Results, week of 7/25-7/31

HOURS
Administrative, 2.00
Study, 3.75
Play, 41.50
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Total Hours, 47.25

I'm pretty happy about this, things are definitely going in the right direction. One of things that I've finally figured out is that I do better in a few long sessions than in a lot of short ones. As I have ADD and I'm supposed to have trouble staying focused, this would seem counterintuitive. But the truth is that it's like running--once I actually start doing it, I enjoy it, and it's not a chore. But it's easy for me to get distracted: I watch a news story on TV, get a drink, check my E-mail, and generally mess around, and before I know it an hour has gone by. So fewer but longer poker sessions seems to be the way to go.

I recently had a nine-hour session, probably my longest online session this year. I might be close to reaching one of my goals, which is to at least occasionally put in a 60-hour week.

PROFIT AND LOSS
Staring bankroll, 7/25, $116.22
Ending bankroll, 7/31, $57.62
-$58.60

This looks like a disaster, and that's what I thought at first. I knew that I had come just short of the money in a lot of tournaments. I looked at my Holdem Manager graphs, and noticed that my usual cashing rate in tournaments, about 20%, had dropped way down. I thought for a minute, and that I got it--that's what's supposed to happen!

I've been trying to convert from being a SNG player (one or just a few tables) to a multi-table tournament player, who playes tournaments with thosands of players. And that's what I'm doing--I've finally internalized that mentality. I am now a fearless, risk-taking, high-variance player who understanda that most of the money is at the final table, and especially in the top 3 places.

I'm now play like Dr. Chris Ferguson (doctorate in computer science with an emphasis on artifical intelligence), who went an entire year on the World Poker Tour, playing tournaments with entry fees of $10,000 and only cashed 3 times--but they were all final tables, 6-or 7-figure cashes!

I'm going out just before the money, because in a way, that's what I'm supposed to do. When everyone else is playing it safe and hoaring their chips so that they can be sure of cashing, I'm supposed to respond to the timidity of those timid players by trying to push them around, put them in tough situations, and generally make them give up and give me their chips.

That's the good news, and it absolutely will pay off. Intellectually I've known that I needed to play that way for a long time. But for someone like me--methodocal, plodding, tortoise rather than hare, step-by-step--whatever you call my personality, it was the opposite of an MTT personality. But now I'm there.

Of course, the problem is that I'm running out of money. So until I have a lot more leeway with my bankroll, I'm going to have to take some time away from my MTT playing and mix in a lot of SNG low-variance playing to at least keep my bankroll from going any lower until I hit a big score in an MTT.

It's wierd. I had a financially horrible week, but at the same time I've arrived, at least in my mindset and playing style, as a multi-table tournament player. Now all I have to do is turn that mindset into some action, and pretty darn soon.