congrats dude

Awsum. Your bink will come!

Congrats and awesome write up!

Curious, it seems like you knew pretty much every person at every table with their full bio. How do you know all these people?

Thanks everyone!

I definitely don't know everyone but before becoming a pro I was a pretty big poker fanboy, would watch a ton of poker coverage for every series.

Day 1: Faraz is a well known somewhat big name pro. I didn't know anyone else but it was clear from talking with others who were pros and who weren't. The Aussie had an Aussie accent, Englishman an English accent, Spaniard a Spanish accent, etc

Day 2: Now I have a list of names who are at my table. I've known of Jaffee for a while. Szabo's name looked familiar as I'd read updates on Koon winning his bracelet. Theologis had been on a Negreanu vlog and I'd looked him up to see he had a 1.2m score online recently, then checked his P5s account to see he's top 5 in the world. The Canadian and American pros both played well for 10 hours.

Day 3: I've seen Marty on Twitter and have mutual friends. Anton Wigg's a name I've seen a ton. The Canadian pro was at my table the day before.

Day 4: I've seen Teach around a bunch, Zolotow on a bunch of streams, Akkari is relatively famous. I got to know Goulder as the tournament went on.

Day 5: I didn't know many at my table going into it, really only that BetonDrew guy from those Solve for Why videos and Dave Stefanski from East Coast stuff. As play went on it became clear that a few of the foreigners were quite good.

Day 6: I've played with Coles online for a long time, Asher is an East Coast guy, and at this point I have an idea about the other guys because they've either been on a live stream or been reported on by PokerNews since we're now in the top 100 of the main event.

The Week After the Main

I went to the Rio Monday to play the $1500 freezeout. After about 2 hours I started to get a bit of a runny nose and didn't feel 100%. I busted in a standard spot and headed back to the air bnb. That night I took a covid test, came out negative, but I still didn't feel great the next day. Reports started coming out about several different players contracting covid who had been at the Rio. I stayed home, playing online mostly, then took another test Wednesday, once again negative. I started to feel like myself again Thursday but by that time I was nervous about the Rio and felt like I'd been away from home long enough so I booked a flight for Friday afternoon.

I got home Friday night and was really happy to see Amy and be back in my apartment. Saturday I went out with a few of my closest friends and Amy met up with us later. Sunday I put in an online session (after working off a pretty nasty hangover) and decided to play the last WSOP online bracelet event. I'd more or less been boycotting them given late reg ends at 12:30am EST. The tourneys hit the money between 2 and 3am, and then finish after the sun's come up. But since this was the last one, the structure seemed very good, and my body was kinda still on Pacific time, I decided to fire it up. It also started at 6:30pm and was a freezeout so I knew there was a decent chance I'd just bust at a normal hour anyway. I eventually finished 62nd for a $2159 return on my $1000 buy in at 3am. Glad those are over .

Going into tonight I had profited 1 out of 11 sessions on the month in MTTs (though the 1 winning session included the 81k main score) so my feelings have been mixed. I got my career high score but was disappointed not to go deeper, and then have gotten pretty cleaned out in everything else I've been playing. I lost the biggest cash pot I've ever played online while in Vegas but fortunately am still up a tiny bit on the month in cash. The temptation is to whine a bit when you feel like you're losing a high % of your all ins but no one wants to hear that after you've just ran really hot in the biggest tournament in the world. So I'm doing my best to keep my head down and simply keep playing.

Fortunately tonight I was given some respite with a HU chop in a Stars $200 series event. Love me these random Stars series. I put 2 bullets into that and 2 bullets into a Party $535 (which had a frustrating conclusion) and got a cash of $4.7k. Always feels good to have a winning day after a stretch of losers.

