Goals for 2008

As I spend the holidays back in Japan with my family and friends, I notice I have a lot of free time during the day. Well, I wanted to use this time to not just play a lot of poker but also to study and start seriously setting goals for next year. This past year, I grew tremendously and the blog helped a lot. I went from being "barely profitable" to "solidly profitable". In looking towards next year, I want to continue my growth as a poker player. In order to do that, few goals come to mind.

1. Switch to 6 max - I think this is critical. In looking at/talking to a lot of the profitable players, they all play 6 max or are starting to focus on 6 max. And I continue to read that if you are a good poker player, 6 max would be more profitable... which makes sense. Poker is a game of decisions and in a 6 max game, you are put to the test more often, you have more decisions to make because you end up playing more hands, and as such, if you are good and you make good decisions, the profitability should increase. Just look at guys like Gnome, Cmitch, Hoy, and Lucko. They continue to play 6 max and they are killing it. I want to be able to put myself on that list.

2. MTT win (or big cash) - I personally love cash games. Profits are instantaneous, good decisions are rewarded (more often than not) immediately, you could get up and leave whenever you want to, and you can choose your opponents by careful table selection if you want to. However, I want to become a better MTT player... or at least be able to produce results. I just don't want to be one dimensional and the prospect of a large win is always exciting. Also, greatness of poker players always seem to be measured by tournament wins or winnings. All the PT stats I put out still seem to pale in comparison to tourney results as evidenced by the number of comments I've received when I won the Mookie for example for a few hundred bucks as opposed to when I post my cash game results showing thousands of dollars in profit. And it's no secret. I wanna be great.

I think those are my two main goals for 2008. In order to do that, there are some things I obviously have to do.

1. I gotta keep blogging. I guess I learn a lot by writing about my hands. It gives me time to think about the situation, it gives me the opportunity to hear other people's thoughts and opinions on the hands, and so it just helps.

2. Study - I need to do more of this. I read a lot of blogs. I also read a fair amount of poker books. I recently joined Pokerxfactor and I have good intentions of joining cardrunners. The only thing that's holding me back from joining cardrunners is because since I just joined PXF, I don't feel like I would have time to watch videos from CR and PXF. So, maybe when my membership expires for PXF, I'll switch to CR for a few months and then switch back again or whatever... we'll see. PXF has been fairly helpful (though I don't have any results to post - a few cashes in the 50-50 is really not enough) and I will review some of the videos I watch on my blog.

3. Play more - Well... sort of. I don't think I can increase the amount of poker I play. But what I need to do is increase the amount of games I play for the ones that I need to focus on. So, I'll probably drop down a few levels and play more 6 max. I'll do something similar to what Cmitch is doing with his 25k hands challenge. I'll also play more MTTs. Currently, I play probably about 5 MTTs a week including the three blogger tourneys. I'll try to bump that number up.

I sure hope I can experience another year where I can reflect and say I grew tremendously as a poker player. Happy 2008 to all!