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Message: [QUOTE="johnysprinkles, post: 2405464, member: 118037"] It's often important to reflect on ones week if for no other reason than searching for positives to take away, or when those seem difficult to locate, some psychological or philosophical lessons will often suffice. This week was brutally painful, although results were not too shabby. Sounds like a contradiction? welcome to the life of a grinder. I started out with a bang, playing $8/16 Omaha (half kill to $12/24) I booked a solid 100bb win in what was an amazing (obviously) game that included a drunk spewy chap on my direct left and 7 calling stations circling the two of us as if they were a collection of buzzards. Aware of the inebriation of my table mate they were hard pressed to find any reason to fold a hand that he was involved in, even though he was playing a savvy 100/100 style. Unaware of how much value they were gifting to me every time I would 3bet his open, and they would call still aware that every time this situation occurred he was guaranteed to raise again when it came back around to his action. Thanks to a decent run of premium hands, some cooperation from the board cards, and what turned out to be unintentional collusion from my drunk pal to bloat every pot that I had a playable hand, it was a decent little 3 hour session. That was Sunday, come Monday the deck was less cooperating, to say the least, and I was mostly fortunate that nobody was driving a great deal of action in the hands I would be involved. My session looked like this, I would flop the nut low draw, along with some wheel/straight potential, along with some low protection and then brick turn, brick river. I will not bore readers with bad beat stories, that much I promise from the start :) For five straight days I lost every session I played, with my biggest daily loss amounting to $278 I Managed to show a profit at weeks end, though not as much as I would have guessed on Sunday. And yet I could not escape the mindset that I am sure plagues nearly every grinder at varying bad times. I often thought that I was being outplayed, I imagined every time I opened a pot they saw through my hand, knew my cards and were careful not to give action till a safe brick would come. Though I know this was not likely the case from a group that could at their best barely decipher their own hands. By the opening of the fifth day I was sure that I would be in for more torture, I did not look forward to playing and just felt I needed to put in my hours and attempt to play it safe and tight. Basically my game suffered as a result of my results, and upon this inner reflection I quickly pulled myself together, took a moderately long walk around the casino floor and promised myself I would play MY game, the game I always played when I had the utter most contempt for any other style that would inevitably fall short at my table. I felt good about my realization and my "staying strong" mentally and booked a solid -$75 loss for my day. The next day I showed up and was able to beat the game for exactly $75 so one way of looking at this is, I stopped the bleeding. I have now collected my thoughts, my reflections of the attitudes, feelings that I experience in these times are clear and unlike other times in my life I am not ashamed or timid about expressing to others that these feelings and attitudes do exist for even someone that has played for a living as long as I have. The truth is, none of us are immune to these mental swings and to ignore them is foolish. We spend a great deal of time attempting to tear open every person that sits across from us, read into their feelings and see what we find that we can use. We often start one short of where we should, with the person at the table that presents the most danger to our bankroll, ourselves. I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog, and I will attempt to have something from my endeavors posted on a weekly basis as long as some of you, or one of you ( I am not greedy) find it interesting and worth reading. Aaron [/QUOTE]

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