Tomorrow I'm heading home for the holiday. Thursday we'll go to my Aunt's for Thanksgiving then head off to Lake George as a family for the weekend. We didn't go on a ton of vacations when I was a kid so I've really enjoyed the few we've gone on while me and my brother are adults. Both of our girlfriends will be there as well and it should be a lot of fun. Probably gonna play very little poker between now and Monday. I'm kinda hoping I'm able to make it back to Hoboken for the Sunday session but if that doesn't happen it's alright with me. Nothing wrong with taking a little break after running around Vegas the first couple weeks of the month.

Last Week of November

Went home to Hamilton on Wednesday with Amy and spent some time with my dad before heading to my Aunt's house in Holmdel the next day. My mom had stayed there the night before to help prepare and we all met up and had a great Thanksgiving. I brought the Oculus and got to show a few of my family members the whole virtual reality setup which they seemed to have a lot of fun with.

The next day the six of us (mom, dad, brother, his fiancée, Amy, and myself), along with our dog Miler, got in 2 cars and drove 4 hours to Lake George upstate in NY. It was numbingly cold and snowing, a stark contrast to the Vegas weather I'd been getting used to. We mostly hung out in the little mountain cabin my parents had found on Air bnb. It was nice taking time off relaxing with family.

The Sunday we were set to leave was eventful to say the least. My mom fell down the stairs and broke her thumb. Luckily no other damage. In her defense the stairs were slippery and dark and a couple of us almost fell on them earlier in the week. She's a champ and just sucked it up on the drive home. Her, my dad, and our dog went in one car while the other 4 of us were in the other. We got across the NJ border and got a flat tire on Rt 17 in north Jersey. My brother and I got out to change it but he wasn't satisfied with the air in it so he got out an electric pump or something. Plugs it into the car, starts to pump it up, realizes he hasn't turned the car on and has killed the battery. Wait another 40 mins for a guy to come to jump the car then drive it to a shop to change the tire. Eventually get dropped off in Hoboken around 6:30. It was really nice of them to drive us directly to our front door so it was hard to be too upset about the delay getting home.

Walk inside our apartment and it's freezing. Call somebody and they say they'll come check it out in an hour or so. I start up my MTT session wearing a coat and hat lol. Just 4 MTTs I felt like playing on the schedule and I cashed 3 of them. Unfortunately a 10th place finish in the Party 1k, a 14th in the Party 215, and a 19th in the Stars 300 led to just a small win on the day during one that felt like it could've been big, but a win is a win nonetheless.

Today I did a coaching session at 2 before practicing some mixed games which was a fun change of pace. Razz was first on the docket and I really had no idea how in depth you could get with a game that I figured was quite simple. Looking forward to getting more into the mix in the future.

No other poker played today for me. Tomorrow I plan on trying to get back into the swing of things. I've got coaching sessions lined up for Wednesday and Friday. They always seem to help me review what I already know and confirm that I have a good grasp on concepts I sometimes take for granted. It's easy to get sloppy without realizing it in this game and coaching is a great way to fend that off for me. That's an additional benefit beyond the obvious perks of helping someone get better and making money aside from just playing poker. I'll be taking off Thursday, maaaybe Saturday, but want to make sure I play all the other days to start finding my rhythm again.

December Begins

This was the first week I've felt relatively back into the flow of things since Vegas. I really enjoyed my coaching sessions, of which there were 3. I started with a new student Friday and was pleasantly surprised with how knowledgeable he seemed to be; it feels like I'll be able to get into some higher level stuff with him. He's a cash game guy and every once in a while he'd ask something that I didn't feel all that confident answering. Playing SRP OOP as the raiser was one of those, so I think I'll study some CO vs BTN stuff this week. "How often should we look to cb this board and what size should we use?" "Uh, well we cb less often than if we were IP, and I just go bigger to negate the positional disadvantage?" I was giving a lot of these vague answers and realized I didn't have a lot of concrete responses. It's awesome to get paid for doing something I enjoy AND something that will improve my game as a side effect.

