Setting yourself goals in online poker
Written by Steve Larson
Tue, 11 Sep 2007
Category poker
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In physical fitness and bodybuilding, it is always important that you set yourself a clear goal and then do your best to try to achieve it. Generally speaking, this technique is a very efficient one, no matter where you employ it in real life.
Same goes for poker: you need to set yourself certain goals, and then try to meet those goals. People usually recognize that this is the best way to go about learning to play poker, yet so many of them get it woefully wrong.
They set themselves goals in terms of how much money they want to make in a given span of time, not realizing that something like that depends on factors they have no influence upon.
Many people do extremely well in poker, rookies and veterans as well. I remember when I first played real money online poker, I doubled and the tripled up extremely fast. I suppose it was a beginner’s lucky streak. The same thing happens to many people. Then they think that’s exactly the way things are always going to go down at the poker table, so they start making estimates of just how much money they can squeeze out of the whole deal.
Meanwhile, they forget one little detail: the very nature of online Texas Holdem makes it impossible to correctly assess the long term winnings that a player will achieve. Lucky rookies usually lose their money faster than they’ve acquired it, they get grossed out, leave, and never play poker again.
The very first thing you have to realize when you set about making long-term poker plans, is that Texas Holdem is a game of great variance. Not only that, but luck is an extremely big factor in it, too.
While in Omaha or Stud, a skilled player will always manhandle the opposition, In Texas Holdem, which is, by the way, probably the variant you’re playing, skill is not enough to realize both short- and long-term winnings.
If you play extremely well however, you will turn out a winner eventually. So how do you set goals for yourself in poker then?
You need to focus on something you do indeed have an influence on: THE WAY YOU PLAY.
Learning to play reasonably is not a superhuman feat. Learning to be good enough to squeeze out long-term winnings is also rather accessible. Many people play well-enough to become winners, but then again, so few people do follow through and reach their full potential.
The problem is in the consistency. Knowing all the poker theory in the world, is only as good as your consistency allows it to be. What’s the use of knowing what you have to do if you fail to do it when faced with the dilemma?
Poker is a game which tests the limits of your discipline and consistency in play. It takes players on a very shaky emotional ride, it gets the worst out of them. This is the biggest challenge in poker and online poker alike, not the ability of learning theory.
This is where you should start setting goals for yourself. If you know you’ve just made a mistake after losing big on a hand, and if you can pinpoint the mistake that you just made, make sure next time you don’t do it. Set such small goals for yourself all the time. Make it your concern that you always play your absolute best. That’ll allow you to improve, and in the long-run, it will make you more money than any of the goals you might’ve set for yourself in that respect.
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