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For a long time I thought it would be an amazing accomplishment to rise among the ranks of poker’s elite and make a name for myself. I wanted to be known as one of the best. However, after much reflection and soul searching, I’ve found that goals like these are shallow and unfulfilling. Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to set goals to maintain focus and have something to shoot for, but many people take this too far. They let other areas of their lives degrade and fall into an unhealthy, unbalanced lifestyle as a result. Thus, even if they do reach their poker goals, a feeling of melancholy still exists.
Enjoying a healthy balance is really important, but it’s also important to consider the nature of one’s poker goals. Within the game of poker, setting specific financial goals turns the focus of what should be the enjoyment of a competitive multifaceted game into a monotonous day-in and day-out grind. Not only that, but you can’t control what happens much of the time. You might play one of the best poker sessions of your life, yet still be down for the day. Therefore, if you are comparing your results with how you played, you will have a skewed perspective. You will feel that you didn’t reach your objective. In addition, in setting goals people often set unreasonable ones, ones they don’t have the skill, commitment, or focus to obtain. These farfetched goals require a lot of time and energy and, before you know it, you will be well on your way to that degenerate lifestyle that you promised your mom you wouldn’t fall into. Other areas of life inevitably suffer, including relationships with family and friends, hygiene, and overall happiness. It sounds so cliché, but money and fame are very deceiving things that don’t necessarily lead to happiness.
Recently, I’ve made an effort to set attainable and self-satisfying goals. These include making no mistakes, staying focused throughout an entire session, and maintaining a level head regardless of what happens at the table. These goals are difficult but can be reached without luck or outside factors. When I’ve set goals in the past that were out of my control (like win $_____ today), it was easy to become frustrated and blame my luck when things didn’t go the way I had hoped. Similarly, when you know you have a monetary goal for the session, you may find yourself making decisions that you wouldn’t normally make in order to recoup losses. However, if you set goals that you and you alone are in control of, you will have only yourself to blame if you don’t reach them. I mentioned this before, but it’s really easy to fall into the trap of living an unbalanced life, not only in poker, but in other areas as well. I’m one of the most obsessive people you’ll ever meet, but I find that if I’m able to take a step back and spread my energy over a number of areas that I’m better off in virtually all of them. In other words, if you only have one focus in life, it’s really easy to get depressed if/when things turn to garbage.
The solution? Set goals in other areas of your life and play poker only when you truly feel like playing. Like a washed-up sports professional playing only for the money, poker can very quickly become more of a job than a passion. It’s so rejuvenating to play occasionally and then turn to other areas of interest and accomplish goals outside of your career.
Everyone goes about poker differently, but for me taking breaks is vital to my success. I find that I almost always win, and win big at that, after a fairly long hiatus from the felt. I have the right mindset — positive and carefree. Conversely, when I’ve been playing day after day I start to become predictable and the game becomes more of a burden and liability than anything. Often I let previous unlucky sessions linger and that negative energy has a great impact on my decision-making, whether I realize it or not. I know that a typical grinder may not have the luxury of stepping away for a long period of time, but any good poker player knows that if you don’t feel right, you shouldn’t play.
When you play for the right reasons, you give yourself the best chance at success. Find other areas of life that make you truly happy so that you’ll have another outlet to turn to when things go sour at the poker table (which will happen many times throughout your career). Playing through slumps is about the worst thing you can do — both financially and emotionally. The only good thing that will come of it is that you will definitely find rock bottom and there will be no place to go but up, or so you will tell yourself until the next “insanely unlucky” session.
Another thing worth mentioning, specifically in online poker, is that little cashier button. I used to check how much I was down or up on a session about every five minutes or so. One day I tried not checking the balance at all until the end of the session, and I found that it had a very positive influence on the way I played. I was less worried about getting back to even and more focused on having fun and making appropriate decisions. It’s so easy to look at the short-term swings and let that affect your mood. I have a difficult time with that even now. I’ll be down a significant amount of money and in a terrible mood, even though I look back at the session and feel that I made few, if any, mistakes.
This seems obvious, but playing good poker really comes down to playing good poker. That means setting realistic goals for yourself, ones that are within your control. It means keeping a balanced life away from the table. Sometimes the poker world glorifies the crazy gambler, but in my opinion, the real pros are the ones setting obtainable goals and striving for a sense of balance in life and in poker.
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