I had almost forgotten...

...how pleasant it is to win.

I went out tonight to my B League tournament series with a somewhat fatalistic attitude: "I'll play my best and get destroyed, ho-hum, what else is new." I certainly didn't leave the house with a song in my heart or gladness of spirit. I was going to work and I expected to have another soul-crushing night.

Instead, I played my best and things went just fine. I took third of 21 in the tournament, and added more points to my top score on the leaderboard. There was also an impromptu small-stakes cash game afterwards and I walked away with five times what I bought in for. (The game was soft AND I got hit, big-time, by the deck — which, let's admit it, is pretty much an ideal combination of circumstances.)

It is a measure of how far I have to go as a poker-player that this outcome has left me in a mighty fine mood. I confess that I haven't yet reached the nirvana state which would allow me to experience perfect equanimity in the face of the both loss and victory. To be honest, tonight I'm quite content to just enjoy a little success.