm is so wide and deep, I feel like I can barely see the other side anymore. Let me pause to make a critical distinction: I'm not talking about a "having money" vs. "not having money" mentality; this isn't a rich vs. poor thing -- I don't really think I'd qualify as either, to be honest. I just mean that the fact that I can win or lose $10,000 in a day, and still sleep just fine at night is a tad bit frightening, and requires developing a mental fortitude to be able to alternate between one's "poker" and "non-poker" mentalities. You might be saying to yourself -- as I did, when I first began playing for high(er) stakes: "well, treating money capriciously is just a personal weakness that some people have, but I certainly won't ever fall victim to it. I'm never going to let money change who I am." And it's true: I think I've done a pretty good job of staying true to "who I am" and the responsible economic values with which I was raised. But as time has gone by, and I've become more accustomed to winning/losing amounts equal to most people's entire annual paycheck in a matter of days, I don't know whether I should fight this "big-money complacency" or not. In many ways, it's the catch-22 paradox of what I wrote about 2 weeks ago: to be successful playing high-stakes poker, you've got to develop an emotional neutrality to the amount of money being wagered...and at the same time, that very neutrality only widens the emotional disconnect that you develop between yourself other people away from the poker table (aka "real life"). I really didn't count on anything like this: flipping the emotional on/off switch when it comes to money has turned out to be trickier than I expected.

Am I making a big deal out of nothing? Maybe, but maybe not -- I've taken a few classes about leadership/work/life/happiness (kinda foofy subjects i guess), and a common theme that emerges time-and-again, is that those people who are happiest and most fulfilled by their lives are those that don't just look at their jobs as impediments that "get in the way" of their enjoyment of their real lives, but rather view their employment as part-and-parcel of who they are. It's the people who have really developed a synergistic relationship between the two such that their home, family, work, and social "spheres" are not separate but rather critically intertwined. The classic picture of the father who comes home at 6pm, and turns off "work dad" to become "home dad" is no longer the optimal picture, says this synergistic perspective. That's not to say that that approach "doesn't work", but it doens't compare -- in terms of life fulfillment -- to the guy who's developed a synergy between work, family, friends, and spirituality, such that he never feels like he's sacrificing one at the expense the other, but rather that his rising tide is lifting all ships. But the "compartmentalized dad" exactly what I'm running into with higher-stakes poker. At first it was an unabashed positive force in my life, and my friends saw it too. I was doing something I loved, I was happy, more pleasant to be around, and feeling good about, well, everything...but more and more I've found it necessary to turn off my "poker brain / money mindset"...a move that's largely antithetical to the synergistic approach above, which preaches harmoney among life domains.

Here's a really dumb example -- I've got a friend here who lives a few miles away, and when I go to over there, instead of waiting for the bus (which takes around 45 minutes including waiting time), I just zip over there in 10 minutes for a $20 cab ride. After a few of these round-trip taxi junkets, she asked incredulously: "I don't get why you don't just take the bus...I mean, where are you getting your money from?" Now she knows nothing about my poker-related income; as far as she knows I'm just a law student without any kind of job on the side. I mumbled something about having saved up some money from my job last summer, but in the back of my head I was thinking "geez, I can't believe she's putting me on the defensive for a half-dozen taxi rides? I can't even begin to imagine what the line of questioning would be like if she knew the full extent of my poker hobby." At the end of the day, I guess I'm just saying that this world of high-stakes poker is a bizarre little corner of society; and there's no explicit 'changing-of-the-guard' that signals your entry into this club: it's not something that really hits you right away, until you look back over your progress, see where you've come from, and appreciate just how much emotional distance you've put between yourself and the "normies". But it's a story that really hasn't been told yet, and hence is largely foreign to the general public, even to the point of being incomprehensible. I mean, people "understand" the story of the elite investment banker or lawyer who slaves away for a decade, makes partner/MD, takes home a million-dollar paycheck, moves to the nice neighborhood and sends his kids to private school. They've heard that story before. Just like they've heard the one about the guy who inherits a nice chunk of change from a dead relative. Or the kid who's fortunate enough to be born into a wealthy family. Or even the Silicon Valley secretaries who all cruise around in Jaguars because they just happened to receive some Yahoo stock options in 1995 as part of their salary package. These stories "makes sense" because we've heard them before, and can wrap our heads around them. You could tell even a stranger that you were the fortunate beneficiary of one of the above scenarios, and -- while they might be a tad jealous -- they'd at least understand the scenario as one that happens from time to time in our crazy world. But the story of the middle-class white kid who logs onto the internet, clicks mouse buttons for a few hours, and logs off $5,000 richer is one that's only now becoming understood, because this is, in a very real sense, the first time our world has ever seen it. In a bizarre sense, I'd almost rather admit to any of the previously-described "understood" scenarios than to my poker reality, even while at the end of the day they might all result in a some sort of financial windfall.

