Orbital phase coverage of the XMM-Newton CHOCBOX monitoring of Cyg X-1 in the hard state. The four arc labels correspond to the ObsIDs of each pointing (see Table 1 in Lai et al. 2022 for the full ObsID). The orbital phase, ϕ_orb = 0, indicates the passage at superior conjunction. Observation 201 (in purple) is the focus of the analyses presented in this paper. The starting orbital phase of the monitoring (corresponding to ϕ_orb = 0.82) is also indicated. HDE 226868 and Cyg X-1 are only schematically represented, no Roche lobe was graphically considered in the scheme.