A little over 5% of the way there

I've been struggling with both the quality of my play and my hours in the past week or two. 24 days into the year I've earned 51,500 of the 1,000,000 points I'll need by year's end. I'm certainly behind pace, but not dramatically so. I expect to end the month with between 70,000 and 75,000 points (83,000 would be on pace).

The bigger problem is I'm having a hard time breaking even. It's taken me about 48,000 hands to earn the points I have so far and I've lost about $2,000 in the process. Of course I have cleared two $1,500 FPP blocks so I've actually made $1,000. Not enough to pay the bills by a long stretch, but better than zero.

The good news is $2,000 over 48,000 hands amounts to about -4.2 cents per hand. It's not going to take a drastic improvement to make up that difference. It amounts to winning one more average sized pot every 1,000 hands or saving one bet (or making one extra bet) about every 250 hands.

I've been trying to do some serious critical thinking about the plays that I've been making and I feel like I'm making strides in the right direction. What's driving me crazy is I've had 4 or 5 instances where I've spent all day playing solid and having small fluctuations and then all of a sudden I drop six or seven hundred bucks in a span of 10-15 minutes. Not only is that money gone, but (not surprisingly) it's hard to get back into the frame of mind that every $5 and $10 bet is critical and precious.

Hopefully I'll get the ship righted soon. If I can have a few $500 days in a row or one $1,000-$1,500 day I'll feel just fine about how I'm doing so far. I'll try to post at least one more time before the end of the month.