I'm Actually Enjoying This

I've sort of taken my own advice on ego management the last week or so (combined with my self imposed bounty on big games at commerce) and the results have been swell.  Basically I'm playing a little smaller, but focusing on making sure I'm in very good games as much as possible.  The combined effect has been that I tend to make fewer mistakes (since my opponents are putting me to fewer difficult decisions), I'm harder to tilt/frustrate (since going off for a large number of bets barely registers financially), and I've therefore been able to just sort of relax and enjoy the view for a little while.  And you know what, I really like playing in good games.  Some players get bored so quickly and really want to be testing their wits and playing in tough spots all the time.  And I'm OK with that, too, but what it really comes down to is that I liked playing in the bingo style Garden City 20/40 game from 2008.  Now that game (and casino) no longer exists, and perhaps won't ever again, but I can do my best to find the closest approximation down here, even if it does mean stepping down to yellow chips from time to time.

Tomorrow I'll crack the 1800 hours of limit hold 'em for the year line, and despite the added days off and everything I'm still going to get pretty close to 2000 by January 1st.  And that's sort of OK, I think.  This focus on lower stress hours really is helping, at least so far as I can tell.  I've never really thought about it from that perspective before, but it makes sense.  Just like pitchers being faced with high stress and low stress innings, it doesn't really make sense for me to ignore the fact that playing 6 hours of the bike 40/80 is simply easier than playing 4 hours of commerce 1/2.  That sentence was poorly (maybe even illegally) constructed, but you get the idea.  I'm at least not super stressed out, which is a good thing to be with the holidays rolling around.