So, I hit my August goal before the end of June thanks to a very enjoyable heater at 3/6. So I was chuffed as nuts for a few days, and then a strange thing happened.

Seems like I've had that milestone in my head for so long that now that I've hit it, my motivation to move up has just evaporated. I look at the 5/10 games and I just think to myself, "man these games suck why bother?" Because the truth is that quite often the games do suck. It's like 5 good regs at every table and maybe a 30/15 type that's the donk. And by good I don't mean like "ok TAG with obvious leaks" good I mean like "top 5 2/4 player" good. The fact that I've run pretty bad there in a small sample doesn't help.

But lately I've really been struggling with myself to decide what my next move is. A lot of people advocate mixing limits and easing into new limits like that. Personally I don't really like doing that, I mean how the hell am I supposed to care what happens on a 2/4 table when I'm flipping for a $1600 stack preflop at a 5/10 table? Obviously this is a matter of mental discipline but what can I say, mine is limited.

I dunno, it's strange but I feel like I haven't earned 5/10 yet. Like, I've been beating 2/4 and 3/6 very handily in the past few months but for some reason I just don't feel like I've proven myself to my satisfaction. There are too many little spots I'm not sure about, too many areas where my thought process is sort of cloudy. There are definitely spots where I'm leaking to the regs and that irritates me but these things can be difficult to really nail down.

So after pondering and pondering for the past week or so, I've decided to juice my motivation by paying off my whole student loan balance. It's obviously a smart financial move in itself, and if I can maintain my results at 2/4 and 3/6 it shouldn't take me more than two months to recover entirely. Maybe then I'll feel like I've earned my shot at 5/10 and I can really start taking the necessary steps to get there, like getting a working bankroll on some other sites. But I mean, in a way it's nice to just take a deep breath and realize that I'm at a very comfortable place in my poker career and I can live very well without putting all kinds of pressure on myself to move up as quickly as possible. Only a small percentage of players make it to 5/10, and a minuscule percentage succeed higher than that. There's no shame in taking a couple months to take it easy, play some relatively stress free poker, and post a couple more nice months before entering the gauntlet.