On the results side of things it was a nice week. Lost on Tuesday then had 2 pretty big winning sessions in the next 3 days. I've been continuing playing on WSOP since coming back from Vegas, which was something I used to avoid. HUDs are not allowed on WSOP and I felt strange having one on Stars and Party without having it on WSOP. In the last few weeks something has changed on WSOP where you can't even play on the site if you have PT4 open which seems very weird to me. The HUD never worked on WSOP even if you had it open, so all this does now is forces me to choose between having a HUD on Stars and Party and not playing on WSOP, vs playing on all 3 sites with a HUD on none of them. I've been doing the latter and an interesting side effect has been a bit more confidence in my decisions.

Overall the HUD helps me but I think it does lead to some laziness on my end. For example, I've had plenty of spots where I go to flop with a rec and skip cb because the first thing I did was check his fold to cb stat to see he's folding 12%. However, with the HUD off, I simply cb hands that are meant to be cb. Now when the 12% folder calls flop, I have a fine strategy that involves a bunch of double barrels, where he's probably now overfolding on turn due to having such a weak range. Skipping cb with hands that are good bluffs was actually costing me EV in all likelihood, and now when I play my strategy and don't worry about trying to exploit really hard, I might be making less mistakes. I'd argue this is the exception and not the rule, and usually when I use my HUD I do come up with the best exploit, but not worrying so much about it has been a load off on my mind.

I'm considering playing more live in 2022, with a January trip to Florida for the WPT seeming like a good/fun thing to do. I feel kinda bad leaving Amy for long stretches of time so I'll have to figure out the best blend of playing as much of this live stuff as I can without being away from home for too long. Online is the bread and butter for me after all, but passing up on shots for a huge live bink when I feel very comfortable in that arena seems like a mistake.

I'm going to see Hamilton on Broadway tomorrow. Amy got me tickets for my birthday back in June and tomorrow is exactly 6 months after that day, for perspective on how tough I imagine it was to get them. I realized that tomorrow I'll be halfway between 30 and 31, which also means I'll be halfway between 21 and 40. I think if my 21 year old self saw me now he'd probably be extremely impressed with where I am. He'd probably be kinda surprised I was a fulltime poker player at all. But playing the main event at all woulda been shocking, let alone making a run. Playing the stakes I am at cash, the stakes I am in tournaments, the success I've had with it all, I would've been pretty tickled by it all. But it feels pretty normal and natural for me now. It makes me realize that if I do stick with this and I make the same type of jump in the next 9.5 years then the ceiling doesn't exist. Just gotta keep my head down and keep working.

December Week 2

Not much to report this week. Starting to get back into my structured schedule a bit more. However with Christmas right around the corner I'll get knocked back out of that soon enough. I'm also considering going to Florida for the WPT series in the middle of January. Still waiting to see if my buddy is good to go. Logistics seem to be the things that hold me back the most from playing more live poker, even before the pandemic. Finding a place to stay, people to go with, stuff like that. I'm not all that comfortable trying to do these things on my own but maybe that'll be something I attempt more in the future.

I've ran quite poorly in MTTs since the Main Event. I'd easily take this tradeoff compared to running okay for a month of tourneys and not going deep in the main. It's still great thinking about that experience. I think I've done a good job of focusing on the positives of it all and not the what ifs of a deeper run. It'll certainly be a different feeling next year, knowing how each day feels as I progress through it (if I do make it to day 2 again!)

I've continued the WSOP cash grind. It's extremely awkward not being able to open WSOP while PT4 is open. Apparently WSOP does still run when HM3 is open so I guess I'll start to shift back to that? It's funny how we've all completely given up on WSOP ever giving any sort of official statement on anything regarding its online operation. The idea of contacting support is laughable as they never have any idea what anyone is talking about. So the options are play WSOP and don't play Stars/Party, play all 3 but don't get to use PT4 on Stars/Party, play only Stars/Party and use PT4, or get HM3 and be able to play it all. The last option seems like the clear one but I'm not looking forward to setting up the HUD all over again.

