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

I often listen to podcasts while I play, because I am sick of my music and my Pandora stations. I love the 2+2 Pokercast, but it probably does divert some of my attention from the tables, and there are plenty of experts who claim that listening to the right music can increase your brain’s performance. I’m not sure I buy it, but it’s not going to be terribly expensive to try, and it doesn’t have to be a certainty to be a good investment. I want to create playlists, 100+ songs each, with different types of music for different types of situations: Classical, Hip Hop, Relaxing, Energizing, and Songs That Make Me Happy.

Be ready: I’ll probably solicit your input here. Should make for some interesting blog fodder and conversations.

Update Playlists

To refine my playlists and keep them fresh, I will re-evaluate and update them before the WSOP Main Event and before the start of the WCOOP. In months when I’m not doing that, I’ll continue creating new playlists and sharing my choices and findings with you.

Take Regular Stretch Bags

My mother is a yoga teacher and Fitness Gandhi (like a Fitness Nazi except that she leads through example and gentle but firm nagging), and she’s finally gotten to me. I will stretch quickly at my desk every 20 minutes and for 5 minutes every hour. If don’t have the discipline or wherewithal to self-enforce this, then I will set automated reminders.

Pre-Game

This one is straight out of Peak Performance Poker. I will create a pre-game routine including stretching, meditation, and visualization. I will employ it every time before I sit down to play to help me get “in the zone”. If I really get carried away, I might create a post-game routine as well where I analyze big hands, blog, post on forums, etc., but that’s only if I find the pre-game routine really helpful. Right now it’s still very much on probation.

What am I missing? Any suggestions? What do you consider essential to play at your best?

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.

Aim Reasonably– Your resolutions should encourage you to stretch yourself, but they should not be unattainable. If you only played 100K hands last year, you probably shouldn’t resolve to make SuperNova Elite this year.

Keep It Under Control– Unlike your goals, your resolutions should be entirely within your control. Don’t resolve to earn a certain amount of money or maintain a certain win rate. That’s nearly as foolish as resolving to take fewer bad beats this year. You can’t guarantee those things, and building your resolutions around them is setting yourself up for failure. Recognize the things that are under your control and think about how you can use them to maximize your chances of seeing the results you want.

Keep a Timetable– If your resolutions are year-long, which I recommend, track your progress along the way and set benchmarks. Know how many hands you need to play each week, and be aware of whether you are still on track. If some of your resolutions depend on others (“Buy Hold ‘Em Manager” and “Learn to Use a HUD”, for instance), set a deadline for completing the first that allows you time to complete the second.

Have Consequences– Like a lab rat, you are motivated by punishments and rewards. If you are falling behind on one of your resolutions, you must have a course of action for correcting yourself. For instance, if you fall behind on your resolution to watch three training videos each week, perhaps you will stop watching television and use that time to get caught up. Conversely, when you reach key benchmarks, give yourself a reward. If you are on pace for all of your resolutions after three months, treat yourself to a new monitor, a buy-in to the Sunday Million, or a massage.

Be Creative– There is more to getting good results than improving your strategy. Perhaps you also need to improve your eating habits, exercise more regularly, clean up your workspace, or make your accounts more secure.

Don’t Neglect the Rest of Your Life– It takes more than a successful poker career to be a happy and complete person. So be sure that you are also setting goals and setting aside time for other things that are important in your life: friends, family, hobbies, volunteering, etc. You shouldn’t do these things just to improve your poker game, though you may well find that that’s a happy side effect!

Tomorrow, I’ll post my resolutions for the new year to provide some examples of the above concepts. I’ll be asking you about your resolutions, as well, so start thinking about it now!

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?

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.

Goal 2: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

This shouldn’t be tough, and I’m already off to a good start. Basically I need to earn 100,000 VPP’s (PokerStars’ frequent player reward) over the course of the year. Having earned 3200 already, I’m on course to do this by September.

Last year, I played on Full Tilt almost exclusively because they have rakeback. My understanding is that the Stars VPP program is actually worth more if you devote the time to getting into the top tiers of it, though. Plus bigger games seem to go more frequently and are maybe a little softer.