The following words were once immortalized by rapper Mase: "It's like y'all be talkin' funny, I don't understand language of people with short money." (Sidebar: funny the corners of popular culture that have provided conversation fodder for my blog, from Mase, to WWII documentaries, to Mike McD, to Montgomery Gentry, to Joseph Campbell) And while there's no indication he meant for that lyric to be taken as anything other than: "I'm so much richer than you, you pathetic punk," the white-guy interpretation is that it's emblematic of the emotional distance that newfound financial independence can create between yourself and others. Australia's culture makes this dichotomy all the more relevant, because I find that the difference between upper class and lower class here isn't anywhere near what that difference looks like in America. Maybe it has to do with the salary scale; first-year lawyers in Manhattan will take home $180,000 after bonuses. First-year lawyers here will earn the equivalent of around $55,000 USD. It's not that there aren't rich-folk here in Australia, but that the chasm between the rich, middle-class, and poor isn't anywhere near as jagged as it is in the US. So I guess what brought on all these thoughts of late is the fact that my life right now is a real curious hodge-podge of people, cultures, and social circles: I've got my friends who are starting their law careers in the US, my new Aussie friends, both those in school, and those working minimum-wage jobs, friends in Canada, some of whom have gone on to respectable careers since high school nearly a decade ago, while others still live at home with their parents, some of whom are married, a couple who even have kids. I feel like I'm at the center of a bicycle wheel, looking down each individual spoke and seeing a different set of values, life strategies, and degrees of financial independence, and I just keep whirring around in a circle, having to constantly readjust my demeanor depending on my audience. And it's sometimes exhausting.

Monday, October 9: Charts-r-Us

Something I did last year that I found moderately interesting was posting charts of a breakdown of my progress, segmented by various games / stakes. I'm doing it again now, since I think it tells an interesting story. I've had a pretty mediocre year (by my standards; no, I'm not complaining), and I've really been struggling to understand where I'm coming up short. So here are 4 charts of 2006, with some director's commentary.

First off, here's a breakdown of limit vs. no-limit results.






Commentary: No real surprises here. Yes, there was that nearly unbearable 50K-hand breakeven stretch, the likes of which I had NEVER see before...but then things turn around as they always do, and all is right with the world again.

Now things get a little more interesting, as I break things down by low-limit (which i define as 30/60 and below, and $2,000NL and below) vs. high-limit (everything else). First the low-limit chart.



Business as usual, more or less continuing what I had going on last year: humming along around 3BB/100 (although the combination of limit and NL hands confounds the calculation somewhat.) So you're probably wondering where all my talk of a "mediocre" year is coming from? Wait for it, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait for it................



What can I say: high-stakes poker owns me. Had a few other things to discuss, but I'll leave them for my next post; school in Australia has turned out to be pretty intense. I didn't exactly come down here to spend my days in class, but not knowing anything about Australian law, I haven't really had the luxury of being able to space out during class, knowing that I'd easily be able to catch up later. But whatever: 3 more weeks of this, a few exams, and then, in the words of Scotty Nguyen it'll be "all over baby." Might even have to change the name of this blog.

Tuesday, October 3rd: Oh, Canada!

What has two thumbs and is happy not to be American. This guy!! Alright, you know what: I'm actually going to write this post ignoring the hooplah of the past 48 hours -- if you had your head in the sand, Sen. Bill Frist managed to attach anti-internet-gambling language to a port security bill that was passed resoundingly by both the House and Senate, meaning that it now only awaits the signature of President Bush before it becomes law. Why ignore the elephant in the room? Because people have been losing their collective minds over this thing and nobody - nobody - knows just what type of effect this is going to have. Because it's unknowable at this point in time: the next step is for the US Department of Justice ("DOJ") to formlate a set of guidelines to dictate how the law will be interpreted and enforced. A bunch of uninformed adolescents yelling that the sky is falling serves absolutely no purpose other than to inject an irrational measure of panic into the proceedings. Online poker will survive in some form. Neteller will be fine. Do I have the answers to just how this will affect the internet poker scene? No, and neither does anyone else, so for the purposes of this blog, it's business as usual until we get some more concrete information from the poker sites or the DOJ.

A healthy disregard for money: I don’t think I have it. But something tells me I want it.

