Goal 1: Average 15 Hours/Week Playing My “Regular” Games

Goal 2: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

I’m nowhere near my cash games goal, and I’ve given up trying. Basically tournaments were going so well for me that I started putting more time into those and when I did grind cash games it was usually easier stuff that wasn’t quite as lucrative. Thankfully tournaments have gone so well that I don’t really need cash games to contribute to the year’s income.

Goal 3: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

This is still within my grasp, but I need nearly 9000 points, which is more than I’ve earned in any one month this year. When I do play, it’s going to be with a focus on picking up FPP’s so that I can be sure of making Supernova.

Goal 4: Monetize This Blog

I’ve pretty much gotten over the idea of pulling in ad revenue, but the blog has been helpful in generating coaching business, and hopefully soon it will help me to sell a book as well!

Goal 5: Write a Book

It took most of the year, but I have a draft of an entire book that is currently in the hands of some trusted friends from whom I’m awaiting feedback. I still don’t know what the timeline will be for publication, but this project is well underway.

Goal 6: Average One Blog Post Per Day

I had 311 as of the first of this year. Hitting 365 would require nearly two a day this month. I don’t want to drown you with garbage, but I am going to try to pick up the pace, and we’ll see what happens.

Goal 7: Average Five Hours of Coaching Per Week

I’ll be lucky to get half of that. Even adding time spent on Poker Savvy Plus, which is a bit of cheat, doesn’t get me too close to the goal. I’ve really enjoyed the students I’ve worked this year, but I need to work harder to get my name out there. Just browsing the 2+2 Coaching forum I see so many unqualified people charging absurd rates that I have to figure I’d have more business if people knew that I offered coaching. Look for a revamped coaching page in 2011.

Goal 7: Average an Hour a Day of Dedicated Studying and Improvement

Defining this very generously gets me to about half an hour a day. I found it really difficult to make time for this, mostly because there aren’t that many poker videos that I really find helpful at this point. Since I’m pretty well set on hours for the year, I’m going to make a push to practice my PLO game this month. That will give me some impetus to study and also a reason to grind small stakes games for FPP’s.

Goal 8: Use Hold ‘Em Manager

I’m getting much better with this. There’s more I should be doing to review my own play and that of specific opponents whom I play regularly, but this is the first year that I feel I’ve really mastered the basics of playing with a HUD and using those stats at the table.

Goal 9: Finish the Year with a 4BB/100 Win-Rate at 5/10 NL and/or Higher

Heads up games really tanked my winrate, but if we just look at games with 3+ players, I’m at 3.98 BB/100 for games up to 25/50 Cap (though I’m down at 25/50 uncapped). That’s also counting 2/4 Rush, which is a bit of a cheat since it’s easier than 5/10, but honestly my hourly rate per table is pretty close because of all the extra hands, so I’m going to count it.

Goal 10: Play 50,000 Hands of Heads Up NLHE at 5/10 and Higher

I’ve played 27,000 hands, and I’ve got a -5BB/100 win rate. That’s a bit odd, as this was my best game last year. Part of it is variance, I’m sure, and bad game selection. I’ve been trying to play more lately, but it’s just so damn hard to get action.

What About You?

So my big change for December is going to be a focus on Heads Up and PLO games, playing mostly on Stars in order to rack up FPP’s and make Supernova.

How are you progressing towards your goals. Any last-minute adjustments you need to make to finish where you want to be for the year?

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all enjoyed yourselves responsibly last night (and last year, for that matter), and that you are striding confidently forward into a new year.

Yesterday, I revisited my 2009 poker resolutions. Now, it’s time to make some new resolutions and set some new goals for 2010.

Resolution One: Play NLHE Cash Games

Particularly in the big games, virtually everyone is good and getting better. It’s not enough to be better than they are at the start of the year; if they keep improving and I stagnate, then they’ll be owning me by year’s end. So this year my focus will be on putting in hours at and away from the table.

Goal 1: Average 15 Hours/Week Playing My “Regular” Games

If I wanted a job, I’d get one. I want to have plenty of time for other things that are important to me: friends, family, travel, volunteer work. Then again, most of those things require (or at least benefit from) money, too.

I’ve found that 15 hours/week enables me to earn a pretty healthy income, far more than I could make at any real job I could get, without impeding too much on my lifestyle.

I consider my regular games to be anywhere from 2/4 NL to 50/100 NL as well as big tournaments like the Sunday Majors, the FTOPS, and the WCOOP; time spent playing any of these will count towards my goal.

Goal 2: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

It’s very tough to predict or control what I will earn playing tournaments. With cash games, though, it’s mostly a question of game selection and putting in hours. It’s not something I’m going to announce publicly, but I am going to set a target, and I am going to put in extra hours towards the end of year if I’m on pace to come up short.

Goal 3: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

I gave up on this goal last year, largely because Stars doesn’t have deep stack or ante tables. I don’t want to sit in bad games just to get VPPs.Poker Stars is continuing to sweeten the deal, though. In addition to the cash bonuses that can be purchased with FPPs, they’re now offering up to $1000 in bonuses just for earning VPPs.

