Smart Poker Study

Play more effectively, earn more money and be 1% better every day

Sky Matsuhashi

I Am Your Poker Coach

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With every piece of content I create, I treat it like it’s a 1-on-1 session between me (your coach) and you (my student). You should do the same.

Listen to this podcast episode:

A very simple message with this post.

If you treat each podcast, video, article or book chapter from me as if I’m speaking to you 1-on-1, you’ll get more out of every piece of content you consume.

I’m your poker coach and by taking notes on the strategies I give you then purposefully taking action with the action steps, you’re going to turn yourself into the player you want to be.

With a mindset shift from “passive content consumption” to “I do everything my coach (Sky) tells me to”, you’ll never even have to hire a poker coach.

Counting Outs and Making Profitable Calls

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Do you understand outs and odds math? Do you use it to make profitable post-flop drawing calls?

There is a huge issue that many players face… they don’t know how to determine whether their draw is worth chasing. Maybe you have this issue: You flop a flush draw and your opponent bets 2/3 pot. Is your draw strong enough to call? Are you paying too much to chase it?

This uncertainty leads to losing calls.

Listen to this podcast episode as you follow along below.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to quickly calculate the chances of hitting your draw and how to use that number to make a profitable call.

Counting Outs and Calculating the Chance of Hitting

Outs are the cards that can come on the turn or river that can improve your hand into a potentially winning hand.  Here are some examples:

  • You have AK on the 962r flop. How many outs do you have to a TP hand? 6 outs (3x Ace and 3x King)
  • You have T9, and the flop is 2JQr. How many outs do you have to a straight?  8 (open-ended)
  • Now, let’s say you’ve got the same, Ts9s, and the flop is As6s3c. How many outs to the flush?  9 (spades)
  • Same hand, Ts9s on the lovely 8s7s3c flop. Wow, you’re open-ended with the straight-flush draw and two overcards.  How many outs to a TP+ hand? 21 outs (9 spades, 3 Jacks, 3 Sixes, 3 Tens and 3 Nines)

For some people, counting their outs on the flop can be tough because they haven’t developed good board recognition skills. If this sounds like you, you MUST practice board recognition. Here’s how:

  • Grab a deck of cards and deal yourself a hand.
  • Deal a 3-card flop.
  • Compare your hand to the flop and look for draws.
  • Count the number of outs for a TP+ hand.
  • Repeat this with new hands until you run out of cards.

The more practice you put in, the better you’ll be at spotting your draws and counting outs.

The x2 Rule for the Chance of Hitting

Now that we know our outs, how do we calculate our chance of hitting our draw?

We use the x2 Rule: the chance of hitting one of your outs on the next street can be estimated by multiplying the number of outs x 2. So, flopping an open-ended straight draw with 8 outs, x2, means it hits on the turn about 16% of the time. If you were on the turn with your 8 outs, it would hit 16% on the river.

If you wanted to calculate the chance of hitting your flopped draw by the river, you would multiply your outs x4. Your 8 outs on the flop have a 32% chance of hitting by the river. You use the x4 Rule often in tournaments when you’re considering going all-in on the flop so you’re guaranteed to see the river.

The Math Behind the x2 Rule

8 outs on the flop means that out of the 47 unknown cards remaining in the deck (52 card deck minus our hand minus the board), we have a 17% (8/47) chance of hitting one of these outs on the turn. That 17% is very close to the estimated 16% using the x2 Rule.

Keep in mind that with a 17% chance to hit, we’re missing 83% of the time.  Remember this because we’ll use it again.

If we miss our draw on the turn, we still have 8 outs to hit on the river, but now there are only 46 cards remaining in the deck.  So, our chance of hitting the river is 8 out of 46 remaining cards or roughly another 17% (which is also an 83% chance of missing again).

We can use the 83% chance of missing our draw on either street to calculate how often we’re missing on both streets. We miss on the turn 83% and on the river 83%, multiply these together to find the chance of missing on both streets. So, .83 x .83 = 69%. We have a 69% chance of missing our flopped draw by the river. This means we have a 31% chance of hitting the draw on the turn or river (100% – 69%). The actual 31% chance of hitting by the river is very close to the estimated 32% using the x4 Rule.