There are a couple of drawbacks, though. For one thing, I have way more money on FTP than on Stars and it’s not that easy to reload. At the moment I’m mostly grinding up my balance playing 5/10 full ring games, and that’s going OK, so hopefully this won’t be a barrier. But I’ve already passed on a few potentially good 25/50 games for lack of funds.

Also, Stars doesn’t have Deep tables, which are getting really popular on FTP. They do have some tables with a 50BB minimum buy-in, which helps with the short-stacking problem, but I really like playing deep. There are a lot of regulars who can handle a 100BB stack very well but make mistakes playing 200BB deep. Since the bigger games are comprised mostly of regulars, that makes a big difference.

Still, I don’t think Supernova status will be tough to get, so I’m going to go for it. The next level, Supernova Elite, require 10 times as many VPP’s, though, and I don’t think I have any prayer for that.

Resolution Two: Diversify My Income Streams

I laid the foundation for this last year, but I really haven’t capitalized on it yet. Now that I’m starting to get a higher profile in the poker world, I think there are ways for me both to generate passive income and to combine poker with some of my other interests, such as writing and teaching.

Goal 3: Monetize This Blog

I was surprised by how much I made off of blog ads last year with virtually no effort. In general do find internet ads to be tacky and intrusive, but in this case I am giving away a lot of very valuable information at no cost to you, so I hope my dear readers will understand if there are a few ads on the page. I’ll try to keep it minimally intrusive, and the plus side for you will likely be a nicer layout and better content. Expect to see a new look later this month.

Goal 4: Get Back Into Coaching

I’m not going to set an hourly goal for this because I don’t want to force it, but I think I ought to do some more coaching. With the right students, it is in fact very enjoyable and rewarding. Plus, Poker Savvy tells me I can offer my students a free three-month subscription, which hopefully will sweeten the value of the package without costing me any more time. I may also consider doing group sessions that lower the costs for any individual person while helping to get me an hourly rate comparable to that of actually playing poker. Expect to see more information about this soon.

Goal 5: Market My Writing

I’m still just doing the easy stuff, writing for the occasional people who approach me. I think I want to get my name out there a little bit more and publish in some more high-profile ways. I don’t know about writing my own book, but I’m in discussions with a well-known player now about contributing a chapter to a book he’s doing.

Resolution Three: Improve My NLHE Skills

This is a lower priority than just putting in hours. Then again, practice is the single best way to improve, so I want to do what I can to maximize the learning value of my time at the tables.

Goal 6: Use Poker Tracker More Effectively

I barely use Poker Tracker for anything beyond record keeping, and I know I’m only getting like 10% of its value. I often don’t even use the HUD because it distracts me when I’m playing a lot of tables. But I want to be able to do at least some basic evaluation of my play to try to identify some leaks, such as I found with suited connectors in one of my year-end posts. Plus I want to put together a HUD layout that is truly useful for me.

Goal 7: Finish the Year with a 4BB/100 Win-Rate at 5/10 NL.

This is somewhat beyond my control because I won’t play a large enough sample size (there are good players who have had 100K hand break-even streaks), but if I can maintain this win-rate, which I think is about twice what my “true” rate is now, I’ll be in great shape.

Goal 8: Play 50,000 Hands of Heads Up NLHE

If I’m not going to do PLO, heads up is probably the next best game for me to get better at. At stakes above 10/20, it’s often the only way to get action, and that’s even more true the higher you get. Not to mention that thinking through heads up situations makes you better at playing marginal hands in general. Maybe I’ll read and review Moshman’s new book as well….

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)

I dove into this pretty aggressively at the beginning of the year but didn’t find it as satisfying as I expected. It’s tricky to find a price that’s fair to the student but also worth my time relative to playing poker. To my knowledge, the students I have had have all increased their profitability and considered their lessons worthwhile. Still, the price remains a sticking point for a lot of potential students, which is understandable.

The thing is that for me to block off an hour of my time tends to be pretty disruptive of my schedule. Like if I have a four hour block when I might otherwise play poker, but a student wants a session right in the middle of that block, then it kind of screws the whole four hours. I get out of the zone and lose a lot of time in transition if I try to play for an hour, then stop and coach for an hour, then play for two more hours.

