Results-oriented thinking in poker leads to mistakes. Ultimately, it causes us to falsely attribute winning hands to bad play and avert good decision-making because of a few bad beats. That having been said, setting goals for yourself, whether making a certain amount of money in a day, a week or a month, can be a good way to monitor your progress.
Predicting whether or not you will win a hand at the outset is basically a coin toss. If there are six people at the table, you will probably win just about one out of six hands. Over an extended period of time, the chances of deviating from that number decrease quickly.
The key to making money is the ability to extract maximum value. If you can do this, then, suddenly, your win rate grows and becomes more stable. Essentially, if you play cards long enough, you should be able to anticipate the amount that you will win. After the cards are dealt enough times, luck begins to fade away and skill is the only thing that will separate you from the rest of the players out there. Setting a goal is one way for your expectations and results to align.
I decided at the beginning of the year that I wanted to make more money than my high school soccer coach. I tried to find something more meaningful. I sat around while I played and kicked some goals around in an effort to make my sessions more exciting, but ultimately, this was the best that I could come up with.
My goal is ridiculous for a number of reasons. I have no idea how much money he makes, he has no idea that I’m doing it and it’s ultimately really fickle and pointless. With that said, it’s a fun goal for me to keep track of while I sit around and analyze my win rates, trends and specific hands while looking at thousands of poker hands.
The point isn’t that I want to out-earn somebody; it’s that I want to chase a goal, however unlikely or pointless it may be, while I sit down to play cards. I sometimes find it difficult to sit in front of my computer for hours at a time and play poker against people I can’t see, but having something to chase, having some reason to legitimize a specific session, can make a world of difference in your play. If it lets you focus on a session a little bit harder than you would be able to otherwise, then the goal becomes worthwhile.
During the month of September, it looked like I was going to have no problem catching Coach Whittaker by the end of December. October has been a bit slower-I’m guessing his boss didn’t steal 15 percent of the prior month’s earnings in four days-but I’m still chugging along. Maybe I’ll catch him, maybe I won’t, but it does make each session a little more interesting, a little more exciting, and, most importantly, a little more fun.