Goal-Setting: Know Your Outcomes

So my new video was posted yesterday on HUSNG.com. Please post a comment or send me a message and let me know your thoughts, positive or negative. I've reflected recently on the drastic improvements in the quality of strategy videos since HUSNG.com started. None of us were even using HUDs in the original videos, lol. Now I'm using the CoffeeHUD, which I'm absolutely obsessed with. I have zero incentive to promote this HUD fwiw. I just believe it's an invaluable resource for any serious HUSNG player these days. Is there any other HUD out there that even competes with it? **Serious question. If there is, I'd like to recommend it to my students who are still using HM2.

Throughout my blog, I've shared a lot of the lessons I've learned throughout my HUSNG career (often times, the hard way). Here's another lesson I've learned: I'm not lazy and I don't have ADD. Motivation and work ethic are created by clearly defined goals.

Getting myself motivated to work, especially working consistently, has always been a big leak of mine. Over the past 2 years or so, I had toyed with different ways to keep myself consistently motivated. Even when taking consistent breaks to rest and recover (highlighted in my article 'Playing Poker for a Living' http://bit.ly/x5Bkxb), I still couldn't maintain consistent work ethic and motivation over 2 weeks or so. I wouldn't get burnt out per say, the breaks did help...I would just get lazy, unmotivated. My work ethic and consistency had improved a lot over that time, but I definitely had not reached a point I was satisfied with. It was frustrating. Fortunately, work ethic and motivation are skills, so they can be improved upon.

One afternoon in June, I was reading 'Unlimited Power' by Tony Robbins. Yes, I'm a sucker for corny shit like this :) Anyways, there is a chapter about goalsetting. The author lays out a 4 step plan for setting and pursuing goals. How did I not think about this before? It just seems too simple to me:

Step 1: Set clearly defined goals. Know your outcomes.

I thought to myself, "How can I expect myself to stay consistently motivated if I don't even know what I'm working towards?" Sure, I want to make lots of money, but I had never put much thought into the bigger picture...Why do I want to make a lot of money? What am I actually working towards? The answer for me: Family, Security, Opportunity, Self-Improvement, amongst others. It was just too easy for me to get complacent after a big upswing, or frustrated by short term setbacks, without having a clear picture of why I do what I do. Seeing the bigger picture has definitely helped me to keep the short term in perspective, both when things are going well or not so well. 

Step 2: Take action towards those goals.

"The most effective way to do it, is to do it." Goal-setting is great, but without action goals will always just be dreams. 

Step 3: Analyze whether actions are taking me closer to or further away from goals.

This part was tricky for me at first. The way I've dealt with it is I wrote out all of my long term goals, as well as some secondary shorter term goals to help me reach them. I scheduled on my calendar 30 mins or so every week to sit down and evaluate the actions I took over the previous 7 days. Did my actions take me closer to or further away from my goals? The tough part about this is that ego and bias can get in the way of sound judgement. Try to be as honest with yourself as possible, question yourself even if your results have been positive. Self-awareness is such an important skill for a poker player, imo.

Step 4: Be flexible and change behavior until I get what I want.

Self-improvement and accomplishing goals is all about trial and error. If your answer in Step 3 was, "No, my actions did not take me closer to my goals." Why not? What can you do differently next time to produce the results you want? Be willing to test yourself. Look at adversity and failure as learning opportunities. Keep adapting until you get what you want.

In 'The Mental Game of Poker', Jared Tendler wrote, "Goals are what you want now in the future." That's some deep shit, Jared. What he means is that your priorities and values will change over time. The person you are today will likely not be the person you will be in a few years. 

This method of setting and pursuing goals has had a very positive impact on me personally. I'm more motivated and can work more consistently now than I ever have before. I still have a long ways to go to to reach the goals I've set for myself, but I wanted to share my approach with you all. I hope some of you find this approach useful!

In my next post, I will set some poker goals for September. I want to put in a lot of volume (by Revolution standards) and get another 4 videos released. 

