In my last blog I was pretty tilted after a brutal session of 20 or 25 online donkaments. I was down to just the $215+rebuys on Stars, and decided to blog while I was one-tabling because I can still pay enough attention when it's only one table.

As the Editor's Note mentioned, I finished 2nd in the tournament for $28.5k. It felt pretty good to get back on the right track after a pretty significant downswing. Not out of the hole yet, but am off the starting block and ready for another heater!

It also felt great because I was pretty tilted from that session and hadn't had a single cash yet...unless you count the MONSTEROUS $95 I cashed for in the Turbo Takedown $1M prize pool freeroll. That only left me down $4-5k for the day!

But seriously ... I managed to stay focused and keep playing my A game, even though I only had 4k chips at 75/150 after rebuys were over. I managed to overcome the desire to dust off my short stack and play Mario Kart and turn it into a solid cash.

There weren't too many tricky/interesting hands in that tournament, despite the fact that so much of the field in that tournament represents the best players in online poker. The fact that I put coolers of three of them deep in the tournament helped out...in more ways than one.

To be honest, I even considered quitting the $215+rebuys about a year ago since it's such a high-variance ego battle in a way. The fact that it is held at the very end of the high stakes Sunday schedule when I'm either tired, tilted, or deep in other tournaments also made me consider cutting it out of my schedule.

It seems as though Stars must have been in my head though. Shortly after I considered cutting it from my schedule I took it down for the first time during my Sunday heater of a lifetime during the last quarter of last year.

I'm not a particularly superstitious person, but since blogging while I was down to just the $215+rebuys on Stars last Sunday resulted in a deep run I figured I'd try to trick the random number generator again.

Like Deja Vu, I found myself down to only that tournament shortly after rebuy hour was over again. It's going pretty well so far since I've tripled up since I started blogging, so it's time to get back to focusing on the grind.

Matt Stout