Fat, drunk, weak and tight is no way to go through life son.

A conundrum in The Hoy last night. I ended up playing about 5% of my hands outside of the blinds, an extraordinarily low number even for a tight box like me. Am I going soft in my advancing poker years, or did I just run into a run of really awful hands coupled with a boat-load of aggressive players raising in front, pre-empting my intended raises? The Hoy is a "balls" contest to a certain extent as players are willing to open-raise with a veeeeery wide range of hands from many positions and are able to make the big lay down (sometimes) when the pressure is redirected from whence it came. Unfortunately for me, I was not able to make any effective counter-moves as I really did have a craptastic run of cards. I misplayed a hand against our host early that cost me a quarter of my stack and it was downhill from there.

I'd hate to think it could be fear of being berated for making an incorrect play and excoriated throughout the blogosphere. Likewise, I don't want to believe my game has changed detrimentally. My short-term results are down though in what I have always considered my strongest suit, the <100 player MTT. My NL cash game results are up during the same period and I can feel the improvements there so I am hoping I am merely misplaying "slightly" in the MTTs and can get back on track with a few adjustments.

I am confident of my power to rectify and will bounty myself for my next Hoy. I may need to pressure to perform.

Most startling to me right now though is my astoundingly poor run in one table SNGs lately. That is how I built my initial bankroll. I stopped playing because it got boring playing five or six at a time and making the same plays over and over, looking for that ROI. Live and online, I am in the red for the last few months. Did everyone get better while I was away? I will try to reverse course tonight in the home game. Of course, we have a contingent that never folds there, so even perfect play is fraught with extreme variance. Somebody should write a book about how to play poker. I might actually read it.