Posts Tagged ‘poker resolutions’

This is the third part of my Setting Effective New Year’s Resolutions for Poker Success series. If you haven’t already, please check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Goal 4: Create the Conditions for Success When I Play

One outcome of my recent peregrinations was an increased appreciation for the important of place, space, and atmosphere. Experiencing so many different places, as well as reading books like Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker and Travis Steffen’s Peak Performance Poker, made me realize that it’s not all the same and that environment can have a big impact on how you think and feel. Thus, one of my goals for this year is to be more conscious of the conditions in which I am playing and to be more active about creating conditions that are conducive to playing my best.

Design and Invest in an Ideal Work Space

I need a home first, but once I do, I want to have a comfortable chair, a desk at the right height (also need to figure out what that is), an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, healthy snacks, good lighting, and plants.

Design 1 Playlist Per Month, January-May
 Read the complete post...

Photo by Tim Caynes

Happy New Year!

The beginning of a new year is the perfect time  to re-evaluate your priorities, set new goals for yourself, and start planning for how you will achieve those goals. This is the first in a series of posts about using goal-setting to help you achieve poker success.

Dream Big- Start with some lofty aspirations that you may or may not be able to achieve this year: “Become a winning player”, “Learn Pot-Limit Omaha”, “Move up to 2/4″, etc.  These generally aren’t things that are entirely under your control, and you should be ambitious in setting them. Think of it like winning the pot in a poker game: it’s something you’d like to do, but you can’t just will it to happen, and sometimes it’s something you won’t achieve. Still, it is the aspiration that motivates the rest of what you do.

Plan Concretely- The resolutions that you make should be specific and concrete: “Play X hands”, “Spend X hours/week reviewing your play”, “Start using a HUD”, etc. Such resolutions are the ones most likely to influence your behavior, which is the ultimate goal. If you simply resolve to “Get better at poker”, that probably won’t motivate you to do anything in particular. Think about how you want to get better at poker and what steps you need to take to make that happen.  Read the complete post...

Resolution One: Keep Grinding NLHE Cash Games

This is my bread and butter game, and even if I don’t do anything to improve, just maintaining my current winrate and putting in hours will be very valuable to me. Of course I do want to get better, but my general focus will be on playing rather than doing stuff to improve (posting hands, watching instructional videos, etc.).

Also, I’m not going to worry too much about non-NLHE games. I tried to do it last year, but it didn’t prove too productive. I’ll play/study them when I feel like it, but it’s not going to be a priority. I’m confident in my ability to pick them up quickly should that become necessary/desirable and I choose to devote all my time to it, such that I don’t think I need to prioritize working on them now.

Goal 1: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

It’s very tough to predict or control what you earn playing tournaments. With cash games, though, it’s mostly a question of game selection and putting in hours. My goal for 2009 is to earn in NLHE cash games what I made playing any form of poker in 2008, so that anything from tournaments is just a perk. Hopefully this will help me to keep my focus even if I do make a big tournament score, since that won’t count towards the goal.  Read the complete post...

At the beginning of last year, I set some poker resolutions and goals for myself. It’s time now to see how I’ve fared during the course of 2008. I’ve already posted about my resolutions to Focus on Short-Handed No-Limit Hold ‘Em Cash Games and to Keep Getting Better at Other Games.

Resolution 3: Diversify My Income Streams

I’m happy with how this turned out. I got into coaching, joined Poker Savvy Plus, and increased my income from poker writing (slightly).

Goal 7: Start making money on the blog/website. (Achieved)

I’m not making money, but at least I’m not losing it. I made about $15 off of the ads on the blog- not the old Google ads but the Amazon affiliate links on my poker book reviews. Obviously that’s not much but it was enough to cover the cost of hosting the blog, which was the goal. It makes me realize that if I were to put some effort into it, my site could be worth some money. Also the blog has generated some interest for my coaching and probably contributed to my getting hired by Poker Savvy.

Goal 8: Start coaching. (Achieved)  Read the complete post...

At the beginning of last year, I set some poker resolutions and goals for myself. It’s time now to see how I’ve fared during the course of 2008. Yesterday, I posted about my resolution to Focus on Short-Handed No-Limit Hold ‘Em Cash Games.

Resolution 2: Keep Getting Better at Other Games

I played a fair bit of PLO and watched some instructional videos, but I don’t feel I’m much better at it than I was this time last year. Actually, I’m sure I am better, but the opposition has improved more than I have. It’s quickly becoming a much more well-understood game, and I’m getting left behind. I’d like to get better at it, but I have only so much time to play, and the opportunity cost of playing break-even PLO at 2/4 rather than winning at 5/10 and 10/20 NLHE is pretty high.

As for other games, I played some HORSE occasionally and probably got a bit better at Stud/8, I final tabled a PLO8 tournament, but mostly I didn’t do anything of significance.

Goal 4: Play some WSOP preliminary events in other games (PLHE doesn’t count).
(Failed)  Read the complete post...

At the beginning of last year, I set some poker resolutions and goals for myself. It’s time now to see how I’ve fared during the course of 2008.

Resolution 1: Focus on Short-Handed NLHE Cash Games

I pretty well kicked the tournament habit, but my focus wasn’t exclusively on short-handed play. I played a fair bit of full ring NLHE as well when the games were good, and I don’t regret it. Over about 170K hands played at 6-max tables at Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker (Poker Tracker 3 doesn’t collect UB stats), I ran at about 2 BB/100. This covers stakes from $.5/$1 (for a Poker Savvy video I was recording) to $50/$100, which is the biggest I’ve played.

Over 27K hands of heads up NLHE, I ran at nearly 4 BB/100. Sadly, a few ill-fated forays into 25/50 heads up nevertheless left me down about $35,000.

I say that I don’t regret expanding into full ring because over 60K hands I ran at about 4 BB/100.  Read the complete post...

Happy New Year!

Yesterday, I reviewed my 2007 goals and whether I’d achieved them in the last year. Today, I’m going to set some new poker-related goals for 2008. If you’re a serious poker player, I think that you ought to do the same.

Last year, I set a monetary goal for myself that I didn’t come close to reaching. Mostly, that was because I didn’t put in as many hours as I thought I would. But I feel happy with the amount of time that I invested in poker last year, and I don’t want to push myself to do more than that this year. Instead, I want to make better use of the time that I do spend by focusing on my most profitable opportunities.

Resolution 1: Focus on Short-Handed NLHE Cash Games

I got my start playing poker tournaments, and I still enjoy them, but the truth is that most aren’t worth my time. The stakes in most online tournaments just aren’t high enough and my edge isn’t as big as it is in cash games. Live tournaments avoid a lot of those problems, but they require a much larger investment of time and money and I can only play table at a time.

Goal 1: Play no more than 400 tournaments in 2008.  Read the complete post...