on the grind

so as most months i started off playing hardly any hands this month. i played maybe 1k hands in the first week of august and had continued to be lazy. i think there is a real fine line for me between not playing when in a -ev mindset (tired, tilted, stressed etc) and general laziness. this partly comes from starting the last couple months off great and being up a good number for most of the month. i feel no pressure to play since im up a good chunk and have a positive outlook on my game.

But recently i've been thinking about why my motivation to play is at a all time high when i'm stuck or running bad. i have no problem playing then because i'm eager to get back in the positive and work on my game. i need to keep that attitude while im running well and winning.
i'm at the point now where i can make some serious money at 2/4. the stakes are significant enough that winning and losing 2k in a session can be fairly common. to put it in perspective, a decent session for me is the same now as a two week pay cheque from my 9-5. i put a lot of effort in to get here and if i want to maximize the gains of that work i need to start grinding a little harder. now, im not gonna go off in another extreme and start 12 tabling and playing in a -ev mindset but i have been playing 6 tables lately and feel my play hasn't really dropped off from when i 4 table. the one thing i have to keep on top of is not getting too tight pre-flop which is easy to do.

so last thursday during my coaching session we set a goal of 10k hands played by today. i've logged close to 7k so far and will probably get another 1.5k in tonite. so 8.5k hand is very good production for me in a week and if i could somehow keep it up i believe i can become one of the bigger winners at 2/4 on ftp. my plan from here to the end of the year is to basically grind my ass off but to have fun at the same time. my gf is going to be away for a couple of months starting some time this fall and this will be by far the biggest money making opportunity i will ever have as far as poker playing goes.

oh and on a side, it's been cool to have enough br to be able to randomly buy into some of the ftops events. it was always my goal when i was an mtt player to satellite into them but i never really had many chances. now i can pretty much just buy-in without it being a big dent to my roll or affect me phycologically. i played the $216 4x shootout a couple nights ago and managed to get hu on my first table but got owned pretty hard by a 10/20 reg. then last night i played the $322 mixed holdem event and was up and down like crazy before busting shortly after 2 hours.

anyways, happy grinding!

tg