The Cycle

For years, I've been on the traditional sleep schedule for poker players.  Rarely would I wake up before noon and I'd wait until early morning to go to bed.  I'm not sure why that's what most of us do, but if I had to guess I'd say it's a product of laziness and opportunity.  Put more succinctly, we're afforded the opportunity to be lazy and take full advantage. 

A friend of mine and fellow grinder here in Thailand has taken several steps in order to overcome his laziness, one of which being a change in his sleep cycle.  He now goes to bed around 9 PM and wakes up at 5 AM, allowing him to see sunlight basically all day, a sharp contrast from the literal darkness that consumes the majority of my normal day.  Such a schedule is terrible for drinking/going out, but I've curtailed those activities in recent months.   The only other drawback would be missing peak hours but traffic isn't terrible during the other parts of the day and the games are certainly softer.  I decided to give it a shot.

I'm only a few days in, but my body is taking some time to adjust.  On the first attempt I woke up at 1:30 AM and last night, 3 AM.  If the trend continues, by tomorrow I should be rising near the same time as the sun.  There's a direct correlation between happiness and exposure to sunlight, and so far I've noticed enhancements in both my mood and productivity.  Volume is up, results are solid, and I feel I've been able to accomplish more non-poker activities throughout the day.

By results, I'm referring to solely the profit/loss as I haven't looked at the red line for nearly four whole days.  That might not sound like a lot, but using Hold'em Manager is one of the strongest addictions I have, just behind Diet Coke.  I know I can't resist forever and plan to look at it sometime tomorrow -- I was tempted to look because of a 700 game breakeven stretch, but I crushed the set immediately after and that calmed the storm. 

If I had to guess, I'm running over EV.  Even with that breakeven stretch I have a 10% ROI in the 9-max Hypers and did extremely well in a small sample of 180s. 

A minute ago, that picture was accurate.  Now, not so much.  While I was proofreading this entry, I managed to ship another $3R 180.  Here's an updated version. 

Okay so maybe an extra $500 isn't enough to make it rain, but it's at least a drizzle.