My life is a mess. Chop chop! Get it together, Roy.

. . .

I should really be sleeping, but everytime I lie down, I just can't sleep. Not sure what it is. I rather just sit in front of the computer and listen to some Fooled by April while mindlessly staring at the Google homepage (or the Tabulas homepage).

The pressures are really starting to get to me. I've already started to crack. I just feel like there's so much I don't know where to start. It's enough that I've lately just been avoiding all the things and people in my life ... and now I find myself way behind in everything.

I really got to get my shit together. I'm not a little kid anymore. I have to man up to my responsibilities and just work my ass off and get this done.

Yeah, it sucks.

. . .

Finally I placed 2nd (to Ryan) in Terrence's tournament. I had some really shitty showings in the previous week, so I was looking to own. I know most of the guys are no good (can't lay down those top pairs!) so I knew that the only person who could defeat me is me (OHHH CHECK OUT THE OVERUSE OF CLICHES!).

So I had a personal vendetta to take out that Josh dude ... and I tried to tangle with him in every pot he played where I had something remotely playable. I eventually doubled up on him (I went from about $120 to $240) on this hand. He raises preflop, so I figure he's got high pockets (he did this earlier with AA and QQ). I look down to see 65o (5 is a club). Not a wonderful starting hand, but I'll see the flop.

Flop comes 632, all clubs. Top pair with insight straight draw and a club draw isn't bad. Now, I have no clue whether he has a club or not ... so I decide I'll play the turn to see if I can figure out where I stand. He makes some mediocre raise off the flop which I quickly call. The turn comes a 4 of clubs. Whoa, a straight flush. He bets $40, I reraise $40 more, and then he puts me all-in for my last $40-ish (exact numbers I forget, but he has me covered). He flips over TT (ten of clubs). A ten-high flush! You should of seen the grin on his face when he flipped that over, as if he had won the pot. Riiiigggghhhtt. Anyways, I was pretty happy about that.

Although this sound arrogant, I should note that I tried to keep my table going as long as possible. Godwin was the short-stack, and I honestly did not want the table to break. So Godwin went all-in a few times and I folded a few hands I would normally attack the short-stack with (AJ, KT were the two good hands I folded) to try to prolong the table and extract better chip position. That's how confident I felt about the table. I knew they would all tighten up so they could make the final table, and I wanted to put them all in as weak positions as possible ... unfortunately after I got a huge chip lead after another hand where the board showed KKJJ (I had KJ) in my hand, I figured it was time to try to eliminate some short stacks. Unfortunately, I sucked Godwin out (my second pair caught trips on the turn to his top pair) to move to the final table.

One interesting note about tonight in retrospect: I picked up HORRIBLE hands all night. I did not pick up Big Slick, AQ, AA, OR KK once tonight. I did pick up AJ once to bust Donald, and I did pick up QQ which I ended up losing with when I made a bad read on Ryan.

Looking back at how I busted people:

• Big Red held TT, I held 67o, I busted with two pair off the flop.
• Against this dude (don't know his name), went all-in and called with A4 and caught a 4 on the turn to beat his A3.
• Against Godwin, played J9 against Q2 and caught my set of nines 9 on the river
• Against Donald, AJ vs. AT and busted him once the flop came with an Ace
• Busted Matt (new dude) when I got J7 against his 88 and he made a move on me on the turn/river with the board at JT66x

I really got NO hands tonight. Even when I got heads-up with Ryan, I had to make do with borderline hands (98o, T6suited...) ... don't think I picked up an ace once (although I did catch a set with pocket pairs ONCE) so I couldn't even call all-ins with ace-high (although I once considered calling an all-in with king-high, but turns out Ryan had ace-high).

So actually I'm pretty proud of the way I played; with no cards, I'm surprised that I got so far. Just wish I had gotten some better cards so I wasn't so tilt-y when I played that last hand against Ryan.

I played real crappy at the final table, so nothing to note there. Ryan plays the exact style of poker I hate to play heads up ... all-in fest. I hate all-ins. With a passion. So to those you who will play future heads-up with me, play the all-in game. I'll probably fold top pair and second pair all the time to you.