I recently launched a new site, Simple Presence.

For the last year or two I’ve been studying zen buddhism, it’s had some fantastic effects on my life. I was introduced to the idea of presence during coaching with high-stakes poker player Boywonder and have since witnessed it having incredible effects on my life and happiness.

Simple Presence is the continuously evolving result of my fascination with zen, creating a tight knit community in the zen forum and allowing me to share information via the zen blog. I have some fun experiments that I’m looking forward to unveiling on the site over the coming weeks.

Go sign up for the RSS, facebook and twitter if you’re intrigued and I’ll be sure to keep you informed.

Now that we have a clear vision of where we want to be and an idea of how much money we need to make… what’s the best way to get there?

I’m going to start with the assumption that the games are good right now and I’m very +EV in them when playing my best. I’ll give myself the best possible chance of hitting my long term goals if I play a lot of Volume, while also playing my A-Game. This should be obvious, but we need to be focussed on descending our goals from both of these things.

Outcome based goals
An example of an outcome based goal in poker is “I want to make $500 this month”. Most of us know that this isn’t very good, a bunch of factors (predominantly variance) limit our control over achieving our goal. However there’s nothing wrong with having a long term vision for the amount of money we’re aiming to make.

Volume based goals
We gain greater control of achieving our goal if set a target of hands to play for the month. Even better, create a realistic schedule for our grind.

There are a few problems here. What often happens is that it goes great for the 1st week, probably the 2nd week too… then something happens and our schedule gets messed up or we get behind on hand count. At that point things often go out of the window. Our goal no longer becomes realistic so we lose motivation to achieve it.

However most importantly, a volume goal doesn’t address the quality of our play. Logging a bunch of -EV hands just to hit our volume target could be very detrimental to our actual long term goal of making money. Some days we’re correct to not play, regardless of our schedule.

Performance based goals
This is when we set goals for each of the areas that contribute to the outcome. To do this we need to break down Volume and A-Game…

The key areas that influence A-Game are focus, self control, confidence and fitness. We can take each of these areas and break them down again to look at the relevant skills within our control. For focus that’s making sure I have no distractions and developing presence. I can then take each skill and explore how good my habits for it are, looking to break bad habits and set goals to develop good habits to develop these skills.

We don’t have to tackle everything at once. Just like leak-fixing in our poker game we want to zone in on the areas where our biggest leaks are. I’m a HUGE routine fish, most of my goals for this month involve making sure that my day-to-day routine balances well with poker to keep me happy – and that I stick to my daily plans. For different people I’m sure different areas require the attention.

With performance goal setting we’re working directly on the skills required to achieve our long term goals.

Give it a go this month! If you’d like your goals checked over just drop them in the comment below.

You will be more driven to achieve your poker goals if they descend from your personal/life goals.

Why are you playing poker?
- To help you save for a house?
- Pay for further education?
- Support the people you care about?
- To allow you to take more vacations?
- Be able to afford cool things that you’d like?
- Spend more time with your girlfriend or kids?

You get a lot more motivation from realizing why you’re playing and basing your financial targets on that instead of an arbitrary number. What is the money going to mean to you? What will it enable you to do?

My list of reasons is pretty big! I have it written down and read it aloud before each session to motivate me by reminding me why I’m playing.

Visualize the place/situation that you’d like to be in, then create your poker goals from that. Even if you’re currently pretty far from where you want to be, take it step by step.

To be continued very soon…

… when I’ll explore the practical skills required for meeting ANY poker goals.

******

Some pics from last month – vacation with my bro in NYC and road-tripping California with my girlfriend.

A reminder of some of the reasons that poker is important to me… personal freedom, and having money to spend travelling/exploring the world.

I’m not into posting up my monthly results any more but I’m comfortable sharing my results from the $200nl that I played this month – mostly in the daytime when the higher games aren’t as juicy. I’m sure poker players can figure out the $$$ pretty quickly!

Following up from our first session last week, Matt sent me this cool email, I thought I’d share…

“Thanks for opening my eyes… I had no idea how much it would change just after one session… Soooo much easier… It’s like I’m playing a different game.”

Plug your leaks and improve… FAST!