Last night we made the dubious decision to get up early to watch the Ryder Cup and play a long day of poker. We set our alarms for 3.45am and began the day with Ongame’s Big Deal amongst others. Setting my alarm for 3.45am was pretty strange for me considering over the past 3 years playing poker in the UK I would normally be going to bed at that time, and even if I wasn’t if I had to be up at 3.45am it would certainly mean staying up rather than getting up.

Obviously the golf wasn’t such pleasant viewing for us Euros, although I have been told that the golf on display was excellent, but because I was 6 tabling from the off I only saw a few shots every hour, so really the only thing having that having the TV on was giving me was instant access to results, and the joy of when Europe won a hole was often eclipsed when America won the following one. It seemed like we had to win 3 holes to balance out one win for the Americans, and while this may have only been the case because I knew we were behind and needed to win more than we lost, it could also just be a common psychological issue where losses hurt harder than wins feel.

This feeling is one that I’ve been experiencing in poker for the last 2 weeks, and I guess for longer than that if I care to admit it. For example, two days ago I was $3k up, and I felt pretty pissed off with the whole thing, I had gone deep in everything but yet failed to get a significant score, but oh well I was $3k up, and if I was $3k up every day I would be happy. Today (as I’ll explore in more detail shortly) I was $4k down, and the gut wrenching feeling of dropping a teacher’s monthly salary in one day hit. This is all pretty obvious though, and it’s something a MTT player has to deal with. I am going to lose more often than I win, and you just have to find ways to not let it bother you.

Today’s poker saw me playing 33 tournaments across 12 different sites. Ranging from a $20 rebuy on Ongame to Full Tilt’s special $500 Million. Combined buyins were in excess of $5k, which was a new record for me, eclipsing the $4k I invested last Sunday/Monday.

It got off to a pretty horrible start and didn’t really change as the day went on. I barely scratched the surface in any of the majors, my best performance probably came in the Stars Warm-up where I made the third hour and got to 30k before running 99 into QQ. Aside from that, it was gg in the first hour in most. There was one final table, but with 1st prize being about 50% of my daily outlay my 4th place finish for $879 didn’t appease me too much.

There were few positives to take out of the day, but one I guess is that I managed to put in $5k of volume with few problems. I didn’t feel overloaded or too overworked despite the early start. I guess though that if I had made it deeper into more tournies, my multi-tabling skills would have been tested more, so I will have to reserve judgement on my Sunday/Monday schedule for now.

We’re hitting the road for a few days after tomorrow’s play, so hopefully a few days away will improve my mood. It’s the Grand Tourny on Ongame this weekend, and I feel as if I’m due a run in that, although you’re never really due anything in tournament poker as the poker gods seem to be reminding me daily at the moment.