I’ve been enjoying a much needed break from poker the last month, but it’s about time to get back on the grind.
In fact, I hope to have played a session by the time you read this.
I have been carefully considering my poker goals for 2012. I want to challenge myself and strive to do well this year, but I also don’t want to set goals that are unrealistic.
Sometimes it’s hard to find the right balance. To be honest, I have no idea what I should be expecting of myself at this point.
I’d love to make a profit goal, but I don’t like the idea of it due to the unpredictable nature of the game.
I mentioned that I had a profit goal of $30k last year, but I’m not even sure where I came up with that number. I think I just pulled a random number out of a hat and decided that it was my goal.
So I don’t want to make a profit goal. On the other hand, however, I really don’t think I want to continue playing online poker unless I can start making decent money.
In late 2011 I said to a friend, “If I don’t make at least $50k next year, I’m quitting professional poker.” He seemed surprised that I would say that.
Maybe it was a stupid thing to say and maybe it’s an empty threat, but I feel like playing poker and just scraping by with bills is silly. Poker has no benefits and no job security.
The situation with online poker in the U.S. has shown that online poker can just disappear without warning. Is it really worth this risk to make $40/hour? And then there’s also the fact that playing poker for a living isn’t very fun sometimes.
Actually, it’s often downright infuriating.
For the amount of stress that I sometimes feel playing this game for a living, I would hope to make more than what I made last year.
So while I’m not going to set a profit goal, I’m going to guess that earning less than $50k (pre-rakeback) next year is going to make me seriously rethink poker as a career.
The one thing I have 100% control over is the number of hours I play, so that seems like a good goal to make. My goal is to play an average of 30 hours of poker per week.
Realistically I think that I will play around 40 weeks of poker this year, so that’s 1,200 hours of poker. I played around 900 hours last year, so it’s a decent upgrade.
When everything is considered, I hope to make at least $50/hour playing poker in 2012. That includes rakeback, but it also includes time spent reviewing. I usually review between 2 and 4 hours per week.
So there are my hopes and dreams for 2012! I look forward to blogging about my experiences along the way.
What are your poker goals for this year? Feel free to leave a comment and thanks for reading.
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