Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Speed of progress?

I'm generally disappointed in my poker progress during this calender year.

The areas of development that I care about are, in no particular order:
- limit hold'em ring game skills (online and live)
- NL hold'em ring game skills (online and live)
- NL hold'em tournament skills (online and live)
- non-hold'em game skills (probably omaha, omaha hi-lo and triple draw are the games I care about. I think my memory is too poor to make the investment in playing stud. At some point, I will put effort into stud, but I think time invested in omaha or triple draw would be much better spent)
- bankroll size

Mostly from reading some other poker players' blogs, I'm feeling pretty inadequate about my rate of progress in the areas I care about. Naturally there could be a great deal of exaggeration in some people's blogs, but there are a number of players that I do suspect are being fairly honest and accurate with their status and the time period of their development.

I need to take some effort to analyze my overall strategy for pursuing my poker goals. Sometimes I feel like I just don't have enough time for my poker pursuits, but this may just be me lying to myself. I just don't know....

Are these other players just more talented? disciplined? focused? efficient? energetic?

1 comment:

ScurvyDog said...

I think the sticking point is how you measure rate of progress for the areas you mention. Bankroll size is the only one that's easily quantified but isn't always the best barometer for whether you're playing good or bad poker.

From what you've posted, it sounds like you're having what most people would define as success (i.e. making money) at pretty much all the areas you mention. From your post, though, it sounds like that's not what you're using as a measuring stick, as you say yourself that you're feeling pretty inadequate as far as development over the year.

Speaking solely for myself, I feel like I'm hitting a bit of a similar wall. For me, it's a matter of time, or lack thereof. I've been happy with my results so far, especially in relation to where I was a year ago, but I'm reaching a point of being stretched pretty thin, time-wise. I feel like I need to move up in limits to be challenged and continue to learn and develop, but 30/60 would demand a whole new level of time and dedication that I just don't have right now.

Maybe it's just a matter of setting different, more tangible goals. I'm fairly focused lately on grining out enough profits to take a few shots at WSOP events next year, so I'm not exactly sweating what seems to be stalled out development in general. Plus it's forcing me to mix things up a bit by playing larger buy-in MTTs online, which I need more experience in. For me that's a more tangible realistic goal right now instead of the more amorphous "Become a better limit HE player" sort of goals.