2:35am: It was yet another session of extreme swingyness, peaks and valleys, ups and downs. So many times in crucial situations in crucial hands that determine the winner of the match, I’ve been on the wrong side of the fence in the last 3 days. Today, despite that fact still existing, on skill alone I was able to eek out a 13-11 record.

I say “skill alone” because I was definitely more unlucky than lucky today and somehow was able to turn in a winning day. This new committment to putting in high amount of volume at mid/high stakes is way different than playing 5-6 matches a night, turning in a 4-2 record and calling it a day. It was easy back then. This is because your mind has less time to forget about the ugliness, and it’s hard not to take that with you into the next match.

Yet, that’s what I’ve been in constant struggle with the last three days, and surprisingly, I’ve been up to the task. For the most part, when you’re opening up games left and right and you’ve got so many more to play, the bad beats don’t stay with you as long because there’s really no time to focus on the negative.

I’ve said this before, and this time is no less important: it takes an EXTREMELY mentally tough person to play these for a living. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s probably the most exhausting form of poker because there’s so much thinking involved. That’s the price we pay, however, for the decrease in variance (as compared to other forms of poker).

If I would have been playing heads up cash games the last 3 days, I’d be down thousands of dollars. That’s because I ran terrible when either myself or my opponent was all in. The “battle in the trenches”, I felt was one area that I excelled in. But unfortunately, coin flips have not been very nice to me this week.

All that being said, even though I’m on a completely break-even streak this week, I know things will change. All I need to do to remind myself of that is to take one look at my graph. The greatest predictor of the future is the past, and based on where I’ve been, I like where I’m headed.