Since this is a blog, I suppose I should occasionally talk about recent occurances in my poker career instead of just posting rambles about "the life."
This past week I've been extremely motivated to get better at poker and play a lot. Someone I respect asked me "You need motivation to play poker?"

Here's the answer: I don't need motivation to play poker - if there's a game to play, and I'm free, I'll play, and I'll probably make money - but sometimes I'm not motivated to stay at the top of my game in the heat of the competition, work on improving my game away from the table, or put in the online hours.
When I'm playing a lot of live poker, I occasionally slip into auto-pilot mode. I make standard plays, and I rarely venture out of the comfort zone. Because of my experience, knowledge, and discipline, my auto-pilot mode is profitable against my opposition. In fact, you could take five members of a subset of my opposition, force them to pay attention to everything going on at the table and come to a consensus before making every decision and my auto-pilot mode would still be profitable.
The problem is, that's not good enough. One obvious issue is that playing at the top of my game is MORE profitable that staying in auto-pilot. Another issue is auto-pilot doesn't allow me to improve my game nearly as much as paying attention and thinking through things. When I'm completely focused, every one of my thoughts (except the occasional "I have to take a leak") improves the way I'll play in the future. When I'm in a hand my estimates, calculations, and decisions are more precise. When I'm out of a hand, I'm watching the others play. This has the obvious effect of giving me useful information about them, but if I'm thinking about ways I would have played the hand differently, I increase the amount of experience I'm getting per hour.

Away from the table, I'm often not motivated to read books or the two plus two forums. Plenty of people will tell you experience and playing by "feel" is more important than reading a book. Most of these people just don't have the motivation in them to actually page through a book and learn from it. I'm not going to continue the debate between understanding the game theoretically, or understanding it through some mystic power called "feel," but I know that studying the game improves MY results.

Finally, I sometimes need motivation to play online. There have been month long stretches where I play a great deal of poker, but spend very little time online. I've said in my last post that I definately make more money with smaller variance (a technical term for the amount of swinginess in results) online. Another benefit is that I primarily play Limit Hold'em online, and only No Limit Hold'em live, so playing online is my only avenue for improving my Limit game.

Well recently, I've been focused at my live games, spent a lot of time studying the game, and have logged more online hands than any period of time in my career. This is all in addition to returning to a three-meal-per-day schedule, eating healthier, improving my posture, beginning a work-out routine, improving the way I dress, and spending a majority of my waking hours while the sun is up. This motivation is refreshing and it's given me confidence and made my mind feel sharp. Mark (the profound online pro who asked me why I needed motivation to play poker) told me he played more poker once he started working a full-time job then he did in the months before that, explaining "productivity breeds productivity." I'm starting to buy in to that concept, believing motivation is a full package, and I'm starting to witness the results.