My plan for this is to table select as usual in the beginning of each month, and then assess my progress towards the end of each month. If I’m on pace to come up short, I’m going to put in extra hours above and beyond my weekly goal just grinding 9 tables of $1/2 NLHE (or smaller) until I hit my VPP target for the month. Hopefully this is something I can do relatively stress-free, just an hour or two at a time, when I’m not in the mood to put in a proper session in higher stakes games. To be honest, my hourly rate should still be quite good multi-tabling SSNL, so hopefully this will incentivize me to make a little money in what would otherwise be downtime.

Resolution Two: Diversify My Income Streams

This has been a long-term goal of mine, and I feel like it’s well underway now. Not only is it nice having some guarantee, variance-free income, but it’s a fun and rewarding break from grinding to coach aspiring MSNL players, write for Two Plus Two Magazine, or make videos for Poker Savvy Plus. It even helps me to cultivate and demonstrate other skills, like writing, teaching, and marketing, that would prove useful should I ever decide to seek proper employment.

Goal 4: Monetize This Blog

I know I keep saying it, but sooner or later I really am going to look into making money a little more directly from this blog. I feel like it’s right on the cusp of being pretty profitable. That doesn’t have to mean ads, though it might. Maybe I’ll…

Goal 5: Write a Book

I’ve talked about this before, but this is the first time it’s ever been an explicit goal. I’ve already got some downtime sketched out in the next few months to work on this and have been kicking around some ideas in my head. Rather than trying to write one big, expensive e-book as a lot of people have done, I’m thinking of doing a series of smaller, modular works that could be purchased separately or as a set. Those of you who read this blog regularly are going to be a big chunk of the target audience, so keep an eye out for posts in the next few weeks soliciting your input about what you’d like to see in a poker book authored by yours truly.

Goal 6: Average One Blog Post Per Day

I know it’s been a little quiet on here of late. Part of that is the holidays, and part of it is just laziness. I want to get back to posting once a day. There will probably be more non-poker content, and not all of the poker stuff will be equally in-depth, but overall you can expect to see more and better content here.

The other part of the problem is that fairly often during the week, I’m staying somewhere where I don’t have a reliable internet connection. I’m pretty sure it’s possible for me to write stuff in advance and schedule it to post on a particular day, though, so that’s really not an excuse.

Goal 7: Average Five Hours of Coaching Per Week

Coaching was extremely fun and rewarding for me last year. So far, except for my group seminars, I haven’t done much to market myself as a coach or actively solicit students. I’ve mostly just worked with students as they’ve come to me, and so so far that’s kept me just about as busy as I’d like to be with coaching. I want to ramp it up a bit this year by setting a monthly goal and actively soliciting students if necessary to ensure that I’ve got a regular stream of students.

By the way, if you’re interested, check out my poker coaching information.

Resolution Three: Improve My NLHE Skills

There are so many good reasons to make an active effort to improve my NLHE. In addition to the obvious benefit of getting better and winning more money, studying can give me new material for blog posts and book reviews, introduce me to new coaching and video producing techniques, help me to monetize what would otherwise be downtime, restore my focus and confidence during a downswing, and help me keep up with what my opponents may be learning and trying at the tables.

Goal 7: Average an Hour a Day of Dedicated Studying and Improvement

I’m going to be very broad about what this can include: reading books, watching videos, reviewing hands in Hold ‘Em Manager, talking poker with a friend, and even blogging (when it’s related to reviewing my play).

I may even hire a coach. It’s funny: many of my students expressed some concern about the cost of coaching when we first discussed working together. After a few hours with me, though, these same students have always told me that coaching was far more valuable than they expected and that in retrospect they considered it a very good investment.

Yet, cheapstake that I am, I still balk at paying hundreds of dollars an hour for a high-stakes coach. I probably ought to just suck it up and purchase a few hours. To be fair, though, I do charge less than most comparable coaches. Plus, I don’t have the option of hiring someone who coaches as well as I do :-).

Goal 8: Use Hold ‘Em Manager

I switched from Poker Tracker to Hold ‘Em Manager last year. PT2 is great, but HEM is just better. For the last part of the year, I was playing without it on my laptop. It does get in my way sometimes, but I’d rather learn how to work with it than insist on playing without it.

Goal 9: Finish the Year with a 4BB/100 Win-Rate at 5/10 NL and/or Higher

Same goal as last year, since I didn’t achieve it but still think it’s very viable. It might be cheating a little, but I’m going to allow myself to count my results from bigger games towards this goal or not depending on whether I do better in them than I do in 5/10 (this was the cast last year). Basically, if I am at 4 BB/100 over a big sample at 5/10, then I don’t care how I’m doing in bigger games. If I’m not doing quite that well at 5/10 but am at 4 BB/100 if I also count bigger games, then that’s certainly a fine result as well.

Goal 10: Play 50,000 Hands of Heads Up NLHE at 5/10 and Higher

Last year, my win rate at heads up was twice what it was at ring games. Plus, it’s a great way to improve poker skills in general, and at stakes above 10/20, it’s often the only way to get action.

The only problem is that I can’t play as many tables at once, so my hourly rate isn’t necessarily better, plus it’s tough to get action from people I actually want to play. Unlike with my other goals, I don’t want to resort to playing smaller stakes just to hit this goal. I will try to be more diligent about starting tables and maybe even playing some people against whom I don’t necessarily have an edge, since part of the point here is to get better.

What About You?

How did 2009 treat you? What are your goals, poker or otherwise, for 2010?