My Goals for 2009

Alright. It’s a new year coming up. All my friends are doing it. It’s time for me to put some poker playing goals for the New Year on paper. So here’s a rough draft.

1. Play better poker. This is a great place to start. Obviously the point of putting down goals is to improve something. And I am one to believe that goals should actually be possible. And if it is possible for me to play better poker, I should be able to measure this. So I need to update 2008’s goals rather quickly. Here’s the entire list from the old year: 1. make a spreadsheet to track all poker playing for next year.
Really, this is such a stupid goal to start with. I can see already that all of my other goals will be a spin-off of this one. I should have just made “Playing Better Poker” the name of the blog. So here are my goals for playing better poker:

a. Track every single bit of poker activity. I’ve already been doing this (sort of) lately. The fact is, I am not tracking the losses. I should be tracking how well I am doing in what types of games. In the last month I have been killing the 18 and 27 person sit n’ go tourneys on PokerStars. However I can’t seem to win at any limit poker cash game. Also, I can run deep in any multi-table tourney on PokerStars, whereas Full Tilt gives me problems. These stats should be plain for me to see when I sign in.

b. Assign time and loss limits. Mike Caro talks about the dangers of playing to get through a losing streak in Brunson’s Super System II. I am a living example of someone who loses all sensitivity to losing online. I can easily drop $100 in my bankroll without blinking. I need to structure my play around this by placing limits on how many tourneys I can play and how much money I can lose relative to my bankroll in a day.

c. Log my major mistakes. I play amazing poker in stretches. Eventually after playing a boat load of winning sessions I stop paying attention to what blunders I have made. When I am losing, these missteps are blaring. During a win streak I will need to step back and break down major hands of tournaments, which may mean reviewing long strings of hand histories.

d. Log my brilliant plays. I’ve made some moves in poker where my intuition was at high tide. Quite a few of these end up emailed to my dad or uncle, and so are archived somewhere in a mass pile in my Gmail account. I can learn a lot from focusing on what signs my brain picked up on before I made the correct decision in extremely close calls. These could help me from chasing down hands I can’t win while maximizing the bets that I can win.

e. Blog more, Railbird more, talk to my poker friends more. Actually, I probably do the last two enough. All I ever talk about is poker, even to people that feign interest. Railbirds.com has become my favorite poker site. The group I am involved with on that site has really brought out a better poker player in me. I have an increased sense of accountability and confidence since joining them. Blogging is a great way for me to reflect on my play and to try and improve.

f. Bring more mental focus to tournaments. This may not be measurable. In the Sunday Warm-up last week I had three weeks to prep myself for the event. The result was a tournament where I lost focus once. I can improve on that focus, and bring it to every tournament I play in. The only problem I see with this approach is the incredible let down experienced after being knocked out of such a tournament. I was still letting out huge sighs on Tuesday. There is a happy median somewhere, and the answer may be to plan out larger tournaments farther in advance while continuing to play the $1 and $3 sit n’ go variety “on a whim” so to speak.

2. Win more money. This doesn’t always go hand in hand with playing better poker. I’ve won money as a very bad poker player before. Here’s what I am looking at: In 2008 I cashed out $300 playing online poker. This year (to date) I’ve scored $570. For 2009 I plan on cashing out $1,200. I am riding a large wave of confidence into the New Year, and I look forward to proving to myself that I am not a fluke. So $100/month does not seem unattainable.

So that’s it – a mere two goals (sort of) for the New Year. I can’t wait to get started!