One of my favourite motivational speeches is Rocky Balboa's speech to his son, "It ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward, that's how winning is done". I spent a lot of time on MSN with very close poker friends in Dean (AllOrNothing), Spamz, and Dale (Chumplestultz) while one of us was downswinging just trading inspirational speech vids back and forth. Fun times, but I guess if I have ever had a time where I needed to turn to my collection of favourite inspirational speeches, the last month and a half has been it. I feel like I have kept moving forward even though this has been the deepest and most harsh downswing I have ever had. I won't call myself out of it, but things are seeming brighter so I thought it was time to pull out the inspirational speeches for those of you who are going through rough times...

This week in poker was average after an obviously very good week last week (the weekly TLB win). I had the lightest Sunday (Monday morning) grind in months as I had a John Farnham concert on that night in Sydney. For those of you who don't know John Farnham, he is a legend in the Australian music industry. It's not really what I imagine a lot of you guys are into, nor is it generally the type of music people my age are into, but I don't really care. I have grown up listening to him, and he is undoubtedly my favourite singer/artist. Anyway, back to the poker. I basically bricked out Wed/Thurs/Fri sessions, making a few runs here and there but nothing really eventuated from any of it.

Friday was Nat's birthday and even though I got up as usual as to not break my schedule/routine, I only played a few of the early turbos on Stars before Nat and Madden woke up. The rest of the day was pretty full on as we took Madden to see Dorothy the Dinosaur concert that morning, went and did a little bit of Birthday retail therapy, and finished it off with a really nice dinner at Nagisa Japanese Restaurant in Honeysuckle. I'm not really one to eat Asian food (believe it or not), but the food at this Japanese restaurant is amazing, even if I only eat three things on the entire menu, haha.

It was back to work as usual on Saturday, yet quite an unusual start to my session. For some unknown reason I woke up at 3:20am thinking it was 6:10am completely freaking out that I had overslept a lot of the good tournies (I usually wake between 4:30-5:00am). It took me all the way to the end of my hallway until I looked at my phone and realised it was only 3:20am, wtf!?!? Not a good way to be mentally prepared for a session. The session pretty much turned out as random and surprising as my odd waking up. I was clearly absent minded and not very well focused, and consequently my results throughout the morning reflected that. I managed to get one run going though in the $50rebuy on Stars and managed to ride it to a 2nd for $7.8k despite having an awful table draw with Moorman two spots to my left for the last two tables right through until he busted in 8th. Even though it was a pretty nice save of the day, it was still disappointing to somehow leak a 6-1 chip advantage when I got heads-up and lose. I cannot complain though, to get away with a winning session after being so far off with the fairies for 80% of my session is a good result. I was still frustrated with myself for how I had handled the session, so I went and swam it all off at the aquatic center and felt a lot better for it.

This morning (Sunday) was completely different, yet the session ended up going in a very similar manner. I woke up right on cue (3:30am on a Sunday) and felt really fresh, relaxed, and ready to crush. As is often the case, the poker gods had different ideas as I busted tournament after tournament right through the first 6 hours of registration. Around the time I usually stop registering I decided that I was still happy with how I was playing and my mental state so I registered a bit longer and decided to finish with all things in between and including the Weekly $215 6-max and Weekly $215 turbo on Stars (10:45am). This decision worked out well as I managed a 6th in a $44 turbo for a bit over $1k, as well as a 3rd in the Weekly 6-max for around $5k. Similarly to Saturday, I bricked everything for the first 90% of my session and managed to come away with a winning session =D... A very different session though as I was at least satisfied with my performance today, as opposed to being quite filthy with myself yesterday.

So that basically brings me up to date. Tomorrow is the day of the week where everyone wants to eye the big score and like every week, I am hoping tomorrow will be my day. I will leave you all with my top 3 motivational speeches. They have got me through some rough times in poker, so hopefully you guys can make good use of them as well when things aren't looking so bright. Hope you are all running and playing well!

Matt

Rocky Balboa

Al Pacino

William Wallace

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