Setting Smart Goals
As a new year begins it’s extremely important to analyze what went well with your poker game over the past year and what needs some improvement. For a poker player, measuring yearly goals isn’t as easy as we think. It’s not just as simple as an increase in our bankroll as many would believe. It’s about measuring success in regards to each and every hand we play.
Some people have said that a yearly goal would be to become a winning $5/$10 player (when they are currently playing $1/$2). They then try for that goal and even if they didn’t improve in that game enough, they’ll still regularly put themselves in that game by the end of the year.
I’ve also seen others make goals for an individual tournament. Goals like “I need to have $15,000 by the end of the fourth level,” or “I just want to make it out of Day 1.” Think about those goals. One is based on chip accumulation and the other is based on survival. Both can result in major mistakes. The fi rst one advocates a need to reach a certain point by a certain level. As we all know, sometimes the cards don’t cooperate and this type of goal is essentially impossible to always achieve because there will be times where you force the issue and doing so causes you to go broke. As for the other goal, players get too set on survival and fold hands where they had the advantage because they fear elimination. In either case, optimal poker isn’t played.
The goals above all have their faults, partially because of the game itself. In most aspects of life, making your goals concrete is extremely important so that there is no doubt when you achieve them. The problem with that in poker is that if you set a concrete goal you could be throwing yourself into a wall. If you say that you’re going to get from Point A to Point B no matter what, in poker there’s a chance that you just can’t do that, at least not with sensible play. Especially with bankroll goals, many will risk too much to achieve their goals and often end up running their bankroll down to nothing as a result.
That said, here are a couple of goals that every poker player can use to make the most out of their endeavors on the felt in 2009.
Commit yourself to learning a new game by the end of the year. I know that many of you are strictly Hold‘em players, but there’s more to being a successful poker player than just Hold‘em. Become a decent Stud or Omaha player. Try some Razz or Badugi. No matter what you choose, make sure you undertake the assignment intelligently.
So how do you take your fi rst step in learning a new game? Take your bankroll and allocate a percentage of it to the new game – fi ve to ten percent should do. In the same way you’d manage your Hold‘em bankroll (meaning how many buy-ins you’d need for whatever limits you are playing), only play games that your bankroll is big enough for. Just because you are playing $10/$20 Hold‘em that doesn’t mean you have to play $10/$20 Pot Limit Omaha. Play $1/$2 instead.
If you’re a complete novice to the game and barely know the basic rules, start at the smallest games online and learn it as close to free as possible. At the same time, if you at least have a basic understanding, don’t start at the bottom limits. The stakes you are playing should depend directly on your bankroll, and honestly, there isn’t a dramatic difference in the play between 1¢/2¢ and 25¢/50¢.
Now that you have you have an idea of where you’re going to invest your bankroll, it’s time to learn about the new game. Your fi rst stop should be the bookstore. There are books that specialize in the strategy of just about every game. From there, head online and use the Internet for its wealth of poker resources. Go to any of the poker community sites and join the “Other Games” forums. Learn from others who make your new game their primary game and ask questions! Take it a step further and attend a live poker camp like the WSOP Academy. Camps work well because you’ll go away for two or three days and poker is all you’ll think about. If you’re sitting at home and reading a book, you get interrupted. At a camp, you are truly engrossed in the material.
Depending on the way you learn, videos might serve you better and sites like ProPlayLive.com have videos on every game you’d want to learn. Personally, I’m a book person, but I know that others fi nd these videos incredibly helpful.
Make all of these resources part of your arsenal and the next time that you go online or to a casino, if the Hold‘em games don’t look good, now you’ll have a new game to play. The second goal that I’m recommending is a bankroll goal, but not in the typical sense. Take an ordinary player who has been playing the best they can and has built up a bankroll of $800 from an initial $100 investment. At that point, this player may make the goal of reaching $1,500 no matter what. As I mentioned above, this goal will result in more harm than help for most people. You can’t make these goals unless you know when to give them up.
The best bankroll goal is to simply create a written set of guidelines for the next year. Among those rules would be the limits of what you will play. For example, unless I have at least $X, I won’t play higher than $1/$2. To determine that $X you’ll need to determine how many buy-ins you feel you’ll need at each level and how much you’ll put up in every session. I’m recommending at least fi fty buy-ins at every level you play. Until you have that magic number, don’t play it, even if you think you can beat the game. Even if I go to the local poker room with forty buy-ins and there’s a soft, juicy game, I won’t play. Stick to your requirements. If fi fty buy-ins is too safe, choose a lower number, but once you pick your number at the beginning of the year, don’t let yourself make any exceptions.
In addition to everything above, there should really be one overarching goal that dominates your mindset over the next year: play each hand as perfectly as possible. Whether you’re a seasoned professional player or just an amateur, goals can have their place throughout the year, but when you’re actually playing the game, the only goal you should have is to play each hand perfectly and do everything you can to make the correct decisions at all times. Good luck in ’09, and more importantly, play smart!
