June

June is my new biggest month ever, finishing up over $35,000.

It's without doubt my biggest poker accomplishment and typifies the type of month I've always aimed to achieve as a pro. After how May went it feels great to be back on track with the $150k goal for this year. Shows how important it is to keep working hard and moving forward as things can turn around pretty fast.

I started out June grinding $200nl to get confidence back, within a few days I moved back up to midstakes and continued crushing. Picked up a lot of confidence and decided to play some 5/10 and then some higher games. From there just went on a tear and ran really well the whole month. Really happy with my game selection, shot-taking and play overall... although there's still a lot of work to be done.

I'm gonna take note of some of the most important things I think I learned this month, I reckon it'll be useful to read back over in the future and might be useful to some of you guys too...

Mental Awareness, Confidence & Goals
Being able to gauge how confident/happy/risk adverse I am at a given time has been important for selecting my goals for that individual session. If I'm low on confidence then I like grinding lower to regain confidence and book a win. If I'm high on confidence then I'll take on higher games.

I understand that for some people making a goal of playing X amount of hands in a month at a particular stake is useful to give them structure and help with volume, but I feel that it restricts your ability to adapt based on you current state. For me, keeping daily/weekly/monthly goals flexible is a much better way of achieving my long term goal of making as much money possible.

Changing and updating my goals throughout the month based on how I'm feeling and how things are going has really helped me keep as motivated as possible. There are a ton of scenarios which make this obvious to me. Here's an example: You told yourself you'd play 40k hands this month, but there's now only a week left and you're only 20k hands in. If you keep the 40k goal then you'll likely subconciously have the attitude that you won't make the goal anyway and slack off telling yourself that you'll play more and do it next month. I think it's better to reset your goal... look at your schedule for upcoming week and create a realistic hands target to keep your motivation (and volume) as high as possible.

Another slightly different example... You set yourself the goal of playing 2,000 hands today but 500 hands into the session you're down 6 buy-ins and on raging monkey-tilt. Is it still realistic to get those 2k hands in? And is it best for your long-term? Unlikely... so change your current goal to returning yourself to a confident/positive state of mind as quickly as possible. Don't beat yourself up about losing money and not getting your hands in, look at the big picture. If you get back into the right state of mind quick enough you might even still get another 1k hands in for the night.

Back to confidence a little... I've also found that my confidence level at the poker table can be improved by improving my overall confidence at that given time. Working out, going for a run or playing sports are all great for this... physical activity increases confidence and positivity a ton for sure. I've also found that eating well has helped a lot, eating big meals before sessions is a big leak too.

Wow, I'm turning into Raptor a bit :S

Tilt and Quitting
Keeping mentally aware while playing has really helped me to make fantastic quits all month and play my A game as much as possible. I can't remember any time in the whole month where I played tilted, even if there were good games. I can remember getting tilted... but I realised right away and made a solid quit, same with when I get tired. I really can't stress enough how much mental awareness has upped my game over the last month. I seriously think it's had a HUGE affect on my winrate, thankyou Tommy Angelo.

Working Environment
Another thing I think helped this month was having a good working environment to play in. Got a desk setup in my room, 2nd monitor and it's been nice and calm/quiet here with de-tilting furry cats to pet. Much different to Thailand where I didn't have a good calm workplace and found it difficult to concentrate. Been thinking about heading on to the APPT trail in a couple of months - not to play the tourneys but to grind high-stakes live cash and hang out - but I'm beginning to think that having a more stable workplace might be a lot more profitable. Hopefully I can find a compromise as I really want to travel.

July
Headed on holiday with a few mates at the start of the month, then moving when I get back... so might not be a whole lot of volume. I'll be continuing to branch out to both FR and HU NLHE. A few reasons for this... better game selection, benefitting my overall game and keeping things interesting for me. I'm really enjoying learning HU at the moment, the DogIsHeadsUP series on DC is without doubt some of the best poker instruction I've ever watched. Dude is mindblowing.

I understand it's important not to get ahead of myself... not to expect too much of future months and to keep working hard. I feel confident that I can stay on the top of my game so long as I stay mentally aware. I'll make sure to keep my head up if next month doesn't go as well.