Good luck.

Hokie

Black Friday Reflections, Switching to Hypers, and Some Goals

Hey guys. I'm on a flight back to my hometown of Richmond right now. I figure now is a better time than any to write a blog post. If you are in the US and haven't flown JetBlue yet, I highly recommend it. Way more legroom than other airlines - I happen to enjoy personal space, so it's a big perk to me, haha.

I have been reflecting on my life since Black Friday a lot recently. What a crazy past 16 months! 

Pre-BF: I was playing high stakes turbos on Stars, had only played a few hypers on Full Tilt, was living in Virginia, and had never travelled much outside of the US. 

Post-BF: I'm sponsored by Lock, playing high stakes hypers, living with my girlfriend of 15 months in Florida, and have travelled extensively outside of the US (Mexico, Italy, France, Spain). 

Nothing has come easy for any US poker player in the past year, me included. It's been a grind and every time I think things are going to start running smoother I seem to run into another roadblock. Cashout issues, life variance, etc. Being successful with poker IN the US post-BF is about getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

The biggest change for me with poker since Black Friday has been my transition from turbos to hypers. I had played only a few hundred hypers before BF on Full Tilt. Since BF, I really haven't grinded that hard bc of other responsibilities and the some general laziness, but have still managed to put in about 10,000 hypers on Merge/Revolution. I've  coached hypers for well over 200 hours (mostly Stars regs) with students ranging from $500/1k to $15 regs. I ran Mersenneary's FastTrack Forum, a private forum on HUSNG.com focusing on hyper strategy, for 5-6 months in 2011.

There has just been so much great hyper content produced in the last 1.5-2 years. The game is evolving so rapidly right now. I feel like I'm learning about a new, super-sick program to analyze hyper play every month or so (most recently, the CoffeeHUD).

If you know anything about me, you know I love teaching. I also love poker theory. What a great match hypers are for me then! Hyper structure/format is just so teachable. I've found it easy to improve most of my student's games very quickly (in comparison to coaching turbos).

So what can I offer you as a hyper turbo coach?

- I am a natural teacher and I am passionate about helping my students improve their game efficiently (i.e., quick results)

- I have a ton of coaching experience. I've coached 200+ hours of hypers, and at least as many hours coaching turbos before BF.

- I am competent with most popular husng programs: PT4, Flopzilla, ICMizer, PokerStrategy Equilab, Pokerstove, CoffeeHUD.

- I have coached Stars players enough to have a general sense of population tendancies.

Ok, ok, enough of the sales pitch. I'm a greedy bastard, I know. It's a 2-way street though! I help you, you help me. We both profit. Ship it! If you are interested in discussing coaching further, email me at hokiegregpoker@gmail.com. Coaching Options/Rates: http://bit.ly/z4d8Ch

Anyways, I can not wait to get back to Florida in a few days so I can start grinding hard. I've put in a lot of hours working on my game the past month or so, and while I haven't put in a lot of volume yet, I can see the hard work starting to pay off in my thought process in-game and just my general confidence in my decision-making.

I want to use this blog to hold myself accountable to reaching some goals. Here are a few goals that I'm going to track through my blog going forward:

- make 85k in $EV by the end of the year (definitely a long-shot goal, but I want to really challenge myself)

- produce 5 hyper videos for husng.com by the end of September (owed Ryan these forever. sorry, boss)

- have fun, enjoy life, and keep perspective

Plane is landing! Hope you all are printing the monies.

Hokie

P.S.

A few pics:

Took an airboat tour of the Everglades National Park (in Florida) recently. It's basically a GIANT swamp filled with alligators, snakes, etc. A few pics:

Also, I ran into former professional baseball player, Manny Ramirez, at the grocery store the other day. Epic!

Accountability

Accountability: Actions toward or involving others that reflect the integrity of the person you want to be. 

