It’s technically Day 9 of the 2017 WSOP and if you look at Maurice Hawkins’ profile on WSOP.com you notice that he has yet to record a single cash this summer. For a guy that has openly talked about winning $7 million at the WSOP this year, it’s not exactly a fantastic start but Hawkins isn’t exactly down on himself for the lack of early results.

“I feel great. See the thing is, I trust the process. Most people get hell bent out of shape after they lose a couple of tournaments, but last time I checked we only cash around one out of ten, so I’ve lost like five, but three or four unique tournaments, winning is just right around the corner,” said Hawkins. “I don’t get too down about it, except for the first ten minutes out of a tournament, I don’t like to be touched or talked to, but after that I’m straight.”

Like most of the Circuit grinders playing the WSOP this year, Hawkins took a shot at the $1 million first place prize money in Colossus III but found the structure to be not to his liking.

“The (starting stacks) are so small, the blinds go up so fast, it’s a hyper turbo. You’re forced to play every pot and every hand basically to showdown and pray to god that you have the best one because if you don’t get any chips, a couple of doubles in the first three, four levels, you’re just toast,” said Hawkins.

Despite this, Hawkins fired six times.

“I like to call it the $3K punt off because that’s what it felt like. It felt like I had no clue how or when or where or what I was doing,” said Hawkins.

He also played the tag team, joining forces with Brandon Fish and Charles Moore. The team quickly built up a decent stack and even found themselves near the chip lead at one point. A couple of “unfortunate spots” later and Hawkins and his team were out, well before they hit the money, but that gave Hawkins a chance to reset before the first $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event of the year.

“The $1,500 I felt like myself in, because it was just a nice No Limit tournament, not tagging nobody in and not worrying about the blinds eating me up. Can’t wait for more of those, that’s going to be beautiful – like breakfast in the morning,” said Hawkins.

Again, he built up a decent stack early on and saw his name at the top of the chip counts before getting bored and busting out, again well short of the money.

“I wasn’t having fun, I wasn’t playing my style of poker. i think I was just sitting back too much, hanging out, playing that ABC grind game and I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of energy, sway, positivity when you’re having fun,” said Hawkins. “I feel like you hit more sets – you don’t, I know I live in a logical world – but I just believe when you’re having fun, things seem to be going better for you.”

That reminded Hawkins that for him to be successful, he’s got to be himself and make sure that he’s doing things to keep the game fun for him, and his tablemates.

“So I’m going to try to fun it up a bit more; have more conversations, have more talks, stack more people, upset a few more people when things don’t go their way and they don’t know what the hell I just did,” said Hawkins.

Thursday afternoon he’ll be putting that to test in the $1,500 Six Max event. He also has the $565 Pot Limit Omaha event and the Millionaire Maker on his schedule, but he’s most looking forward to Sunday. That’s when his family arrives.

“You start going delirious because you start losing human contact. You could talk to people everyday, they could be your man, your friend, all these different people, but for some reason it doesn’t feel like real human contact until you can talk to the person you love or your kids or your family,” said Hawkins. “It’s always good when your family gets here.”

Stay tuned throughout the 2017 WSOP as we check in regularly with Hawkins and talk about how things are going – good or bad – and chronicle what could be an amazing summer.