(My Blog is cross-Posted from it's original location at husng.com)

Well after a 2 month hiatus from blogging I thought I'd better get back to it. I guess the main reasons I haven't blogged in the past 2 months are really that I had an amazing trip to APPT Queenstown, followed up by a gruelling WCOOP series, and after that a continuing really rough period. The last thing that has really been on my mind has been blogging so I aplogise for my absence (for anyone who cares) .

I have continued playing MTT's fulltime and the last 2 months have really taught me an invaluable lesson about variance. This isn't going to be a blog about "ZOMG I run so bad" or anything like that, but there is a reality that MTT's can be absolutely devastating to one's mental state. Given that most of the people reading this have a main game of HUSNG's, my advice is to stick to that! HUSNG's are such a low variance form of poker, even though it doesn't always feel that way. I remember back to a stage where I dropped 60 buyins (100BI below EV) in HUSNG's and that was a really brutal period for me, I felt like I couldn't win anymore and certainly had doubts over myself. People generally don't lose much more than that in HUSNG (excluding superturbo formats), and to go with that I was certainly not playing my best when I had such a lack of confidence. In a nutshell, I shouldn't have lost 60BI's playing HUSNG's, but it is what it is and I learnt a lot from it.

To put into perspective what I mean when I give the advice to avoid MTT's if you are not really confident in your mental game, I dropped somewhere in the range of 350-400 of my average buyin in the space of a month and a half. I have always felt very strong mentally and have never really had tilt problems or anything like that, but this has been hard to deal with. I like to think that it hasn't really affected my play at the tables, but it has probably had more of an effect on me as a person in the real world than poker ever has before. In saying all of that I am still really enjoying my time as an MTT'er and feel I have tons to learn to get better at them. My desire and drive is still there, and I have a full understanding that this happens. While it would not be acceptable in anyone's eyes to lose that many buyins playing HUSNG's, it is not unheard of to lose this many buyins in MTT's. Even through this rough period I could still feel my edge, however things just weren't going my way when I needed them to. As an average I still think I have probably performed above expectation during my transition into MTT's, and it has helped me to keep reminding myself of this through the rough times.

As much as I would love to have blogged during and about my trip to Queenstown, and my experience throughout WCOOP, it was hard to keep up when I was grinding so damn hard. I will say that Queenstown is definitely my favourite place that I have visited, and I would highly recommend to anyone (APPT Queenstown next year people!). I met some really cool people there and had an absolute blast. WCOOP was a huge disappointment for me (and OLD TIME GIN who I had staying with me through WCOOP), especially because I was looking forward to it so much. I think I played somewhere between 20-25 events and could only manage one cash (LOL, I think it was even a mincash). Fortunately there is always next year, and SCOOP in between .

To finish up on a good note, my past week has looked a little brighter. I won the Stars Weekly MTT TLB last week for the first time, which feels like a pretty nice little achievement. Hopefully things will look brighter over the coming weeks/months and I can get back on track both mentally in life, and in my endeavors in poker. I hope you have all been playing and running well, and I look forward to blogging more regularly again going forward.

GL at the tables!

Matt