This week I'll continue coaching, continue playing cash, throw in some of the WSOP circuit events, and continue studying. Probably more of the same the week after before travelling a bit for the holidays.

HM3 is the superior HUD anyways hah. You can pick up some decent HUD setups on the marketplace for a few dollars

Haha yeah I asked around after HM2 went out of use and was convinced to use PT4. Went through learning it all and now WSOP's making it somewhat obsolete. Dumb

End of 2021

I had covid symptoms starting around Tuesday the 14th. The weird thing was I got my booster that day so assumed the symptoms were a result of that, but I had some things (sore throat, cough, runny nose) that aren't supposed to come from the booster. On top of that, a friend I'd been with on Saturday also got symptoms Tuesday night then tested positive the next day. I got a PCR test that Friday and it was negative so who knows. In any case I more or less quarantined and felt tired and sick for about a week. As I was feeling better from that I pulled my upper back out?? I think I did it opening a stuck window in a very awkward way (reaching over a big desk, sideways, reaching up, etc), although I didn't feel pain right after that. I played a lot of beat saber with some wild arm movements and Rocket League hunched over which almost certainly exacerbated the injury. It was 3 days later it started to hurt bad, then on Christmas day I woke up and was in so much pain that I wondered if I'd even be able to get out of bed. I was at my girlfriend's parents' house so I tried to power through but I must have been noticeably uncomfortable since moving my arms, neck, and back in any way led to immense pain. I still feel pain in my upper back and neck but it's like 5% of what it was at its worst so it's manageable.

All of that led to me playing less poker, updating this thread less than I wanted to, and pretty much being out of commission with anything productive. My January goal will be to start to crank out some volume the way I was before November started. I played over 1000 hands on the 1st, played a bunch of the 2nd biggest stake on the 2nd, and had a wild session yesterday that involved me playing 1 table of the biggest stake, 1 of the 2nd biggest, and 2 of the 3rd biggest at one point. I won my biggest pot ever (standard AA>KK cooler) and lost one of my bigger ones ever (AQ<A7 on AQ7J7 where SPR was <1 on river ) but managed a win on the day.

I'll do a more detailed post on the year as a whole but in summation, it was undoubtedly the best year of my life from a poker standpoint, and maybe from a life standpoint too. I got to move to Hoboken and live with my girlfriend in an apartment I love. The state of the world makes it a bit of a bummer but outside of that things have been great. I made day 6 of the Main Event, I made a lot of money playing poker, I improved my game quite a bit, and I feel very happy. The grind continues in 2022.

2021 Review

I don't plan on making this a huge recap but I do want to note some of the most important details of my year.

--First full year playing cash
--Despite the above, made more playing MTTs in the first 5 months than I ever had in a full calendar year previously
--Moved to Hoboken in June with my wonderful girlfriend
--184k cash hands played on tracked NJ sites
--Cash profit comparable to my biggest previous MTT year
--Got my feet wet in the biggest stakes in NJ with about 500 hands played. 7k hands at the next stake and 20k+ at the stake below that
--Day 6/top 100 run in the WSOP Main Event in November to add another $81k score to the total

Had an extremely successful first 3 months, fueled by a 3 day (2 session) stretch of winning 46k in mtts and a ton of cash volume where I won at a pretty absurd rate. April-October were slower but I still did well and worked hard. The move to Hoboken in June may have slightly derailed my poker motivation. Living with my girlfriend has been so much fun but I think it's easier now for me to make excuses not to play poker. I'm settling in better with this dynamic as time goes on.

I attempted to get back into running several times but kept finding myself dealing with minor injuries. I went on a walk today (I haven't attempted to run in months) and felt tightness in my calf that quit on me the last time I attempted to run. I'm probably at the point of needing to go to a doctor if I want that fixed. I pay for my own health insurance but have to pay some absurd amount before they'll help me at all with the cost so I'm always hesitant to go.

