You wake up. You turn on your laptop. You click register. You lose. You click register again. This is your world. You like your world. You feel special. You register again. This time you don't lose, you win. You win again. You like winning. So much you can't wait until tomorrow. You must win again now. You should win. You're a winner. You start playing. You start losing. But you're a winner. You'll win soon. You keep playing. You get angry. You play higher. You must win now. You don't. You've lost it all. Sound familiar?

Ironically, I consider myself an experienced compaigner in this game. What I just described is the all too common downfall in the mindset of so many gamblors, many of them young and naive. And yet, even after multiple years of playing poker, elements of this description are still my own undoing. I still struggle to control my emotions in-play, and have never stopped self-destructing with the chase losses mentality. What I have changed over the the last few years, however, is my general approach to the game. Materialistic objectives like being the top ranked player or worrying about what others think of my play have become far less important than in the beginning - I can happily say that these objectives have given way for enjoying life and worrying more about general health and wellbeing. Don't get me wrong though, the desire to succeed is as high as it ever was.

You get a lot of time to reflect as a poker player. Why can I not stop myself from playing in huge games when I can barely buy into them just because I see a soft lineup? There is always time, yet I am always in such a hurry to succeed, it must happen now! At times you need to just sit back, show some perspective on your situation, and set some more intelligent longer term goals. It's easy to dwell on what could have been after running awfully in a big game with soft competition, but the reality is simple: I shouldn't be there. Maybe this can be like the Oprah Winfrey weight facade haha. Still the good thing about poker is that there's always tomorrow, and leaks can always be corrected. For the time being I'm going to start grinding more tournaments and spend the downtime working on tennis betting using my selfmade variance reducing formulas. Trust me, tennis betting is a lot more secure than letting my degenerative brain go looking at the lineups in some of the nosebleed games..

I'm happy to report that after a pretty decent effort over the last two weeks I am already in a completely foreign physical condition to that of a few weeks ago. The increase in energy levels is marked and is only going to keep improving. After all, they say a healthy body equals a healthy mind right? It's time to get into gear with the announcement of the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) on PokerStars in early April, and all I can say is it's going to be big and you're not going to forget it in a hurry Smile.

Yours truly,

James