Adjusting My Poker Goal

Reality has settled in to my ambitious plans and I simply don’t have time to spend 4 hours aevery night grinding away at the Party Poker micro tables. I’ve got other projects demanding my time and, as much as I’d like to neglect them all to concentrate on poker, it can’t happen. As a result I have made a few necessary adjustments to my goals beginning with my short term goal which will then flow on to my longer term goals.

Firstly, I am still allowing myself the luxury of playing every day, I’m not going stark raving mad over the whole “haven’t got time” thing. I’m no longer focussing on making a pre-determined profit every day, instead I’m prepared to quit playing for the day once “a profit” is reached. This has the effect of removing a further pressure which I had placed upon myself that was proving to be rather inhibitive. I was trying to commit to playing at least 100 hands per day. I felt that too often after I had made a profit that I was happy with for the day I was beginning to play a lot of junk hands just to reach the daily quota. It was doing nothing for my game and I was actually resenting the extra hands rather than maintaining a necessary focus and concentration.

I’ve found that unshackling myself from self imposed constraints has given my poker play a new sense of freedom and I am coming away with more winning sessions as a result. It’s all about compromise and whatever strategy most suits your state of mind. For the time being, my state of mind craves the short sessions with smaller profits.

Incidentally, my bankroll has grown too. My starting measly $30 bankroll is now looking a tad more impressive, sitting at $214.90. A paltry sum, to be sure, but when you consider that I’ve mainly been playing the $5 NLHE tables at Party Poker, it represents a helluva lot of patience, quite a few bad beats and a great number of seemingly insignificant profits. Remember, a $0.50 profit is a much better outcome than losing your $5.00 starting stack any day.

I’m still deriving most pleasure from standing up from a table with a profit rather than worrying about the size of the profit itself.