I do enjoy the personal interaction of coaching and I like seeing my students improve their confidence and their games. I’ll just need to keep working on the right formula. One thing that I think will help is that Poker Savvy is now allowing me to offer free subscriptions for my students. That will both increase the value of the package for them and give them access to a lot of my own thoughts on poker theory, freeing up their paid time to focus exclusively on their application of key concepts.

Goal 9: Affiliate myself with an instructional website. (Achieved)

Early this year, I did some guest videos for Poker Savvy Plus. Those proved popular, and I met with the entire PSP team while in Las Vegas for the WSOP. Starting in August, I became a “Core Pro” and now produce four instructional videos per month for them. I’ve done series on Flop, Turn, and River Fundamentals, on some of my deepest tournament runs, and am now in the midst of one on Full Ring play and one joint tournament video with Tony “Bond18” Dunst.

My familiarity with education and teachers has definitely been an asset. While I’m far from the best player on the PSP staff, my videos have been among the most popular- probably because of my ability to structure and explain important concepts.

Goal 10: Get a book deal. (Failed)

Meh. I didn’t really try at this, and I’m not at all sure I want to. The book market is saturated and poker’s popularity is already on the decline with the general public. I don’t think the kind of book I’d want to write would have broad appeal, and besides names seem to sell poker books a lot better than quality content. It’s just a ton of work for surely less monetary reward than actually playing poker and less “sense of accomplishment” reward than my work with the Boston Debate League.

I do appreciate all the people who have encouraged me to write a book, though. An ego boost is always welcome!

That’s the last of the resolutions. Tomorrow I’ll post some year-end miscellany: more stats, biggest pots won and lost, etc. Then on Monday I’ll have my resolutions for 2009. Hope the new year is treating everyone well so far- it certainly is me!

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)

I think I would have been good enough to play some of the cheaper PLO and Stud/8 tournaments, but I wasn’t in Vegas for them, and I certainly don’t regret that. I did play some other games in FTOPS and WCOOP and did alright, including a final table in PLO8. Also, I was lucky enough to stake Tom Chambers (LearnedFromTV) on his way to two WSOP final tables in some non-NLHE games, so even though I suck at them I still found a way to profit!

Goal 5: Be a winner in 10/20 PLO by the end of the year. (Failed)

I fell so far short of this one it’s laughable. At the end of 2007, I was breaking even at 2/4 and 3/6 PLO. This year, I was a pretty substantial loser at 2/4, running at -6 BB/100 over 10K hands. I feel like I ran pretty bad, but I also think PLO always feels that way because it’s such a gambly game. Regardless, I’m clearly not very good at it right now.

Goal 6: Be a winner at 30/60 Stud/8 by the end of the year. (Failed)

I’m still pretty comfortable at 10/20 but I haven’t put in much time or attempted to play higher. Actually, I played exactly five hands at 30/60 and lost $600, for a win-rate of -200 BB/100. Sustainable?

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss my progress towards my third resolution for 2008: Diversify My Income Streams.

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.

As most of you know, tournaments did still prove profitable for me thanks to a very deep run in the main event of the WSOP. For the year, I had an ROI of just over 100%, which is in line with what I hear the best tournament players tend to expect. Of course, with a sample size of 261 mostly huge-field tournaments, that’s not a very meaningful number. It’s scary to think how much a single card could have changed the course of my year. Change a few rivered Aces to deuces and I leave Las Vegas penniless. Then again, gimme an Ace on the river against Scott Montgomery and maybe I leave Las Vegas a millionaire. That’s tournament poker.

The real issue with tournaments is that they are mostly a lot less interesting than cash and it’s much harder to put an equivalent amount of money in play. Basically I could either chase the circuit around the gruddiest parts of the US (Reno! Atlantic City! Tunica!) or spend less time playing more money 8-tabling 5/10 NL Deep in the comfort of my own apartment (and underwear, if I damn well please).

Goal 1: Play no more than 400 tournaments (Achieved)

This one wasn’t even close. I played just 261 tournaments, almost exclusively big buy-in, large-field events. In fact, the average prize pool in the tournaments I played was over $900,000. I still enjoy playing the biggest events like the Sunday majors, the FTOPS, and the WCOOP. However, I no longer feel any urge to play something like the 100K Guarantee on a random Thursday night.