Covid has continued to take its toll. It's more mental than anything now for me. The way it's constantly discussed but progress is incredibly slow is kinda exhausting at this point. I just wanna stop talking about it. We still seem to have no good answer for schooling and dining and other things we should've figured out by now. I get that we can't predict future variants but we can predict that this isn't going away. The lack of leadership has been disappointing (and I don't mean this politically, both sides of the aisle have let me down).

In November I made the decision to go to Las Vegas for the WSOP Main Event. Two very important things happened there. The first is obvious, the day 6 run that finished with a 79th place effort for $81,000. The second was more subtle and probably more important. Talking to a group of guys somewhat consistently who have been professionals for so long helped me immensely in viewing the game as a true professional. It'd be embarrassing to complain about anything that was going on in tournaments while with those guys so it was way easier for me to focus on the important stuff. I think that was a big part of the Main Event run itself and it's something I'm trying to focus on anytime I get the urge to complain about how a session is going.

Overall, 2021 was a good year. The cloud of covid is always there but looking beyond that it was great. I live with my best friend and girlfriend and had the biggest year of my poker career by far. I'm happy and healthy and am grateful for it all. I'm still thinking about 2022 goals and aspirations but I don't want to put too much pressure on those. I know what it takes to work hard to improve so I want to simply keep doing that. I hope everyone had a good 2021 and finds happiness/success in 2022!

Congrats on the great year man! Seems like a big mtt bink is around the corner and cash games will provide a nice steady return to help take pressure off from the mtt's. Sucks about the injury and the health insurance situation. I have a high deductible plan as well and it's definitely easy to try to avoid using it since you have to pay out of pocket for a decent chunk before being covered. The good thing is it's early in the year so if you have any other nagging things you need to be seen for you can squeeze it all into 2022 so the later stuff is all covered. Every company is different but you might also want to check into your girlfriends company now that you guys are living together. Some companies allow a bf/gf to hop on their plan if they live together.

How you liking Hoboken so far? Good friend of mine from college lives there so pre covid I'd go now and then for a few days and play on nj sites/hang out. Pretty nice area especially being so close to the city.

Gl in 2022!

Thanks Tyman! Yeah I'll have to see a doctor at some point. Might try going on a run again before I do to confirm it's enough of a problem to bother with. Will have to wait for the temperature to get above freezing before I'm willing to do that though! Gf's still an intern so gotta wait at least another year before her health plan becomes an option lol

Hoboken's been great. It's proximity to the city has definitely been part of the reason I've occasionally struggled with volume. Overall though I've found a pretty good balance of working and enjoying time off. Lots of good spots to go and I really like my location here!

Start of 2022

I've played at least 176 hands every day so far this year. It's not really a thing I'm gonna fixate on going forward but I've felt good every day and wanted to stay fresh, so even days where I knew I was going out at night I'd get some mini session at least in early in the day. I had some poor results to start the year but was in a weird zone where I was annoyed but not discouraged. I was definitely focusing too much on results but I also was in a good enough headspace to at least be playing my B game so I continued playing. I'd often stop early though when things were going poorly.

This led to a lot of shorter sessions, sometimes less than an hour, where it was hard to get into a rhythm whether I was running bad or not. I've made a big effort this past week to focus way more on how I'm playing, what I can improve on, and lengthening sessions even when they aren't going well. As often happens, the results came quite quickly with those efforts and as a result I got out of the hole tonight for the first time this year. The goal going forward will be to be more vigilant in focusing no attention on results, all in EV, etc, and instead putting it all on gameplay and studying/finding my leaks away from the table.