Oh, I've got it to some extent...the other day I let a few acquaintances watch me play a few tables (I didn't dare play anything higher than 20/40 for fear of offending their sensibilities), and they were positively dumbstruck that I could shrug off a $400 loss in 15-minutes. But another nugget from The Professor, The Banker, and the Suicide King that really jumped out at me is that these high-limit pros have a very unique ability to treat enormous sums of money like confetti. You would think that people who had lived their lives by the "bottom line" would have a shrewder conception of the value of a dollar, but the exact opposite seemed true. There were tales of a small group of players who, on a lark, each put up $10,000 to have Howard Lederer, a vegetarian for the previous decade, eat a double-cheeseburger at the table. And you didn't at all get the sense that, after he accepted and scarfed it down, their internal monologue was telling them "what the hell did I just do!?? I can't believe I'm gonna have to pay this guy 10 grand for that!!". Conversely, they really, honest-to-goodness believed that they had just made a wise investment of $10,000. That seeing this man eat a hamburger was worth a Mini-Cooper. Other prop bets they had were even more outlandish, with stakes many times higher. How do they do that?? Mike Matusow, after winning over a Million dollars at last year's WSOP "bragged" that it was all gone within 2 months. We're quick to label him a degenerate / undisciplined / idiot for blowing the biggest cash score of his life, but might there be something worthwhile to learn from this devil-may-care attitude that all the pros seem to have about money? I mean, have you ever heard the story about the pro who practiced fiscal responsibility, played within his bankroll, invested wisely, and never forgot the value of each and every dollar he earned? Me neither. I wonder whether to really reach the stratosphere of the poker universe I'll have to learn to develop this 'healthy' disregard for money...I'm getting there, but still have these occasional hang-ups about the amount of real money that I'm putting at risk. "Easy come, easy go" is just about the last expression that I'd use to describe my money management mindset; more like "scrap like hell to get it, and squeeze it like 'til they rip it out of your cold, dead, hand". I've been wondering more and more lately whether that mindset is a limitation keeping me from stepping up to the next rung on the poker ladder.

A successful mid-to-high stakes NL player recently told me that he rationalizes big losses (or losses that would seem sizeable to the general public) by reminding himself that if he had never taken any risks, he would never have built up his bankroll nor enjoyed the success that he has. For whatever reason, that simplistic line of reasoning struck a chord with me. Nothing but a cute soundbite, perhaps, but it speaks to the emotionally neutral mindset you need to be able to rise through the ranks of the poker world. I think I’ve done alright so far. My comfort zone right now is $30/$60 and $50/$100 and $1,000 NL (arguably $2,000 but I'm not so sure of that), and I’m able to play those stakes without compromising my gameplay.

But in analyzing recently why I’ve had more difficulty at even higher stakes, I’ve realized that despite my beliefs to the contrary, I do indeed change my play at stakes like $100/$200 and $2,000NL / $5,000NL. My VPIP/PFR at 100/200 6-max is closer to 25/18 over a few thousand hands, very far from the 31/21 that had been my norm over hundreds of thousands of hands at 20/40 and 30/60. Despite trying to convince myself that I’d simply run poorly at 100/200 (which is why I was playing fewer hands) I think I’m in denial: a few thousand hands at 100/200 is enough to substantiate that I am indeed changing my game, and it’s because…well…$200 bucks is a lot of money! See, that’s what I’m talking about – I've resigned myself to the idea that (as of right now) $100/$200 is the threshold for me – wish I knew what the key was to ‘getting over’ that emotional hump. When I was a low-limit grinder, I used to look in on the $15/$30 games (at that time the highest game Party spread), and wonder how on Earth people could toss around so much money every hand – e.g. “doesn’t he know that 3-bet is a nice dinner for him and his girlfriend!???” I remember equally well sitting in an $8 / $16 game in Atlantic City with my stomach churning with every hand…it just felt so unnatural to be putting as much as $100 of my own money into a single pot. And this was less than 2 years ago. Go and read my entries from early 2005 if you want a glimpse into how hard I took bad beats in my first few $15/$30 sessions…it was almost unbearable, and I think I ranted and raved in this blog to no end…I remember within my first week at 15/30 suffering a $3,500 downswing (I don’t think I’d ever had to put up with any drop bigger than $1,000 before that), and I was just beside myself…that was nearly 1/3 of my bankroll at the time, and it just made me sick to my stomach. Fast-forward to present-day, of course, and downswings of 5 times that magnitude come and go with alarming regularity.

I haven't come up with any "solution", as it were, to getting comfortable other than practice, which in poker parlance unfortunately means having to actually put the money at risk. The other night, with the help of my good friend Jim Beam, I came home and decided that I'd had enough of writing about this mental block and it was time to hold my breath and take the same step that had allowed me to finally break into the $15/$30 games. The $5,000NL games looked soft, so I jumped in head-first on a couple tables. Long-story-short, I stumbled initially, then went up a couple buy-ins, went to sleep happy, tried it again the next day and gave it all back. But I felt pretty darn happy with myself -- I didn't once tell myself "you freakin' degenerate, do you realize you just won $10,000 in an hour, and then lost it just as quickly?? Who does that!???" And I was able to play a pretty good game too (losing the second 5K back w/ KK all-in PF vs. AK). My net profit may have been zero, but I think I took an important step forward in for the first time being able to adopt the emotional vacancy I think I'm going to need to finally shed my uber-high-stakes training wheels.

That's it for now -- if nothing else, the recent legislative mess has really got the old cranial gears turning...it's a bit of a shock to the system to see one's entire income stream flicker...maybe this soon-to-be law diploma's not such a bad insurance policy after all...more thoughts to come.