Setting Goals to Improve Your Poker Game

Why Set Goals in Poker?

Goals help maintain a strong mental game in poker by staying motivated and improving over time. They also have many other advantages:

• Having measures of your performance
• Being able to compare your performance over time
• Avoiding the variance trap in measurements
• Knowing why you play Poker
• Regularly checking that you're moving in the right direction

How to Set Good Poker Goals?

To set good goals, start by setting few of them. Having too many goals risks sending you in multiple directions at once.

Results-Based Goals

When setting a goal based on financial results, there's a risk of not achieving it due to variance. Avoiding setting financial goals just to avoid failure is a poor reason. A financial results goal provides direction with a real desire to achieve it. This goal requires defining the means to achieve it.

Goals Don't Work for Me

For goals to work, you must be aware that your potential isn't fixed. You can improve over time regardless of your level. Professional players constantly work on their game.
Don't underestimate or overestimate yourself. Your goal should be challenging but achievable.

Differentiating Between a Goal and an Expectation

A goal has never been achieved before and there's a risk of failure.
An expectation is certain to be achieved. You already have the capabilities and skills. There's no challenge.

Identifying Goal Obstacles

You can fail to reach your goal. To avoid this, you must anticipate obstacles and difficulties in advance. This will help prevent disillusionment and allow you to readjust the goal if necessary.

In case of failure, you can ask questions that explain why the goal wasn't achieved. These questions will help adapt future goals and progress, and can bring satisfaction even in failure.

The Problem with Expectations

Expectations bring little satisfaction: success is normal in the case of an expectation.
In the case of failing to meet an expectation, it's even harder mentally: failure isn't an option with expectations.

Bringing Meaning to Goals

Find the reason behind your goal. The main reason is money but there can be others like independence, wanting to prove something...
If the goal aligns with what you truly want deep down, it will be much easier to have the discipline needed to achieve it.

Setting a Finish Line

A goal must have a real finish line to know if it's achieved or not. This finish line can have a high and low version. For example, in the case of a bankroll: Have a bankroll of $1000 (low version: $750) before the end of the year.
The goal must also have a deadline. A goal without an end date is just a dream.

Detailing Steps to Achieve the Goal

You must detail all the steps to reach your goals. By detailing them, you can more easily anticipate obstacles, adjust the goal if it's too ambitious or not ambitious enough. These steps constitute the plan to achieve it.

Poker Goals and Beyond...

You probably have many desires in your life. Poker goals can conflict with life goals. For example: you can't have 6 Poker sessions per week while seeking a promotion at work and going out with friends 3 times a week.

In this case, you need to identify which goal matters most and scale back the others.

Going Further

Poker Toolkit helps you define your goals. If you want to learn more about goals in Poker, the book The Mental Game of Poker 2 is worth reading.