In a Groove

The streak of playing every day has continued. The volume isn't as high as you'd think given that fact. I'm a shade under 20k hands in 23 days now, so averaging less than 1k hands/day, but I'm starting to feel in a rhythm again. I played my first tournament of the year yesterday, booking a small win after a cash in a WSOP circuit event, a 12th in a Party $215, and a disappointing 5th in a Stars $250 where I had the lead for most of the tournament. I also lost a massive flip early in a 1k with overlay and <30 runners for almost 5 starting stacks. However, in part due to having a solid preplanned schedule prepared for my day, I booked my biggest daily cash win ever, despite only playing 872 hands. I played cash from 4pm-6pm and did very well, winning over 6 buy ins at my most common stake. Big one came when I 4b KK oop then bet 3 times vs a reg on a K high board and stacked AA for 160bb each.

I took a break from 6pm-8pm to eat and relax with Amy before sitting down to play tournaments. One table of one of my bigger cash stakes was running so I played that while I played MTTs. I won 2 buy ins with that as my only cash table. After being down/breakeven all year the results have started to come back to me. I think I've been underestimating the variance in cash, especially the higher stakes with the tougher regs, since coming from a tournament background. The variance is clearly lower than it is in MTTs but it's still poker and having stretches of 10k-15k hands of losing or breaking even shouldn't be as surprising to me as it felt this time. I put high expectations on myself but sometimes it's important to step back and realize I've barely been grinding cash for a year at this point. There's still a lot to learn. And as with all things poker, the more I focus on the strategy and other things I can control, as opposed to putting any energy into thinking about luck and things out of my control, the better I'll do and the better I'll feel.

Rounding Out January

I've managed to keep the streak alive of playing everyday, which I'll finish up tonight. I won't put emphasis on continuing that throughout the year but it was a fun challenge. I've only played 26k hands on the month so while playing every day has kept my mind sharp, it hasn't exactly led to massive volume. This is also in part due to me being very willing to fire the highest stakes whenever they run and focusing on those more than 1/2 or 2/5 volume. It's hard to play 2000 hands in a day if you're tired from the day before or concerned with playing again the next day. For example Friday the 14th and Saturday the 15th I played for less than an hour combined and 440 hands in total. I ran good and made a bunch those days but those can hardly be called sessions. The focus February will be making weekly schedules, taking one or two days off each week (barring the 2nd week which will be tough given I've got our yearly beerfest scheduled for Saturday the 12th, the Superbowl the 13th, and Valentine's Day the 14th).

I'm still all in on playing cash but am going to reattempt committing myself to playing the good tourneys on Tuesdays and Sundays. I doubt I'll put many sessions in of really grinding tournaments below the $200 buy in range. That will allow me to play the 4 (or however many) best value tourneys while playing cash on the side. I'll give myself a chance at a bink while still getting my cash volume in. This will usually simply result in a small loss in tourneys but occasionally a big score will come that can really boost my month/year.

~30k hands of reg tables a month is pretty solid dude. Hold your head high.

Thanks man appreciate that. I see some guys put insane volume in but I kinda struggle to put more than 2-3 hours of cash in per day. Hopefully something I can improve on going forward but like you said, a shade under 30k hands for the month isn't bad at all.

Congrats on the recent online score and the consistent volume! It seems like you're still in the process of optimizing your schedule, but the discipline for consistent play seems to be in place... you'll figure it out, keep it up!

Hey Man,

Don't post here often, but I was following your NJ journey as a NJ poker player myself. I couldn't figure out a way to private message you, but I wanted to talk to you about that calf you mentioned may be injured. It so happens I live not to far away from you, and run a physical therapy business. I'm the PT myself. Figured since we live close, I might be of some help to get you back running. before seeing a Doctor..

In any case, if you are interested in talking a bit more about it feel free to message me or reach out in some way. Enjoy the reads and seeing another NJ pro grinding out some nice results! Figured I could help you in some way if possible!

