Week 31:
Well I made Goldstar on the last day of the month. The grinding has burned me out for a bit so I've taken the last couple days off from playing. I feel like I've kind of hit a wall at 50NL. The stakes are now comfortable for me, but I just can't seem to put together a winning streak over a few days. It's been -$80, +$45, -$8, +$60 the last four sessions. I feel like the cards I've been getting are about average, although my AKs seem to be missing the flop an awful lot recently. My game continues to evolve thanks to some ideas I picked up in the Harrington on Cash books that I finished over vacation. I've been incorporating more suited and unsuited connectors and one-gappers into my game when I'm in position. It's a fine line between playing them just enough to disguise my other hands and going overboard draw-crazy. On Friday I fired up 9 $4.40 180-mans, hoping to go deep in a couple. I only managed to make the money in one and the following hand occurred: I make the standard raise from EP with QQ, MP guy reraises to steal, I shove over him and he calls with... K4o. I guess he thought he was pot committed after the reraise, personally I would have let it go as it was only about 35% of his chips. Of course the king hits the river and instead of having an above average chipcount with 16 players left I ship away 90% of my stack and am out shortly thereafter. Losing a hand like that in a situation like that makes me want to quit playing MTTs for a very long time. Why would any sane person subject themselves to 3+ hours of accumulating chips only to lose them thanks to such an idiotic play? I honestly don't know how the best MTT grinders do it.

BR: $1660