[Closed] Is a Goal a good thing or a bad thing?

Hi clawindsouza,

As soon as you have the feeling you start tilting you should immediately stop playing. You will just lose money. Set yourself a stop-loss limit.

Do not focus too much on a brankroll goal. Your goal should be to improve your game and then you will reach higher bankroll automatically. So it should be more like: today I watch a video and play 1 hour poker and then review your session and post minimum 2 hands in the evaluation boards.

Best regards,
Hannes

Write it down. Then you don't have to think all the time about it.

Thanks guys. Hannesz i did set a stop loss limit but i just wanted to hit that goal so bad that i realised how badly i played only when i reviewed my sessions:)

So my goal needs to be in terms of amount i spend on poker and not my winnings?

I like that.....so from now on i shall set a goal on the time im spending on poker and break it up into time for playing and time for videos,books etc

so is that i good goal or do i need to change it in any way?

IMHO, if you are starting at poker, you want to learn first and focus on the winnings later. That doesn't mean you should discard the profit/€ factor.

My goal is to become successful at poker.

I haven't decided what that success is yet, I just have the desire to be better than others.

it's good thing if you scored it

Just enjoy playing. If you can't do that, what's the point? There are easier ways to make money.

Having goals is good for the psychology pertaining to tasks. Focusing your mind on that one task is beneficial, and goals help with that. Setting a time limit, though, doesn't seem that great. It can lead to desperation and can lead to thinking like "omg I haven't reached my goal which is counter-productive, especially in poker, and you WILL lose money the more desperate and dissatisfied you get you get with not reaching your goals in X amount of time. Just be relaxed, set yourself a goal but throw the time limit out of the window. Let yourself get to where you want to be whether it takes 2 months or 2 years.

Goals are essential IMO. Make them realistic and achievable so they motivate you to achieve them rather than set overly ambitious goals and get pissed off if/when you miss them (there is another school of thought which says set outrageous goals - worth a search for an alternative point of view).

Anyway, you are better to set task oriented goals than results oriented goals.

eg task oriented goals are things like resolving to study x hours each week at x times, play x hands in a month. Results oriented goals are things like moving up a limit by x date, earning $x per month.

Task oriented goals you have more control over, results oriented goals require things outside of your control to assist you (ie variance).

Hope this helps!

Originally posted by clawindsouza
playing more when im running good and playing less when im running bad.

That doesn't make sense.

But yes - goals are good (not only in football). I've heard that it's best to have two types of goals - short term goals and long term goals. If you only have long term it seems something remote and far away and you'll begin to doubt whether it's possible to obtain them. You'll also become lazy, because of the "one day doesn't really matter, I still have five years to make a million" thought pattern

A short term goal could be posting x hands in the forums each week, learning particular skills; or watching one vid a week, etc., as has been mentioned above. Notice here that there is a time period for these short term goals, this helps to keep focus on what is required to achieve the longer term aims, which are more general in nature and upon which we can lose focus due to the longer time frame involved.
We generally say that goals are shorter term and aims are longer term and the short term goals are designed to help us achieve our aims.
Hope I didn't confuse too much. GL.

Originally posted by clawindsouza
So my goal needs to be in terms of amount i spend on poker and not my winnings?

I like that.....so from now on i shall set a goal on the time im spending on poker and break it up into time for playing and time for videos,books etc

so is that i good goal or do i need to change it in any way?

Sounds good, and also review hands so you can get a better understanding of your opponents game and your own so you can play future hands better.

The problem with setting monetary goals is that variance in poker is very high. It's not uncommon that a player may be playing well but be break-even or worse after 100k hands.

Here's a poker variance simulator. For nl, make sure u set the s.d. higher than 27, for me it's 60 big blinds, or 30 PTBB's.

http://www.pokervariancesimulator.fr/

Originally posted by jbpatzer
Just enjoy playing. If you can't do that, what's the point? There are easier ways to make money.

like what?

Originally posted by jbpatzer
Just enjoy playing

I agree, but having goals like it was said here is good. Just set your goals in a way you'll still have fun playing poker, setting a goal like "play 5 hours a day" could be bad depending on the person, because that could take the fun out of poker.