K

Thanks! I think my scheduling has gotten pretty good, it just has to be fluid as a poker player. One of the biggest issues is that people make plans without any concern for my schedule (as they should). One of the common ones is Amy's family will have dinner in Long Island on Sunday afternoons/nights. I just cannot do that and it makes me feel bad. There's also the very common Friday/Saturday night meetups with my non-poker friends. I don't want to lose touch with them and I want to take nights off, but it'd be way better for me to play Friday/Saturday and take 2 other weeknights off. So I try to be fluid, compromise a bit, and create a schedule each week based on what others are doing. Recently it's been trivia at a bar on Thursday nights and then deciding whether I'll take Friday or Saturday off each week, giving me a 5 day workweek with 2 days off. This week the plan was to take off Thursday/Saturday, but I called an audible and took Friday night off to hang with Amy then played for a couple hours during Saturday afternoon before going out that night as planned. Cash makes this schedule more easily flexible which is a great luxury for me.

I played every day in January because I really wanted to get back into the flow of playing consistently. November was WSOP, December was a ton of obstacles one after another (covid symptoms, back completely thrown out/in constant pain, holidays), so getting back into rhythm in January was a priority. I didn't plan on playing every day but as the month went on I felt great each day so I played, including some daytime poker to allow me to go out at night. I went out less often in January too with the frigid cold weather here in NJ and the higher risk of covid exposure. The plan in February is to get back to that 5 day/week schedule, the specifics of which will fluctuate week to week.

Thanks, appreciate that! I might try to run this week since the weather's supposed to get a bit warmer. I'll let you know how it goes.

No worries! Know it’s random reaching out like this but was reading and figured I could help. Have worked in sports/orthopedics since 2012.

I finished 12th in that same circuit event you almost took down. Why not meld both my worlds together to help who I can hah.

Reach out if you need anything and yeah let me know how it goes if you run.

Check me out if you want. Can reach me there as well. Keep crushing

First Week of February

Took my first day off of the year on Thursday. Felt nice to take it easy. Planned on playing Friday and taking off Saturday but decided to take Friday off and hang out with Amy that night. Got up on Saturday and played from noon through 2:00 before heading to the city to hang out with some friends. It's crazy how you can feel rusty at something from taking two days off despite having played each of the 33 days before.

I noticed something today after having a small losing session last night and a small losing one today. My motivation to keep playing was higher. I think that might be why I ended up playing every day in January. After 2 weeks of losing I felt really motivated to keep playing and continue proving to myself that I'm good at the game. I had an obstacle to overcome. That's a mindset I've only developed recently. In the past I'd probably have taken a few days off after the first couple weeks I had. This time I simply played every day until I had one of my winningest months ever (helped in part by the 30k circuit score, but I did finish with a nice winning cash month as well).

Two weeks of doing really well, followed by the first three days of February going well despite low volume, almost left me less hungry. I won a bit yesterday and took a break, eventually forcing myself to grind for an hour around 1am. I lost a decent amount in that hour but was really proud I got the hands in. Today I played from 3:30-5:30 and thought I played well but lost small again. I feel more motivated to get hands in after I eat, or at least study a bunch of spots tonight. It's not that I was feeling a lack of motivation to play at all when I was winning. But I think if I played 500 hands and had a winning session and didn't feel 100% I'd just stop. Whereas the losing sessions made me want to continue, not in a degen type of way, but just in a "well if I'm losing I might as well hit my volume goal for the day" frame of mind. This week will be focused on getting the hands in even when things are going great. I've done a good job of that in the past, pushing through that "winner's tilt" of wanting to quit while up, but I think the last couple weeks the combination of playing every day and doing well had me lowering the volume quite a bit. Now that I'm back to a reasonably normal schedule I want to make sure I'm getting 1k+ hands in each of the five days I play every week.

OP, I'm not sure why, but your thread has become a huge spam magnet since your last post - probably 30 or 40 new accounts have shown up to drop spam here. No idea why these bots choose a specific thread, but yours isn't the first we've seen this happen to over the years. I'm going to lock it for a short bit, as that's helped in the past with other ones. We can open it again in a week or two and hopefully the bots will have moved on. If I don't remember to come back in here, and you're looking to post again, report this post and/or send me a PM.

Sorry for the inconvenience.