I run good. I crush.

Happy to say this.

Flatline league. Three weeks, three tournaments, three cashes.

Including a first place finish last week.

Honestly, I don't know what I'm doing all that different - save for one piece of advice I took to heart over a month ago from a player I greatly respect.

"Chris, you've got to have patience."

Sounds simple. Some would probably say - simply stupid. I'd say my rediscovery of the most important trait of a poker player has improved my tournament game immensely.

Of course variance has helped as well - especially last Monday where I found myself all in bad a few times (and crushed one time) and managed to be on the right side of a suckout or two. Or three. Or seven.

To be fair, I also got in ahead many more times and got rivered, or runner runnered, and even flushed away - though managed to still have enough chips to crawl back.

Last Monday's first place finish was especially dramatic. With a starting stack of 5000 whittled down to less than 1100 (thanks to a terrible call by an opponent who naturally turned his middling flush draw) I somehow released my despair into the ether; and bit by bit, little by little, built my stack back up.

Tight. But VERY aggressive. Again and again, I used my MAXIMUM fold equity. While other players, including one or two whom I love dearly as friends, continue to bet out a quarter or even a third of their stack (in the vain hope of somehow getting away from a hand) pre-flop. I simply pushed all in - with expertly timed, SELECTIVE aggression.

Sometimes I had a premium hand. Sometimes I was stealing with marginal cards. Sometimes I had trash. No one at the table was able to distinguish which hand was which.

And then I ran into cards. JJ All-in. No callers. AA. All-in. No callers. AK. All-in. Called by A6. Sweet.

By being almost hyper-aggressive when I did have good cards early on, I was able to maintain this tone - and get paid when people woke up with slightly better than marginal holdings.

I love that people think I'm maniacal, when in reality I've tightened my game considerably.

Here's hoping they've stopped reading this.

If this isn't the case, I do have to mention one thing, and give credit where credit is due to ProfGrif who managed to outplay me heads up after sucking out on me about mid-way through our battle.

I was indeed tilted, and only by the grace of the poker Gods was I able to put a brutal runner-runner straight on him and then put him away by getting lucky. You had me sir - next time I hope I play better in the end, and if you outplay me again, I hope you take it down.