I took some time off from playing poker tournaments this past week then played three of them yesterday. I played one on UB and two on FullTilt. I just made a four figure deposit on FTP in case I get the urge to try and win a WSOP package. It seems both weird and perfectly natural that I have very little desire to play in these qualifiers and even when I do I can’t seem to shake my feeling of dread. Playing in a tournament with top prizes being WSOP packages while wondering if you really want to go if you win is not exactly prime mental space.

For the past three years or so my experience has been pretty much the same as it was these past three tournaments. The first one pays 10 spots in a 500+30 and there are 18 left and I’m mid-stacked. A late position big stack player limps and I go along for the ride from the BB w K J .

Flop K K J . I bet out 2/3 pot to mimic a parallel bluff I showed and hour before and he pushes. Easy fold, right? I call he has A A and the A hits the turn. Weirdest thing is that I don’t make quads to take it back down and I’m out.

Next one is another sattelite into a 500+35 with two limps to me in the sb where I call w 6 3 . BB comes along also. Flop is 2 4 5 . I bet out 160 (pot) and its folded to last guy with a big stack and very agro. I had made that pot out bet to look weak and this guy rereaises me to 760 and I push in my 1575 stack which he snap calls w 3 4 . The 7 turns so I’m free to pursue other interests.

One more left, another sat on FTP and I get down to 8 with 3 getting seats and the fourth some cash. I pick up KK and rr a small stack who goes all-in w AJ and wins what he refers to as a “race”. Then a few hands later I pick up AJ as it is folded to me on the button and I smell doom switch humor—lose to AJ, lose with AJ. I raise anyway and the sb who I have been pounding goes all-in for about 2.5x my butt raise. I call and he has 10 10 and I brick out. I steal a bit after that and next time it comes to me on the button I r w Jd10d and the sb calls. Flop is J 4 3 , he checks, I bet, he pushes, I call and he tables 55 and makes trips on the river and I now have free time to read the pro blogs of some WSOP players.

Here’s one I can easily relate to, I paraphrase from yesterday:

“Early on I win four flips in a row, all from behind, then I go on a sick rush that basically lasts eight hours and then we ended the day.” That is so my experience. Nothing special worth writing about or elaborating on. Just your basic four flips from behind followed by an eight-hour heater. Standard.

I was playing in a golf skins match yesterday and we came to this great par five which has two lakes one on top of the other like a figure eight. The tips, where we tee –off from are at clock position seven on the bottom circle. The fairway is across the water on the other side of the eights and the green is then back across the second lake again. Most people drive from the “7” towards the “3” into the fairway and then have to lay up again to cross the second lake and land safely on the green.

Or it’s 290 all carry across the first lake if you take the “7” to “1” line. If that wasn’t daunting enough there is a huge tree fifty-feet in front of the tee box on that line that forces you to hit a very high ball to clear it. And if you hit too much of a draw it can clear the first lake, hit a bank and bounce into the second one. I was explaining this to a guy in my foursome I did not know who was new to the course. Then I stepped up and hit it about 340 on that line without the least bit of self-doubt or hesitation as the hole sets-up for me perfectly and I have no trouble clearing that lake.

He turned to me and said ‘you are playing a whole different game.” It’s kind of a compliment but it’s also true. This is kind of leading me to think that luck in fact does even out but maybe only across life not individual parts of it. Variance has not really allowed me to play much poker at all for over three years now unless you consider these last three tournament examples to be playing poker. But on the other hand I can not only go play some other games unavailable to other humans but I can also make money playing them. So, I got that going for me… which is nice (Bill Murray, Caddy Shack).

We all only have our own human experiences but is it just me or does even “winning four races in a row, all from behind, seem like the echo of an ancient rumor on scale with Nessie, BigFoot and Monty Python’s Holy Grail? And WTF is that “eight hour rush” thing? Man, I’m whooping it up over here when my flopped sets hold up or at least don’t bust me.

Hope this article makes no sense to you whatsoever and you are all thinking to yourselves “I hope he’s joking. I might go a week or two without an eight-hour rush but eventually luck evens out and I get a few back to back.”

If so give my regards to the horse you road in on.

Thanks for reading.