Getting Back Into The Grind
I really haven’t put a very good effort into poker since early 2008. At that time there were some changes in my life and it caused me to not want to play as much. The lack of volume has been devastating for my earnings and my ROI. The reason it has had such an effect on ROI is because when playing less volume I tend to focus only on Sunday tournaments and $1k buy-ins, and if you run bad in those for an extended period your ROI will plummet, especially when you don’t have all the smaller tournaments to pick up the slack. Then the lack of success causes me to play even less. Thankfully I have had some success at live poker during this time period so things are not all that bad.
I have been telling myself for about a year that I am going to step it up and start playing more volume online again like I used to in ’06 and ’07. I made ambitious tournament schedules and then failed to follow them. I focused on other areas in my life: upgraded living arrangements, spent a lot of family time, and have improved myself in other ways. I feel like I have gotten everything to a point where I can really focus on poker now with no regrets. But why do I still find it so hard to get back into the grind? Is my game no longer as good as it used to be? I feel like I am playing my best and am a much better player now than I was when I was killing it online so that’s not it. Is the field just getting too good and the game passing me by? No, I feel that I can compete on an elite level with the best in the world on any given day. Is it because I cant multi-table anymore? No, I have four monitors hooked up to my computer and I multi tons of tourneys on Sundays with full confidence. If I can still compete and have the desire to, why do I find myself with a lack of motivation to grind? I wrestle and wrestle with this question every day.
I know this happens to other players, usually after an extended bad run but not always. We get burnt out. We lose the itch to play; it’s just not fun anymore. It feels more like work than anything else and tedious work at that. So how do we break this rut? We need to make it fun again. We need to make some goals and try to attain them. We need to mix it up and play some other games. We also need to achieve some success so that we get that winning feeling again. We need to take care of anything else that has been neglected in our life so we can again play guilt-free. I can’t truly tell you how to get out of the rut because I have not yet succeeded. My new attempt to get back into the grind is writing this article and publishing my goals and thoughts to give me more motivation to step into the right direction. I am now accountable to the readers of BLUFF. If I fail then I fail publicly.
In poker, you get out what you put in, just like any other business. The more effort you put in the better the rewards will be. Knowing this I don’t even want to play anymore unless I am going to give it 100%. I feel like I have slacked long enough and tried the “just Sundays and $1ks” schedule and it has not worked out so I need to abort that and go back to playing a full schedule and get back some of the success and sense of achievement I experienced when I was doing so. I know I need to want to do it and I need to want to do it for myself. I do want to do it; I just can’t get myself to do it. This article will just make me more accountable to myself because it is more real.
So I am going to put my schedule and goals here in print to force me to do it. If you’re in the same situation as me and you’re saying, “Well thanks, Ryan, but I don’t write for BLUFF so I can’t really publish my thoughts,” what you can do is start a blog, or you can make a post on your favorite poker forum and tell everyone your plan. Get out your thoughts and frustrations about not putting in the effort you want to and detail what you’re going to do about it.
I am getting back into the full grind starting on September 1st, 2009.
I will play every MTT on Full Tilt, PokerStars, Absolute, Titan, PartyPoker, and bwin that has a $10k or more prize pool during the following registration times (EST) up to a maximum of sixteen tables at once.
Monday through Wednesday: 2pm – 9:30pm Thursday: 8pm – 1am Friday: OFF Saturday: Rotate between being OFF and 2pm – 8pm Sunday: 12:45pm – 9:30pm
The only excuse to miss any of these days is if I am in a live event or traveling to or from a live event. Like I said I have focused on everything else in my life for long enough and I am at a point where I can play as much as I want with no regrets. This also leaves enough time to take care of anything else I need to and enough time for rest.
From Monday to Wednesday I don’t start until 2pm, so I have all morning to play with my daughter and make her breakfast and lunch before I start grinding.
Thursday my wife works the 1pm – 9pm shift so I need to make dinner that day and take care of the little one all day. I will spend that day going to parks and doing activities with my daughter and then start my tourneys nice and refreshed at 8pm.
Friday I will take off so I can do chores around the house and take care of any errands that I need to. I will spend that evening with my wife and make it a “date night” so she can have my full attention for one whole evening/night and I can go to bed at the same time as her that night. This is important if you have a family, to take time out to give everyone attention and make everyone happy so nobody feels neglected and starts to resent the poker. My wife is really amazing about everything so I do not need to worry, but one of the reasons she is so easy to deal with is because I do things like this.
Saturday will rotate between being OFF and 2pm – 8pm. The weeks that I’m off I will do family activities like going to the zoo, getting ice cream, going to the beach, and things like that so that I keep everyone (including myself) happy. After days like that I will be nice and refreshed going into Sundays. The week that I will play on Saturdays I will still do those things until 2pm.
I feel that this schedule will balance things out and give me enough time to do everything I need to while still playing a gazillion tournaments each week like I want to. It can be hard getting back into the grind of poker, especially when you have a family. The bottom line for me is that I play poker to support that family so I really need to stop slacking off and start giving it my 100%.
It’s really easy to be lazy when you’re a poker player. You get used to just doing whatever you feel like, and taking advantage of the freedom that comes with playing poker for a living. If you get too used to it, you stop putting in enough effort to maintain the ability to live that lifestyle. Poker is like anything else; you need to put the work in if you want the rewards. So make a schedule and stick to it to give yourself some sense of accountability for something and make some goals for what you want out of it.
September 1st, here I come! Make room in the rankings because “gotskillz” is back...
You can follow Ryan’s progress at RealPokerTraining.com where he explains advanced strategies while recording his play on training videos.
