Whilst tournament poker is immense fun it is also one of the most frustrating forms of poker, especially when you are grinding turbo tournaments! After my blistering start it appears that Lady Variance has dug her claws well and truly into my back and is showing no signs of letting me go.

Since the last update I have played a total of 107 multi-table tournaments and made it into the money a total of 11 times, reaching three final tables. This sounds great but during that time I am actually down to the tune of 70 buy-ins, which certainly is not nice at all. Most people would go into panic mode at this point but thankfully I am rolled pretty deep so can soak up these losses, but getting back to winning ways sooner rather than later would be appreciated!

Another reason I am not too worried about the losses is the fact I have been constantly getting my chips in good but the cards simply are not falling for me, but I am stacking up plenty of ‘Sklansky Bucks.’ During this period I am 130,000 chips under EV and considering you only start with 1,500 in each tournament you can see how badly I have been running.

Running badly early in a tournament is fine because if you bust you simply register for another game but when you run badly late on it is more difficult to take I can tell you. On each of the final tables I lost huge pots for stacks that would have seen me sail into the top three easily. I had KK run into AA, lost with 33 to QQ with the chips going in on a 8x8x3x flop and then AK lose to TT when the flop came down TTK. Win just one of those hands and it would have been a completely different story indeed.

This week’s plan is to play at least 150 tournaments because I will not get to play next week as I am going to Venice for the World Poker Tour. Here’s to taking one or two of those babies down before my trip away!