More Grinding

Not a whole lot of news - basically just been grinding sng's as much as possible, and doing pretty well. Im up to being able to comfortably play 9 games at a time, which has really helped me put in some substantial volume. In fact, 9-tabling helped me reach a little goal I set for myself for November.

Pokerstars has a VIP program where players are given certain perks depending on the amount of play they put in every month. I generally don't put in a ton of volume online, and when I do, it's usually to play tournaments, which really don't help out your VIP status much. Anyway, in November I decided I was going to try to make the Gold VIP level on Pokerstars, which I had only made previously once before (like 2 years ago when I was playing a lot of Omaha H/L). Normally, this wouldn't be that tough for me, but because I had waited until the middle of the month to start shooting for this, I had to put in a pretty sick amount of hours. Also, with Thanksgiving getting in the way, I'd lose a couple of days' playing time that would be spent with friends and family.

Anyway, as the end of the month approached, things were looking pretty bleak. In order to meet my goal, I'd have to play about 240 sng's in the last 3 days of the month. That's 80 a day. Each set of 9 takes about an hour, so, 9 hours of 9 tables for 3 days straight. Although it may not sound that tough (hell, I've put in 26 hour live sessions before), let me assure you 9 hours straight of 9 games at a time can make you want to rip your eyes out. Either way, I figured I had to at least try.

That Friday I woke up early , had some breakfast and tea, and began at noon. At 9:20 pm I was done, having played 85 $16 sng's. I ran pretty well, and ended up clearing about $250 for the day, which is probably what kept me motivated to play the following two days. Although I ran like dogshit on Saturday and Sunday, I was able to finish up at 11:30 pm on Sunday, with about a half an hour left in November. Even though it was just a dorky little personal goal, I was really proud that I buckled down and made it happen. It also occurred to me what a great way this is to force yourself to put in long hours. It's pretty unrealistic to set any monetary goals in poker, but this VIP program really motivated me to play a high volume of sng's. And, if you're a winning player, you just have to force yourself to put the time in and make correct decisions, and the money will come.