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NewbSaibot United States. Jan 15 2014 01:22. Posts 4946

Joe recently talked about the importance of goals in poker, to which I added my only little take about how I set winstops as a goal to stay focused and positive. Most people dont advocate this, but I still wanted to talk about it just because it has been helping me a lot lately.

So take a look at this giraffe eating grass:

I always have the ugliest graphs because I'm never consistent with anything and just play in my spare time. What you see happening here though are a series of trends directly correlated to my goal oriented sessions vs my freeplay sessions. Basically, at each of the spots where you notice a downward trend are days where I completely ditched my goals and started playing with no particular purpose (other than to win money). For instance switching to HU, or PLO, or normal ring games, or higher stakes. What happened was that for no particular reasons I just said "lets try something new to day", most likely out of boredom I suppose. And on each of those days, I just started clicking buttons trying to learn the game. It's understandable I might fail at foreign game types like HU or PLO, but even the ring games where I had no winstop always ended in me losing several buyins.

Every time I would finish these losing sessions tilted wondering wtf happened. There was always some degree of self-imposed jackassery involved, coupled with tilt and just bad hand selection. But I never knew why I'd suddenly begin playing like this. I still dont honestly, without any goal to look forward to I just lose track of everything I'm doing and start doing stupid shit like fancy play and so on.

The converse being every time you see an upward trend is when I went back to setting winstops. I'd say "lets hit $100 tonight, that'd be nice, that sounds doable at NL25" and just proceed from there. By the simple act of having to watch my bankroll grow another $100 I'd do everything in my power to win. You know, stuff like proper hand selection, no hero calls, no big bluffs, etc. The real kicker is, no matter how those sessions ended, I'd always leave feeling good. Most of the time I'd actually hit my goal, which would serve as excellent motivation for the next day. The times I'd lose wouldnt even phase me. I'd just shrug it off and say "cant win em all, back at it tomorrow". I'd never lose more than 4 BI's at a time so I guess I had a stoploss as well. Now you might wonder why I dont just keep going after I hit $100 & renegotiate my goal. Well that wouldnt work because I'm so fucked up I'd know I was cheating and then start playing sloppy. I really need the feeling of success at the end of the night to stay motivated to play the next day, and to stay motivated to hit my goal. If I dont have a goal in sight then the motivation drops. But just like any sport, when you are so close to victory you find yourself trying extra hard to reach the finish line. In poker this translates to even stricter attention given at the tables.

Anyway I hope to condition myself with a series of winning sessions that result in a permanent positive attitude more or less, so that I can then remove this cap I have placed on myself and rely on my experience to just win win win with no end in sight.

0 votes

bye now

Last edit: 15/01/2014 01:27

GoTuNk Chile. Jan 15 2014 02:04. Posts 2860

your blue/red lines are so weird ;p

napoleono Romania. Jan 15 2014 04:06. Posts 771

He probably plays too many hands and too aggro, thus whenever he has good showdown value he cant get it to showdown and whenever he gets to showdown, he is too weak to actually win.