TILT - a way of life

I have no reason to be on tilt. My job is going well, I just got back from a semi-annual trip to Vegas with 120 of my closest friends, my wife and I are happy together, and we're both relatively healthy.

I have no good reason to be on perma-tilt, but I have been grumpy since I got back from Vegas, and for no good reason. Some of it spills out at the poker tables, where I've gotten to the point where if I get all my chips in late in a SNG while ahead of my opponent, I go ahead and minimize the window, because I know I'm behind. My Guitar Hero play is going fairly well, but the exercise thing has taken a back seat since I got back from Vegas, and that, coupled with the holiday meals this weekend, has taken a toll. I've put on 4 pounds since returning from Vegas, and I'm having a hard time kick-starting my diet and exercise regimen again.

I did drag my ass outta bed this morning to do 20 minutes of interval training on the stationary bike. Intervals are of the devil, but they can get an intense workout in when you have a very limited time. What I do for a 20-minute interval session is this -

3-minute warm-up
1-minute interval - pedal as hard as I can for 60 seconds
2-minute recovery period, at an easy pace (13 mph on middle resistance for me)
2-minute interval - (same resistance, 21-22 mph)
4-minute recovery period
1-minute interval
2-minute recovery
2-minute interval
4-minute recovery/cool down

Then there's a few minutes of staggering around and nausea, as the intervals are brutal, but it gets a huge boost to my heart rate early in the day, and allows me to get the equivalent of a 45-minute workout done in 20 minutes. I'll likely do a normal 30-minute ride tomorrow morning, and try to do intervals twice a week for a little while, to knock some of the rust off. I also want to get back to my free weight workouts twice a week to go back to building some muscle mass.

Holidays are always tough on losing or just maintaining weight, and I'm trying to pay attention to that now since I have made so much progress toward a healthy weight. The comments I got from everyone in Vegas were amazing, and so were the comments I got yesterday at Suzy's family Christmas get-together. I think my favorite came from Iggy, when he said "I have to keep changing my mental picture of you. You used to be the jolly fat guy, and now it's like you're John's rock n' roll younger brother!" Now I gotta make sure I can keep the weight off, not to mention losing that last 20 lbs.

Probably no online poker for me the next few days, as I've suffered a remarkable combination of suckouts and bad play in the $6 Turbo SNGs lately. It's amazing. I understand that my aggressive style of play leads me to be the guy that gets called down with a bunch of mediocre hands by my opponents, and I'm usually okay with that. But it does get frustrating when those mediocre hands hit in 5-6 running SNGs to bust me short of the money.

BG had a tournament at his place Friday night, and that was fun. I did get a little frustrated with my buddy Jim the Knife, who has started a new blog since Vegas, decided he was a short stack when he was actually holding about an average stack and came over the top of my preflop raise with QJo to my 99. I called the push, since Jim had limped into the hand to begin with and his number of limp-reraise hands was pretty small and I was ahead of most of them, and he ht on the flop. Not a terrible move on his part, but I was frustrated that he made the move because he thought he was the short stack when in fact he was an average stack. I went out a few hands later with KXc against QXc when a Queen hit.

Cash game was better, and I profited about $100 after deducting the tourney buy-in, so it was a good night overall. I played much better when I was sitting in the corner finishing up a writing assignment for PokerNews than when I was actually at the table. Basically I limped into every pot, had someone read the board off to me, and called any bet that I had 5:1 pot odds to make. Once the turn hit and people actually started making real bets, I asked someone to flash me my cards, and then I made a decision. I hit a couple of lucky rivers and added about 50% to my stack while I was away from the table. BG and I had a running flop bet color prop going, and I think I finished maybe $5 ahead on that. I think I'm too aggressive for my home game, and need to dial it back a touch. Might be interesting to see if I can take the next month or so and create a fold equity for myself that's >0.

I think the game the week after Christmas is going to be kitchen-table poker with a $1-$5 spread limit format. Bring back some old chestnuts like Follow the Bitch, Low card in the Hole is Wild, shit like that. The only rule will be - No Hold 'Em. Unless it's Double-Flop.

Anyway, I know some of you have family in my part of the world. If you're gonna be down over the holidays let me know.