From donkey to genius

To summarize my crazy November poker run, I basically forgot how to play the game for a minute there . . . and then I remembered.
To be more specific, I made a $1,000 profit during a stellar October, and then managed to blow off $900 of it in the worst single downswing of my tournament career (such as it is).
The way I look at it, the first $200 of the downswing was just the natural variance of poker. I got moderately unlucky in a couple sit-n-gos, no big deal. The next $500 was entirely on me - I played like a donkey. I completely lost my confidence, and every move I made was wrong. If I made a continuation bet, I was definitely getting check-raised. If I had the chip lead on the money bubble, I'd find a way to be the next guy eliminated.
At that point, I decided to buckle down and play some decent freaking poker. I've found that the best way to regain my poker mojo is to play 27-player sit-n-gos as opposed to single-table SNGs. For some reason, the multi-table format tends to encourage me to play simple ABC poker, as opposed to making fancy (often low-percentage) moves. And when I'm playing poorly, a little ABC poker is just what the doctor ordered. From there, I can add bluffs back into my game gradually - only picking the most obvious spots at the start, and opening things up a bit as I regain my confidence.
This tactic probably would have worked, but I ran horrendously bad and managed to bleed off another $200. I lost in all sorts of sick ways: KK vs. QQ, KQ vs. QT, AK vs. AQ, etc. I couldn't catch a break, but I felt like I was playing well again.
The circumstances of my inevitable upswing were kind of interesting. I came down with the flu today and had to stay home from work. As I lay on the couch, chugging ginger ale and sipping chicken soup, I decided to take a shot at one of the big multi-table tournaments. I hit up one with a $20 buy-in, and ended up finishing seventh out of about 1200 people for $671. Pretty sweet on some levels - I got a big chunk of my bankroll back in a big hurry. Of couse, first place was $3,800, so once again I came up just short of a real big score.
Ultimately, I was pleased with my play. I was very patient, navigating my way past the money bubble with a stack that was just a couple bucks below average. Then I was fortunate enough to catch KK against a big stack's QQ, and scored a nice double-up.
I doubled up a second time in fascinating circumstances. The player to my left and I both had very deep stacks of around 50,000, and I think the blinds were around 500-1000. I limped in the small blind with KJ (after everyone else had folded), and he made a bigger-than-usual raise out of the big blind. I just felt like he was robbing me and didn't want any action in that spot. So I shoved, and he snap-called with A9o.
My hand was obviously caught in the cookie jar, but he made a ridiculous call in my opinion. Sure, he had a better hand than me, but that's a very marginal spot to call off all your chips. He's only 60 per cent to win there. Anyway, I flopped a king, and it held to give me one of the biggest stacks in the tournament with about 50 players remaining.
I rode that stack down to the final two tables, at which point I opened up my game and got some timely resteals.
I arrived at the final table with just over 300,000 in chips, which was good for fifth place, just below average. The top five spots paid at least $1,000, which is what I was sort of aiming for, and I decided to be patient. I was rather unlucky not to finish higher - the short stacks kept sucking out and doubling up. It was kind of gross. I only caught one big hand - AA in the big blind - and wouldn't you know it, everybody else folded to me. So sick.
This final table was slow going, and my 300k stack ended up shrinking in relation to the blinds, which rose to 12,500-25,000. I ended up busting in seventh when the chip leader made a small raise from the button, and I felt my AhTh was good enough for a resteal. He called with AQ, and my suckout didn't materialize.
At the end of the day, I'm really happy with both my play and the result. One of these times, I'll get the win.
Bankroll = $5,700