It's what you can call the week after your most exciting moment in your career. I remember it after June 2010 and the infamous KK vs AK hand. (forgot the hand write-up is wrong on pre-flop action). While that wasn't yet the final table it was the closest to the biggest goal I have, a WSOP bracelet. The EPT championship would have easily been just a hair under a WSOP bracelet, but the hangover has been worse. The hangover refers to the fact that every morning I wake up thinking about hands from that final table. I even think about the first hand and things I couldn't control, the fact that my QT suited was calling the 3 bet of a player with KK if QJ doesn't 4 bet shove. The flop of QT5 would have likely seen me stack a player and take a dominating stack through. Poker doesn't always happen the way you want it to.
Nor should it.
I'm still teetering back and forth about calling off my chips with 0% chance of winning. Generally, you don't want to do that too often in a poker career. While I navigated my stack properly to the four handed game, I think I would have had an advantage keeping things in front of me and small. I hadn't tested one of the other four at the final table's post-flop game at all to that point in the tournament and with two player behind me, John Eames and Michael Tureniac that were clearly strong in that regard of the game, why not wait to get into more situations with Per Linde. Those are the strategic hangover thoughts. The truth is that I got up from the table and was so pissed off because I felt the championship was in my blood and my soul that tournament. It was an honest thought and one that still resides. I needed just a little more from myself. It could have been that one decision, maybe it wasn't, but in poker you can't know after you have no chips left.
The hangover extended to online play this week. I didn't bring my A game all the time. I wasn't as hungry as I needed to be. The standard winner's curse I've written about before followed me. I shouldn't have let it. Each day is a new day, a clean slate. Your record before that doesn't matter. All that matters is if you bring it or not. A week off may have been a good idea, but the hangover of such an exciting atmosphere made me want to create it again, even if it was for something smaller.
Oh well, I don't anticipate playing any tournaments Fri-Sat unless they are super duper turbos. I'll be celebrating St. Patty's Day in Chicago and hopefully not freezing my arse off looking at a green river. Happy St. Patty's Day and celebrate with your safety and others in mind.
