September Goals

Labor Day weekend was fun. I played golf twice (rare for me on the weekends) and shot well both days, so I judge it a success. Other than that, lots of swimming and partying with friends and neighbors. I played a little bit Friday evening and last night, and things seem to be going as before, but the few days off at least left me refreshed. And gave me some time to think about goals.

1. 10,000 hands. I won't force this one, as it really depends on what time is left over after work and family, and how tired I am. 10k makes a good target for me, though. 4 tables at a time max.
   
2. Participate in poker communities. In order to make it objective, I'll say 100 meaningful posts across forums and blogs. That's not a lot for many of you, but for us full-time-jobbers, it seems reasonable. I'll have to remember to keep track of it, so I can measure it.
3. Review my own play. I try to review every session -- mostly looking at hands I got significantly involved with. To make this goal more easy to achieve (but still valuable), I'll set a 75% of hands played threshold. In other words, if I play 10,000 hands, I need to review 7,500 of them.
4. Actively study 10 CR videos. Many times I will watch, and maybe not even pay full attention. Again, many of you who play full time will view way more than 10, but for me, I need to make sure that I'm also devoting time to other study.
5. Tighten up UTG relative to Button VPIP. In general, I've gotten feedback on this blog and elsewhere that perhaps I need to play more straightforward, and there is some merit to that thought. I feel like I think well enough to play OK against decent players, but I probably get too fancy against and overestimate a lot of the micro opponents I face. I can't control their cards, but part of playing more straightforwardly is to get tight UTG. So, I want my UTG VPIP to be half my button VPIP this month. No more raising suited connectors and one-gappers to balance my preflop raising from UTG this month ;).
6. Practice hand-reading. I'm trying to pay attention to hands I'm not involved with at the tables, but that is hard to measure at the end of the month, so I will do something extra. As part of my session reviews, I will filter for hands that go to showdown, and will put players on ranges, and will make a guess of their hands before PT shows me the cards. For now, I will go through the exercise for 2,500 hands. The important part is to put them on a range, but that is difficult, so I'll just keep track of how many times I make the correct guess by showdown. Hopefully just going through the exercise will help me get better, but that will be pretty subjective.

OK, that's probably enough goals for the month.