Tournament Poker and the art of being a grinder

To win in tournament poker, there's so many skills and adjustments that you need to work on, on a constant basis so when people say that I make a living the easy way, they truly have no idea what goes on behind the curtains of an MTT grinder so I will use this post to shed some light on both its ups and downs.

Earlier on this month, I flew to Bali for some personal business, relaxation and of course, the usual, grinding, I went on a cold streak during the entire trip, once back, kept on playing the 2nd season of the Micro Millions and on the first night, had a super deep run in Event 47 which was a NL Hold'em $1 Rebuy 3x Turbo, out of a massive field of 12554 runners, I managed to lose a key coin flip with 55s against China's "Keqiwong" big slick and hit the rail 14th for a $233 cash instead the $10.6K 13 places away, it came with a huge disappointment,  a draining feeling that I don't wish on most people but here's some more...

The very next day, I managed to snatch the chip lead very early on Event 55 $2.2 $10K GTD and never looked back, until I lost another huge coin flip with 10s against another big slick to get out 70th out of 9728 entrants.

If you haven't experienced the emotional and physical drain grinding MTTs can have on a person, you are in no way, entitled to judge, and for the people that thinks that poker players are lazy, I welcome any so called wise man to come and see how a week of grinding goes by and how much work even off the tables is invested in studying, reviewing, discussing and so on..

Enough of the downs for now and let's look at the ups, if you haven't heard or experienced it as a poker player yet, you should hold on and throw away the even slight notion of giving up because winning an MTT is truly one of the best feelings in the world, and to illustrate my statement, a week after the multiple disappointments of the Micro Millions Series, I took down the $44 $6000 Guaranteed which had 146 runners and right after that, It felt like I was on a cloud, went out to grab lunch and came back and I was still on a cloud, poker friends congratulating...that feeling about yourself, the satisfaction of hours, days and weeks of work finally paying out and you can only thank yourself for the great gladiator-like work and the next day, you wake up and do it all over again.  

I hope this gave you some ideas about tournament poker players and I'll write back soon, with hopefully some more positive results, may the poker gods shine on you....and I to cooler you down, later folks!