Grinding Grinding Grinding

So, I know what you're probably thinking.  It's been a long time since my last post... again.  Last time I took a while to write because things weren't going so well and it was difficult to write about what I perceived to be an ongoing failure.  So you're probably thinking that my lack of writing lately means that I've been going through more of the same. I mostly just think this because I've had multiple people approach me to make sure things are going okay.  I didn't understand why they were surprised to hear that things were going great, and then I remembered that the last update they received was a pretty depressing blog post.  Well I'm happy to report that things have started to turn around and I am in a much better place now than I was in a few weeks ago.  I received a ton of words of encouragement from many of you, and I can't thank you all enough for that.

Since I'm an engineer by trade, I figured the best way for me to outline how things are going would be through a labeled plot so we can all analyze some data together.  On the x-axis we've got hours played and on the y we have $ won/lost (I've taken out the actual dollar amounts).  The starting point is sometime in July after I left my job and officially started my professional career.  As you can see, things got off to a really fast start.  I got an unbelievable run of cards, everything went my way, and this was all before I started doing any serious studying.  Then I started to incorporate some studying into my game after about 25 hours of playing time.  If you've read my last blog post, you know how that went.  If you haven't read it, hours 25-100 in the graph below will give you a pretty good idea.  Luckily, things turned around for me after that.

I've put in ~150 hours of playing time since my last post and they have been very profitable.  This past Friday I finally took a shot at playing higher stakes, which is going to be one of the most important things for my progression through this journey.  While I can learn a ton and start to build a bankroll playing $1/$2 blinds, if I ever want to stop living off of my savings, I will need to start crushing $2/$5 games as well.

So, what changed between the last post and this one?  I think the answer lies in my constant persistence and working efficiently rather than trying to do too much at once.  When I first started studying I told myself that I needed to put in 4 hours of studying per day followed by 4 hour of playing per day.  It was brutal.  I dreaded the long study sessions, tried to cram too much information at once, and by the time I got to the tables I had too many new concepts that I tried to implement at the same time.  Then I remembered a little tidbit that I had read in countless poker blogs but failed to implement myself.  The best way to learn poker is to play poker.  So I started to play poker more.  I focused on hitting 30-40 hours / week of playing time, with 5-10 hours of study time.  All of a sudden I had motivation for everything.  I could really focus on learning a new concept with a 1-2 hour study session, and now I get to spend more time playing the game that I actually love playing.  It is amazingly easy to stick with a routine when you look forward to every part of the routine....
- Wake up sometime around noon
- Make food and study for a few hours hours
- Go to the rock gym & climb / workout for a few hours
- Head to Foxwoods and play until 4am
- Head home and sleep
- Rinse & Repeat every Tuesday - Saturday

This is my new grind.  I feel as busy, if not busier than I felt when I was working the 9 to 5 job, but now I'm loving every second of it.  My apologies for leaving everybody hanging after the last post, but this time I'm going to attribute it to just being busy and constantly grinding.  I have a few fun stories to share, but this post is starting to get long so I'll save those for next time and hopefully use that as motivation to post a little more often.