I don't understand why you can't be a grinder and still shoot for the big games? Sure it takes the grinder longer to get there, but they will eventually do it if they're good. Many of the pro players you see on TV are grinders. Actually, almost all of them are. It took some of them at least a decade to get to the big games but they did.

You can't tell me that Chip Reese, Harmon, Greenstein, etc aren't grinders. They play a $4k/8k game where their edge is small if not non exsistent. I'm sure that they average way less BBs per hour than we do. If they weren't grinders, you wouldn't see them every freakin' day at the Bellagio giving $1 tips to the dealers after pulling in a $100,000 pot.