I received a few requests for examples of developing poker goals at the beginning of each month as we discussed earlier. So I figured that I would go through my goals for May and kind of show the thought process that I was talking about in practice.

I am not sure how longwinded I will be, but if I get on a big enough roll I may space this out over a couple of days to help avoid tl;dr syndrome that I am often accused of fostering (I will claim accidentally, but that is another story…)


GOAL #1 - NUMBER OF HANDS FOR MAY

Definition
Play 15k hands total in the month of May.

So now we look at how well the goal measures up to our criteria:

1. How well defined is the goal?
Numbers are great when it comes to setting goals. You cannot get more “pass” or “fail” than knowing that you need to play X number of hands (or do X number of anything).

2. How realistic is the goal and how much will the goal challenge us?
For me, 15k hands is a ton. As you always see me posting, I have a bunch of other things going on. But I was able to hit 12k+ last month. I think that I can press that and make 15k though.

3. Does achieving this goal move us toward accomplishing larger goals?
Yes. Like most of us, I have long term goals (overall winnings, moving up limits, etc.) that are all assisted by the number of hands that I play as long I have a positive expectation in the games that I am playing in (fortunately I do ).

GOAL #2 – STARS PLATINUM

Definition
Hit Platinum on Poker Stars.

1. How well defined is the goal?
Another numbers goal. I either get enough points to hit platinum or I do not.

2. Realism vs Challenge?
I have not hit a level beyond Silver on stars for a long time, so this one should be interesting. It will be challenging, but I think realistic given the fact that I want to play 15k hands this month.

3. Does achieving this goal move us towards accomplishing larger goals?
This is probably the most *meh* goal I have in regards to moving me on to accomplishing larger goals as it really coincides with playing 15k’ish hands. Usually, when I play the FPP game, I do it over on FTP and shoot for Iron Man; the thing that I like about Iron Man is that it forces me to spread out my play time over a number of days which I believe is more beneficial as it eliminates the potential for monster sessions dedicated to hitting the FPP goal. So along with this goal comes the responsibility of being able to split my play up somewhat evenly. I am going to do this by tracking my FPP’s per day and do my best to keep them spread fairly evenly (knowing what I need to average per day to hit platinum based upon the anticipated number of days that I can play this month). So for now this will be a "test" goal that we will evaluate at the end of the month to see if/how we need to tweak it for June and beyond.


GOAL #3 – WATCH AND ANALYZE (2) VIDEOS PER WEEK

Definition: Like the title says.

1. How well defined is the goal?
This one is fairly well defined. I obv have some details that I understand going into this, such as watching and analyzing is not simply streaming the vid, letting it play out and then turning it off – so I realize that I have relatively high expectations as to how I will analyze the vid (and in turn what I get out of it). This of course means time, which takes us to the next criteria…

2. Realism vs Challenge?
This one is all about time. I think that I can make it happen, but it will be interesting with everything else that I have going on.

3. Does achieving this goal move us towards accomplishing larger goals?
I have noticed my game tailing off slightly in what are fairly tricky spots. So either I am overthinking these spots or underthinking them. I am hoping that in addition to hand analysis (another one of my goals that I didn’t get to here) I can watch the videos in order to get back to proper gameflow and hopefully get my thought process back on the right track. Getting on the right track is what helps us to squeeze out an even better win rate, grow our bankroll faster and be rolled properly to move up limits, and all of the other "long term" type goals that we all have. So this goal should help me in achieving larger goals.

So that's it for now as it is getting late here. I will try to make a similar post and look at a few more of my May goals sometime this weekend. But, hopefully this gives you a few decent examples of how I approach monthly goals. It may seem to be a bit over the top, but I really believe that by critically thinking about the goals we set, the better position we put ourselves in to improve.