Sometimes you need to take two steps backwards to take twenty steps forwards

Finally I get some motivation to write a blog post, so this is me taking advantage of that as I am awful when it comes to updating this. In the past 3 months I have done a lot of things that have improved my poker game, and more importantly my life, and I have been super busy with everything and I find it tough to find the time to update my blog. Hopefully I can include writing blogs into my normal schedule, that way when I write I don't end up writing a novel, which I am expecting to do here in this post, but for now it is what it is.

I went home in late march for about month to do a few things.. I went to the annual bar tour at state college, which as usual was awesome. In years past we would usually go Friday and go to a house party with people we know that still go there, spend Saturday doing the bar tour, and leave on Sunday. We would spend the whole weekend hammered, and it would be a blast and that would be it. This time around it was waaaaay different. We are all 25-26 now, and we don't know nearly as many people that still go and live up there. It was very weird staying at a hotel there, it was very weird going to a bar Friday, and it was very weird going around campus just site seeing Sunday morning/afternoon. Overall the weekend was still a blast, and just as much fun as its always been, but the partying was for sure toned down a bit.

The rest of the time I was in Pittsburgh, I had a couple of nights out with my boys, but most would go home early. I ended up hanging out with my little brother a good bit, and spent the rest of my time in the casino grinding. The whole experience of being in Pittsburgh was a reality check for me, and made me realize the change of life that I am, or anyone around my age really, is going through.

You go from everyone being in school and working shitty side jobs, to starting out with whatever career you choose, and for the most part have very little responsibility's, and basically spending all of your time together with your friends having fun and just living your life free. Then in a blink of a eye it's gone and everything is changed.

One year ago, none of my friends were engaged or married, everyone was looking to party on the weekends, everyone was trying to do this and that, and everyone was still living their lives free. Today, all of my best friends, aside from two, are now married or engaged. It has been a very fast and very overwhelming change, and being single still is starting to suck when you see all of your best friends get engaged or married, or are in a very committed relationship which might as well count the same as being engaged. I am not living in Pittsburgh currently, but just being there for a month I started to realize that my friends stay in on the weekends a lot now, spend times with their significant others, or when we go out for a drink its just a couple and then its on our way home again. They are worrying about saving money and building credit to buy a house, they are worried about not getting in trouble as that would potentially fuck up their job situation, and they live their lives with much more responsibility's. in short everyone is growing up and moving onto a new chapter in their lives. Due to my friends settling down at such a young age, it makes me feel old even though I am not. I mean I am happy for them, so to them I say both congratulations and you suck.

While I was at home, I also got to see my newly born niece which was a fabulous experience. Up until then I had never held a baby in my life, and it was very uncomfortable for me to hold something so fragile. Scarlett (Baby's name) is doing very well now. Being born 10 weeks early was a scare initially, but she developed perfectly and is in perfect health and I couldn't be more happy for my brother and his wife.

Moving on to poker.

To start the year, I was having a bit of a rough go of things, and i approached my game selection very poorly. I was grinding SNGS only for the most part, and grinding very reg infested fields of 9 man and 18 mans. Due to how tough games were, I was only 6-8 tabling for the the first part of the year. I was playing poorly, very poorly, which is tough to do when your 6-8 tabling. I started out struggling, then I went on a heater, which may have been a bad thing for me as I still wasn't playing optimally. When I left for Pittsburgh, I was on a 5k downswing. When I came back from Pittsburgh, the downswing increased to 11k. I was switching my games from 18 mans to 45 mans and 180 mans, then back to 9 mans and 18 mans, loading a MTT session here and there, I was all over the place and basically whatever I did seemed to not work, I would have good days and bad days, but for the most part I just wasn't cutting it. I wasn't studying the game at all, I was just putting in hours, and lots of them, and with how much I played it really had me questioning what I was doing with my life as I felt the games were too hard, and I wouldn't go to the extreme and say I was on the verge of quitting, but the idea for sure crossed my mind.

Then just like that, how I approached poker changed in a instant. Jordan gave me advice on a certain hand I played, and just from hearing his thought process on the hand made me realize exactly how I was playing bad in all aspects of my game. I won't go into specifics, but for the next week or two, I was 4-6 tabling, trying new things out, and playing mainly just SNGS and working on my preflop game a bit, but mostly post flop. After having success in those two weeks and realizing a lot of the leaks I had, I started to feel much more confident in my game. After having a conversation with Jordan, I decided to change my game selection to strictly all MTTS, and mixing in 180's when I don't have many tables up, and 15-25 table SNGS b4 and after my MTT sessions to get VPPS and to reduce the MTT variance.

The very first week after my switch, which was about 3 weeks ago, I binked the big 27.50 for 5.2k, then a couple days later I binked the 11$ rebuy for 12.3k. I have also binked a 109 turbo for 4.7k, a 109$ freezeout for 2.8k, and I have a couple of 1k-1.5k scores as well. I am also 20 tabling 18 mans and 10 tabling 6 max hypers. I am also doing very well in both game formats and I am earning about 400 VPPS per hour doing either one, in the 6m hypers I get in a bit more VPPS, and its tough to say how much $$ per game I can make as the sample is still small for me playing this many tables.

I really felt like the few months I spent at the start of the month were two steps backwards, but I feel like I am now starting to take twenty steps forwards in the progression of how I play. I understand I am starting out on a bit of a heater with my new game selection, and It's easy to say I am just thinking this because of that because we as poker players tend to be very results oriented, but I don't feel that way at all. When I won 17 days in a row earlier in the year, and won 17k or whatever it was, I was literally on a heater and didn't play optimally for pretty much the duration of that heater.

Now I am entering days with proper game selection, focus, and how I am playing is much more solid and I am expecting big things from here on out if I continue to bring my A game to the tables. I beat myself up for mistakes I make, and for the first time in my 2 and a half year poker career, I am trying insanely hard to improve my game. I wish I had this mind set a couple years ago, but it is what it is, all I can do is make the proper decisions right now and in the future, and that I do everything I can to set myself up to be successful in this industry.

Jordan, Brandon (Mazurite), and Gave ($$$indabank) and myself also went to Ireland for 10 days from the 14th-24th of May, which was a amazing experience. This is something I will dedicate a whole blog post too in the next day or two.

I leave for Pittsburgh again on June 21st, The 22nd - 24th will be spent at My buddy Dave's cabin for his birthday weekend which we did 2 years ago and was a blast, then July 1st will be my buddy Adam's engagement party, and then my ass is on a plane first thing Monday to make it in time for the 1.5k WSOP event that starts at noon. I also plan on playing the 1k on Wednesday, and the Main Event, which day I start for the Main Event is TBD.

I will end this post with some poker goals I have for 3 weeks of grinding I have in June, which I hope to meet.

- 20k Game profit

- 60k VPPS

- Top 5 in monthly TLB by the time i leave (Prob won't be able to keep it for whole month, but to put myself in the top 5 before I leave would suffice)

And I'm grindin' until I'm tired

they say you ain't grindin' until you tired

So I'm grinding with my eyes wide