The Danger Zone

So I'd been struggling for motivation the last few months since switching back to NL. Beating the games wasn't a problem, I'd been 10bb/100+ over a decent sample but getting in the hands was the trouble. I think it was a combination of the money being so small and the game being so mind-numbling boring that even though I knew logically if I just grinded hard for a few weeks I could blast out it was really hard to put that into practice.

Reading this guys thread, the evplusplus BR blog I did and having to deal with conversations like this daily (we're comparing November results, it's Dec 2):

Ken: only +62
Mitch: wtf play more
Michael: yah i know
Mitch: wait 62?
Mitch: total?
Michael: yah wtf ken
Michael: didnt u take him for 110 in one day?
Mitch: and then 64k yesterday
Ken: oh i thought you meant today
Mitch: lol ffs
Michael: LOLFUBUDDY
Ken: :P
Ken: last month was like
*** Mitch has changed the conversation topic to "Ken's a douche" ***
Michael: 100?
Ken: 260k last month
Michael: wow
Michael: fuck you
Mitch: zzz

... really opened my eyes up to just how much of a difference that extra effort can become when it compounds. Hit with inspiration and a 1.5k BR I decided to take a 5BI shot at 100NL.

I've only been 4 tabling so that's 20 hours so far, and I could be putting in a ton more time but sometimes there's been no good games running when I want to play (getting money on other sites now). The downswing came from having the jesus seat on a 90/0 who would call basically any size preflop and then pot donk 3 streets literally 100% of the time. I knew it was a pretty terrible idea variance wise but I couldn't pass up a spot like that, almost blew up in my face but luckily I've been crushing everyone else so it worked out.

And now against competent regs, and being able to make somewhat decent money, poker is amazing again. I'm really enjoying battling and thinking hard and all that. And strangely enough I think there's more fish at 100NL than 50NL, although the regs are a decent amount better so it negates it a little. Either way I generally have 2-3 fish on each table, games are good. So yeah I'm not up too much but feel pretty in the clear now, EV++ has me at only 5% to drop 12 BIs (down to 1K BR) at this point so hopefully I can fade that and full steam ahead.

Even though I used to play MSNL I was pretty unsure how I'd fair against tougher opponents since I've been at the micros so long but that doesn't seem to be an issue, infact I think I make a lot less mistakes against the 100nl regs than 50 and have a lot better handle on what they're doing and how to manipulate them (although they're making less mistakes themselves). So yeah the plan now is to spread money onto some other sites, get the 40 or 50 hour weeks in and move up to 200 then 400 when I have 30 or 40BIs for the next limit.

I feel pretty stupid for not taking this opportunity earlier, like I'd just been spinning my wheels for 12 months and I think I could have done this any time during that period that I wanted but was either overcautious, under confident or under motivated (well, probably a combination of the three). So now I'm making up for lost time.