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.
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!