*I promise this isn't a bad beat post. It is a sappy, excuse-ridden, outward-thinking self-reminder to stick to a plan, and I just choose to express it to a bunch of blood-thirsty greenback chasers who are constantly chomping at the bit to take my hard-earned profits... mom always said I had a weird taste in friends."

After an awesome month of January, where I increased my modest, "starting over after a healthy holiday spending spree" bankroll by about 3,000%, I've had a really, really, REALLY bad run the last week.

How bad, you ask?

$2800 bad. $2800 bad playing $11 and $22 STT's (including sats.), $10 to $30 MTT's, and $1-$2 LHE.

$2800 in a week.

So I've decided that I'm going to take a little sabbatical from Texas Hold 'Em for a while. Why? Because after further review, I've got two very bad habits that are showing up more and more in my playing. First, I have a tendency to lose focus when something becomes routine. This leads to (second) me becoming overly spontanious and creative in the wrong situations.

Clearly, not a good combination combined with a tilt-ridden losing streak.

For the next month, I'm going to work on three major things. First, I'm going to put in some good, old-fashioned study time. I've always been a stickler for the books, but I'm a "read it and try it" type person, which often leaves me learning the hard way (which, come to think of it, is supposed to be what the books are teaching me NOT to do). I also haven't taken advantage of the plethora of info from other online players that are in the same games as me. So while I may know what Dan Harrington would do in any given situation against Amir Vahidi, I still have trouble making the right decisions against a short-stacked FigPucker69's third all-in in a row when I hold a mid-stack and JJ in the cutoff later in a tourney.

Secondly, I'm going to get more proficient at my stud game. I've spent so much time becoming a read-&-react Hold 'Em player that I've regressed horribly at other forms of poker (and have become quite a chip-spewer at my Saturday night HORSE home game). Playing stud is where I learned to love this game, and I feel kinda' guilty for forgetting my roots. Plus, the dead money in this town (no matter what the youngin's say) still sits in the pockets of old-school stud-and-draw playing retired auto workers and millrights.

Third - and probably most important - I'm going to breathe for a while. I've been so caught up in a "read that new book then play for 10 hours" lifestyle since the fall that I've missed out on a pleasently mild winter, a whole football season worth of Monday morning hangovers, a few months worth of birthdays and get-togethers with friends, and probably a ton of other stuff that I'll regret when I look at pictures of other folks having fun.

Sure, earning over a years' salary since I started playing hardcore in August has been extremely helpful, but now that most of the funds are "re-invested" (a term coined by my home-improvement addicted significant other), I'm starting to get the jitters again when I see my 'roll drop. That can't be healthy for my game, my psyche, or my blood-pressure, for that matter.

I'm feeling a bit like that Home-Run hitter who goes through a cold streak, and all of a sudden he's adjusting his swing and trying a different stance and shifting his hands and crouching more and straighening his back and bobbing and weaving and wearing a different jock... anything to chase an edge that doesn't exist. I know that if I'm patient, choose my spots, and just play the game, eventually I'm gonna catch the other end of the proverbial "variance stick", but that's a hard line to swallow after 30 straight strikeouts.

So my plan is to just step back, take a look, observe some different angles and concepts, and come back swinging mid-March.

Wish me luck

By the way, this doesn't take into account when I'm drunk at my Saturday home-games, or the P5's league on Thursday nights where I'll be happily enjoying some college basketball on the tube as I spew chips to the rest of you heathens.