The one good thing about tournaments is that they force me to put in hours. If I’m playing one or two tournaments, I’ll generally have 6-8 cash games going on the side for 4-5 hours whereas playing exclusively cash I’d probably play 8-10 tables for just 2-3 hours before getting bored.

Goal 2: The average buy-in of the tournaments I play will be at least $500. (Failed)

I missed this one, coming in at an average buy-in of $427. If you disregard four freerolls that I played, I can get this number up to about $460, but I still played too many small buy-in events. I was also thinking I would play at least one other big B&M event besides the WSOP, which I didn’t end up doing.

Goal 3: Play at least 250,000 hands of NLHE cash. (Achieved)

This was a very modest goal, and I would have been pretty ashamed if I couldn’t hit it. There are people who play this much in a month. In fact, a guy from 2+2 recently won a prop bet that required him to play 600,000 hands in November! Granted I have no desire to 24-table 50NL for 13 hours a day every day, but still I really ought to play more.

Not even counting UB or the occasional live game, I played 256, 587 hands. Over that sample, I came out at 2.54 BB/100, which is good but far from spectacular. Even in the biggest games the best players are making twice that.

Of the limits where I spent most of my time, here’s how it shook out:

30K hands at 10/20 NL 6-max at 3.9 BB/100

50K hands at 5/10 NL FR at 3.9 BB/100

66K hands at 5/10 6-max 0.4 BB/100

31K hands at 3/6 6-max, 1.1 BB/100

13K hands 2/4 6-max 4.9 BB/100

And for those who are curious about my play style, here are a few of my numbers with exactly 6 players at the table:

VP$IP 21 PFR 16 W$WSF 45% WTSD 24% W$SD 53%

For those who don’t speak Poker Trackerese, I played 21% of my hands, open raising or 3-betting a raiser 16% of the time. This is just slightly on the tight passive side. I think a style like 22/18 would be a little better, and in general I probably call too many raises.

When I saw the flop, I won 45% of the time, which is on the low end of acceptable. Again, this could be a result of calling raises with too many speculative hands, of giving up too easily, or of not playing aggressively enough.

I went to showdown in 24% of the hands that I played and had the best hand at showdown 53% of the time. The latter figure is good, but the former is a little high and suggests that I am not bluffing or value betting quite as much as I should.

My ten most profitable hands, in order: AA, KK, AKs, TT, AKo, 33, QQ, JJ, AJs, 99. This is pretty much what I’d expect, though obviously TT belongs behind JJ and I’ve probably just been running good with it. And of course AQs probably belongs up there ahead of 33, again just a result of variance I suspect. Actually I do tend to use AQ as a pre-flop semi-bluff quite a bit to 4- or 5-bet all in, and when called I’m usually dominated, so that could also be what’s holding AQ down.

I think the more interesting thing to see is my ten least profitable hands: 86s, A3s, 98s, AQs, 42s, 97s, 43s, 65s, JTs, 54s. I was surprised to see that they are all suited. Probably this is because I generally don’t play the off-suit versions, but apparently I am not playing my suited connectors so well either. Again, this corroborates the theory that I may be calling too many raises. I’ll have to work on that.

The other confounding factor here is that, as with AQ above, I tend to use suited connectors as range-balancing hands. This can be tough to conceptualize, but the fact that I am 5-betting all-in with AQ may make my entire 5-betting range more profitable because it generates additional action for my AA and KK even though it costs me money in isolation. The same could be said for the suited connectors. This is what makes it so difficult to analyze poker hands discretely.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss my progress towards my second resolution for 2008: Keep Getting Better at Other Games.

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.

Last year, I played 872 poker tournaments, so this will be a big cut-back, but that’s exactly what I need.

Goal 2: The average buy-in of the tournaments I play will be at least $500.

Last year, it was $224. I’ll be cutting out a lot of the smallest tournaments that I played, though, so I don’t think it will be too hard to get this number up. I’m pretty much only going to play “special” tournaments: the weekend majors, the online series like UBOC, FTOPS, and WCOOP, the larger buy-in satellites to live events, and some live tournaments such as the WSOP series.

Goal 3: Play at least 250,000 hands of NLHE cash.