It's been a long time since I've blogged on the regular. I miss it. I'm back - for the benefit of myself and, hopefully, some of you. 

I started this blog in April 2007. My first post, titled 'In Need Of Motivation', begins: "Nonetheless, I need a way to increase the volume of my play. Throughout my blog I will chronicle my journey playing heads up sit n' go's beginning at the $30+1.50 level. I have already worked my way up the HU SNG chain beginning at the 5+.25's and through the 20+1's. I have built up a solid bankroll, but am beginning to feel burnt out and unmotivated. Hopefully this blog will help me to stick to my course of action and increase the amount of tourneys that I am playing (well)."

Haha. I'm registered in a 2k hyper on Revolution right now. Needless to say, it's always fun to look back at same of my old posts. 

One thing that has not changed since 2007 is that blogging is a great way to keep me motivated. I love setting goals and pursuing them - learning from both my successes and failures. I love teaching, obv. And, most importantly, I just really love poker. I feel incredibly fortunate to be still doing well while living in the US in a nauseatingly-difficult post-Black Friday poker world. So I'm happy where I am, but I need to stay motivated and continue to improve. 

One of my favorite things about being a professional poker player is how you just absolutely can not get complacent about improving for any real length of time. There are just too many other smart and motivated (and young! shit, i'm almost 30) poker players that are gaining experience and working on their game. If you aren't improving at the same rate, it's going to cut into your bottom line eventually. That's poker! I'll be damned if I let those young whipper-snappers get the best of me!

My plans for my blog going forward: 

None.

I'm tired of being the typical blogger that makes promises he doesn't keep. "I'll blog once a week" etc, etc. It never happens, obv. So my plan is basically to blog when I feel like it about what I feel like blogging about. I'll post about my sessions on Lock Poker (Revolution), tutorials/reviews of useful programs for analyzing play, strategy videos, mental game/motivational rants, or just general life stuff like setting a goal of not binge-eating at 3am (impossible). 

So, a quick review the past few months:

May: 

Grinded a bunch on Lock. Ran retardedly below EV for a while, then started playing awful and didn't stop sitting regs when I was off my A/B game. Tilt inevitably ensued. Eventually I decided to just stfu, get better at poker, and appreciate life more. Lock bought out the Cake network and moved to Revolution Gaming. I went on a week vacation to the beach with my family.

June: 

Moved 16 hours away from my hometown of Richmond, VA to paradise - Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Moving is typically difficult. Moving an entire condo with gf and 2 dogs 16 hours away is even harder, supposedly. I wouldn't know since poker has blessed me with the cheddar to pay people move everything for me. Ship it. Best money ever spent ainec. 

New pool:

Spent most of June dealing with cashout issues (weeee), coaching, and exploring Southern Florida. If I worked as little and spent as much as I did in June all the time, I'd be busto by the New Year. I decided towards the end of June that I needed to not allow that to happen :)

July:

Life variance month. Got a phone call from my mom on July 5th that my dad was really sick. Insta-flew home. Things appeared they were going to be ok, so I flew back to Florida. 3 days later, my dad isn't doing well again and I need to return to Virginia again - only this time I was going for 2-3 weeks to help my family while my dad was in the hospital...gf came with me, so we had to take our dogs and drive the 16 hours back to VA. Brutal. Spent about 2 weeks in VA...felt super fortunate that poker allows me to get-up-and-go whenever I really need to. Was good to be with my family during a tough time. My dad still isn't doing very well, so please have him in your thoughts - he's a great guy and a real inspiration to me. 

I also binked 2nd place in the $500 65kgtd on Revolution for 11k. Swongz!

August: 

Back in Florida and back to the grind. Coaching a lot for the staking program that I mentioned in my previous post. Feeling very remotivated with poker. I've worked on my game a bunch the last 2 months and am excited to grind regularly and hopefully put up some good results.

Anyways, that's the short version of it. A pretty crazy last couple months to say the least. 

I hope you are all crushing.

Good luck.

Hokie