Ok. So a lot has happened since the last real update I've given. I'll only write the story of what's gone on since last weekend.

Debbie and I met my parents in Sugarcreek, OH to go buy a crib, which is their present to us. After rooting around in a few stores, we came back to the store where we got quite a lot of stuff in our house from. The crib we chose looks really awesome, and my parents went all out and got all of the conversion stuff for it, too. So a big thank you to my parents for this gift - it's quite incredible.

As always, when we go to Sugarcreek, we ate well. I had roast beef twice (well, the second meal was swiss steak, but that's essentially roast beef.) And the drive wasn't that bad, even though it rained pretty heavily on the way home.

Sunday was a bit more troubling. Unfortunately, Debbie got into her first accident ever. She was turning into our development, and some guy rear ended her. Despite losing his headlight, he sped off, so at the very least he didn't have insurance. She was quite shaken up by it, then angry, then kind of a mixture of pissed off and frustrated.

The week was pretty mundane. Nothing terribly exciting, although Debbie is ready to not be pregnant any more. No real news outside of poker.

The poker has taken a drastic turn for the better. I made a conscious decision a few weeks ago to play a lot more at Bugsy's to get back on form. I have always had a great deal of success at Bugsy's - maybe my game is really well suited for it. Their blind structure is good, although it gets very quick at a certain point, and as a player you have to make a change in your play. As the site is small, the tournaments are as well, so the focus can be on playing intelligently and not having to worry about getting through 1000 or more people. This reduces variance, although obviously a big score is unusual.

During the week I made a couple of nice scores. I won the late night 50 for a small payday on the weekend, then during the week I finished 2nd in one of the 10 o clock $30 tournies. I had a sizable lead heads up, but was really hurt when A9 lost to KK after he called my 3bet push on the AJ9 flop.

Despite enduring a series of beats Friday and early on Saturday, I managed to make a couple of very good scores. I finished 9th in the $30 on Friday at Bugsy's, then won a small field Round 2 late last night. The big score on Saturday, however, came in the $20k gtd lottery on Full Tilt. After losing a flip about 50 out of the money, I managed to short stack ninja my way into the money. At that point, I went on a sick rush (I hit a 6 outer!) and went from about 60% average to the chip lead within 10 minutes. I held on to the lead for a while, then with about 3 tables left I went quite cold and couldn't hold on to the chip lead. I came into the final table 5th of 9.

At the final table, I won a flip, then made a tough fold of tens when I was against aces. The hadn went UTG limp, Button push, I call with TT from the SB, BB folds, UTG minraises. I folded, and UTG had aces. If he'd played it normally and not cutely, I probably go broke. I eliminated a player with two pair, lost a flip, won a flip, won another flip (3-0 against the player who had the aces. For someone who had AA against JJ and AA against TT at the final table alone, he sure was whiny about his luck) and took a 7-1 chip lead heads up. Unfortunately, the happy side of the deck went the other way, as I got him back in it with K9 vs his KQ, then his JJ held vs my AT, I made a move against a monster, then A4 lost to K9 to end it. It was a very good run, it just didn't come home. Honestly, I don't think I played my best poker this tournament. I don't think I played badly, I just wasn't playing awesomely. The deck just went my way.

Today, I won the $20k gtd on Bugsy's. Whereas last night I was hit hard by the deck despite not being at the top of my game, today I was destroyed by the deck while being at the top of my game. Let me tell you - that's a great combination. I was getting dealt big hands, making bigger hands and getting action. I still managed to lose a couple coinflips, but I did win with a dominated hand. Basically, I ran real, real well. That's nice.

So I'm pretty happy. It's been a damn good week. I'm done for the night, because I am pretty tired, but I hope to continue my rush during this week coming up. Hopefully I'll be able to make a real big score in one of the majors in the near future. That would be great.

Man, does running real hot feel great after experiencing 7 months of not running real hot...