So I didn't end up starting my challenge today after all. Instead, I was up all night listening to QuadJacks discuss the mess FTP finds itself in now that Ivey has sued them and most of the rest of their pros stopped wearing their patches at the WSOP and so my sleep was messed up again and i just felt too tired to play much.
I'm still not 100% sure what this all means for me right now but I think within the next month or two I'm going to start moving my action off of Tilt (if they last that long). I would just switch now but this is the worst time of the year to do that since the midyear ironman bonus comes in at the end of the month, so I'll think I'll just grind that out and then gtfo if things haven't improved dramatically.
In the meantime I'm going to try to get the majority of my money off FTP (been waiting for a moneybookers transfer to go through for 3 days now), and grind with a shorter BR....just in case this FTP cashout nonsense expands beyond just Americans (I've heard rumors it's already spread to places like Brazil and even here in Canada).
I haven't decided fully what to do about my 100K hands/challenge since I no longer feel confident that when I wake each morning FTP and, more importantly, my money will still be there waiting for me. So I think what I'll do is just grind like usual for a couple of days and see if anything develops. If I can get most of my funds into my MB account this week, I'll feel more comfortable letting this thing sort itself out while I grind but otherwise it seems silly to bust my ass all month and in the end find out I have nothing to show for it.
Either way, it seems as if Black Friday has affected all of us on an even deeper level than we had originally realized. Of course, the silver lining here is that if FTP really was doing even a fraction of the shady stuff that they've been accused of (hard to imagine an alternative at this point), then Black Friday might end up being the day that saved Internet poker as opposed to the one that crippled it.
'You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one'
5/30/11
And So It Begins. Again. Again.
So I managed to find a partial backer/co-investor quickly on parttimepoker.com and have been slowly getting back into the flow of 200nl. Instead of playing on my own vs playing backed, I decided to chop the difference and sell my action @ 60/40 and take about a third of it myself, effectively making my cut 72% while still permitting me the luxury of not having to keep a big roll online. I think having a backer is also going to help keep me accountable as far as volume is concerned; which is definitely something I could use going into my next challenge.
Overall, since I started playing rush approximately 4 months ago, I've averaged about 50K hands/month and so, for my next challenge, I will attempt to double my production and put in 100K hands in June, hopefully all at 200nl. While this may sound like a standard prop bet/challenge that many players make to try to trick themselves into being motivated when other factors are causing the opposite effect, my plan centers around getting back to the tireless grinder I was before the money meant something to me. See, before I had to worry about a wife, a house, or a future child (the one my wife will eventually have, not a child brought back from 2112 to John Connor it up), I used to be able to grind for days on end and pretty much lived in the space between my bed and computer. But, through the help of Jared Tendler's incredible new book The Mental Game of Poker (you can find it here: http://www.mentalgameofpoker.com/), I've come to realize that my irrational fears of failure have been steadily increasing along with my responsibilities. It now makes complete sense that my motivation would wane...why would I want to grind every single day when I was subconsciously going into every session fearing the worst? I've come to learn a ton about this mental stuff over the past week but I'd basically be paraphrasing Jared, so I'll just say that if you have any motivation, fear, tilt, or confidence issues surrounding poker, you will literally never make a better investment than buying his book (and no, I unfortunately do not get a cut of book sales).
So what I will be doing going forward is getting myself back in the grinder's mindset by putting in 5K hands/day, 5 days/week. I plan on generally doing this Mon-Fri so I can finally get my internal clock realigned with the rest of the real world and, if I succeed in keeping to this schedule, I should reach 100K hands on the 28th of June with 2 official playing days to spare.
I am also going to get back to working on my game on a daily basis. Right now I generally only 'study' about once a week; which I don't think is really enough for anyone to stay on top of their game. I mean, professional athletes don't only practice once a week, so why should I?
I think adding a relatively insignificant 15 minute review at the end of each day, in addition to an hour session during one of my off days, will go a long way to ensure I'm playing my A game as often as is possible and that, when I'm not, my D game might instead turn into a B- game. Thanks again Jared for teaching me that equity comes in all shapes and sizes!
I will be celebrating my last day of slackerism tomorrow by watching the Miami Heat beat up on Dirk and then the grind will begin.
I'll try to post lengthier weekly updates here but most of the time I'll just be using twitter so feel free to click that button at the top right and say hello.
For (hopefully) the last time, this is SlackerSentin signing off.
Overall, since I started playing rush approximately 4 months ago, I've averaged about 50K hands/month and so, for my next challenge, I will attempt to double my production and put in 100K hands in June, hopefully all at 200nl. While this may sound like a standard prop bet/challenge that many players make to try to trick themselves into being motivated when other factors are causing the opposite effect, my plan centers around getting back to the tireless grinder I was before the money meant something to me. See, before I had to worry about a wife, a house, or a future child (the one my wife will eventually have, not a child brought back from 2112 to John Connor it up), I used to be able to grind for days on end and pretty much lived in the space between my bed and computer. But, through the help of Jared Tendler's incredible new book The Mental Game of Poker (you can find it here: http://www.mentalgameofpoker.com/), I've come to realize that my irrational fears of failure have been steadily increasing along with my responsibilities. It now makes complete sense that my motivation would wane...why would I want to grind every single day when I was subconsciously going into every session fearing the worst? I've come to learn a ton about this mental stuff over the past week but I'd basically be paraphrasing Jared, so I'll just say that if you have any motivation, fear, tilt, or confidence issues surrounding poker, you will literally never make a better investment than buying his book (and no, I unfortunately do not get a cut of book sales).
So what I will be doing going forward is getting myself back in the grinder's mindset by putting in 5K hands/day, 5 days/week. I plan on generally doing this Mon-Fri so I can finally get my internal clock realigned with the rest of the real world and, if I succeed in keeping to this schedule, I should reach 100K hands on the 28th of June with 2 official playing days to spare.
I am also going to get back to working on my game on a daily basis. Right now I generally only 'study' about once a week; which I don't think is really enough for anyone to stay on top of their game. I mean, professional athletes don't only practice once a week, so why should I?
I think adding a relatively insignificant 15 minute review at the end of each day, in addition to an hour session during one of my off days, will go a long way to ensure I'm playing my A game as often as is possible and that, when I'm not, my D game might instead turn into a B- game. Thanks again Jared for teaching me that equity comes in all shapes and sizes!
I will be celebrating my last day of slackerism tomorrow by watching the Miami Heat beat up on Dirk and then the grind will begin.
I'll try to post lengthier weekly updates here but most of the time I'll just be using twitter so feel free to click that button at the top right and say hello.
For (hopefully) the last time, this is SlackerSentin signing off.
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