These games are by far my most profitable venture right now. It’s nice to play other stuff for fun, as a change of pace, to take advantage of especially profitable opportunities, and to become a more well-rounded player. However, these will almost certainly continue to be my bread and butter. It might sound like a lot, but 250,000 is really a very modest goal for a serious player. I know people who average 50-60K hands or more per month.

Resolution 2: Keep Getting Better at Other Games

I haven’t studied it much, but everything I know about the history of poker suggests that no game remains pre-eminent forever. Once upon a time, games like 5 Card Draw, 2-7 NL Single Draw, 5 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud, Razz, and FLHE were all the rage, at least in certain areas. NLHE was actually a dying game before the televising of major tournaments revived it. A good player’s edge is just tremendous relative to what it would be in most other games. The fish lose their money too quickly, and the economy peters out.

Television and the internet have changed everything, so maybe the NLHE boom will be different, but I want to be prepared. I’ve heard some people predict that PLO will be the next big thing, others have said mixed games like HORSE. My money is on PLO, but that’s not the point. I’ve enjoyed the financial freedom that poker has given me to pursue other interests that don’t pay the bills, and I don’t want to lose that because I fell behind the curve.

Goal 4: Play some WSOP preliminary events in other games (PLHE doesn’t count).

I did play a PLHE event last year, but that’s really not a terribly different game from NLHE. I could see myself playing Razz, Stud/8, HORSE, PLO, or PLO8 events profitably come June.

Goal 5: Be a winner in 10/20 PLO by the end of the year.

As I said, my own hunch is that if NLHE dies, PLO will be the game to take its place. It’s already huge in Europe, it still gives a nice edge to strong players, but it’s also attractive to fish because there is a lot of action. I’m very comfortable at 3/6 level right now, not so much because I am good, but because the general poker public is much weaker at PLO than at NLHE. As long as I can keep learning ahead of the curve, I don’t anticipate great difficulty in getting to 10/20 by the end of the year.

Goal 6: Be a winner at 30/60 Stud/8 by the end of the year.

Currently, I’m comfortable as high as 10/20. We’re only talking about a two level jump here, but because 30/60 is the biggest game that goes regularly, that’s where all the best players are. This may not be a realistic goal given that I’ll be putting a lot more time into NLHE and PLO than I will be putting into this game.

Resolution 3: Diversify My Income Streams

There are a lot of reasons why relying on poker for the vast majority of my income, no matter how well it’s going right now, is not ideal. I want to explore more steady, reliable, and rewarding poker-related opportunities that will also help me build a resume for other fields of work altogether.

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

This shouldn’t be that hard, there are plenty of really inane websites out there that turn a profit. I’m not looking to make a lot of money, mostly I just want to cover my hosting costs and see what’s out there. There’s some outside chance that this could become very lucrative, and regardless it should help me become better known as a writer and poker player.

Goal 8: Start coaching.

I’ve got one student right now who is about 2/3 of the way through a 10-hour coaching program that I developed for him. He’s growing very quickly as a player and has seen a lot of success since we started working together. I can’t take full credit for that, of course, but he attributes much of it to concepts we’ve worked on. I’m not charging quite as much per hour as I make playing poker, but I enjoy teaching and it’s much more rewarding to be working in cooperation with someone than to be constantly competing in the negative-sum, cutthroat world of poker.

I’ll have more information about my program out soon, but if you read this and are interested, feel free to contact me now at foucault82(at)yahoo.com.

Goal 9: Affiliate myself with an instructional website.

I’d like to at least do some guest videos for a site like Card Runners, Poker X Factor, or the newly formed Lego Poker or Poker Savvy. I may not have the name recognition of most of the people who currently make videos, but I have a much stronger background in education than almost any pro out there, which I think would be a valuable asset. Obviously I could accomplish this tomorrow if I were willing to do the video for free, so I guess the real goal will be to find a company that’s willing to pay me what I consider a fair price.

Goal 10: Get a book deal.

This is by far the most ambitious of my goals, but it would be really sweet. I think it’s something I could do well.

I’m very curious to know what kinds of goals others are setting for themselves, so please consider leaving a comment about your own or a link to your own blog where you discuss them. Thanks for reading, and best wishes for a happy new year!