Paying the Right Price for Chasing Your Draw

You flop the open-ended straight draw for 8 outs. You use the x2 Rule and you know you have a 16% chance of hitting your draw on the turn. Your opponent just bet $.50 into the $1 pot. Is it profitable to call this bet size to hit your draw?

To figure this out, you need to calculate the break-even point on your call then compare your chance of hitting to the break-even point.

Break-even Point for Calling = Total Risk / Total Reward

In this example, you’re risking a call of $.50 to win a total pot of $2 ($1 pot + $.50 bet + $.50 call).

Break-Even Point for Calling = .50 / (1+.5+.5) = .50 / 2 = 25%

If your chance of hitting > BE point, then calling is okay. In this example, 16% < 25%, so calling IS NOT a profitable play to make. You should fold or 4bet bluff instead.

Now this should get you thinking,

“If it’s unprofitable to call a 1/2 pot bet with an open-ended straight draw, how good of a draw do I need to make a profitable call?”

Well, if you had 13 outs, x2, gives you a 26% chance of hitting which is greater than the 25% BE point. So, you would need something like an OESD + 2 overcards for 14 outs. That has a 28% chance of hitting and makes for a profitable call against the 1/2 pot bet.

Break-even Calling Cheat Sheet

Figure 91 from Preflop Online Poker: This cheat sheet will help you make profitable calls.

It can be tough to calculate break-even percentages on the fly. But the great thing about math is that it never changes as long as you’re thinking of bets and calls in terms of the pot. Calling a 1/2 pot bet always breaks even at 25%. It doesn’t matter if it’s $.50 into a $1 pot or a $100 bet into a $200 pot.

The break-even calling %’s on the cheat sheet will help you estimate while you’re playing. If your opponent bets about 1/2 pot, your call needs to win you the pot at least 25%. If they bet roughly full pot, your call needs to win roughly 33% of the time.

Write down the calling break-even %’s on a sticky note so you can use it the next time you’re thinking about calling somebody’s bet.

Challenge

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: Use the x2 Rule and the Break-even Calling Point when deciding whether or not to call with your draw. If your chance of hitting is > the BE calling point, go ahead and call. If not, fold or raise to bluff them off the hand if they can find a fold.

Also, put the BE Calling Point Cheat Sheet on a sticky note to help you with all future calling decisions.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Support the Show

Coinbase makes buying and selling bitcoin super easy, and bitcoin is the best way to deposit and withdraw from online poker sites. Thanks to Robert M, Joshua S, Marco M, Ignacio C, Scott I and Craig for using my Coinbase Friend Referral Link to get a $10 bonus. They each received this bonus $10, and so did I, for their $100 bitcoin purchases through Coinbase. Thanks for the support!

The Dog Doctor, Robert Barnes and Jerry Tommie picked up the Finding and Plugging Leaks Webinar (10% off). This is one of my favorite webinars and I think it’s going to pay for itself dozens of times over (assuming you take notes and take action on what you learn). Thanks all for making this purchase and supporting the show.

Don’t Respect the Player, But Always Respect the Math!

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Always respect the math! Poker’s one big math problem and in this article, I show you the critical importance of 4 poker math concepts. Applying these mathematical bad boys will improve your profitability.

Listen to this podcast episode as you follow along below:

The idea for this article came from a 1-on-1 coaching session with a long-time student named Keith. We were reviewing his recent losing hands and one stood out to me. I questioned him as to why he would play a starting hand as weak as J7s. He said he’s trying to get heads up against every weak player that he has ∅ respect for, and sometimes that means playing really crappy hands.

I told him:

“Don’t respect the player, but always respect the math.”

I whipped out Flopzilla Pro and showed him the equity his J7s had against this player’s calling range… and it was bad. He was a big-time dog and in the long run, it’s going to be tough for him to make J7s profitable with such a preflop equity disadvantage.

Respect the Math of Ranges

Playing with stronger ranges than your opponent gives you a mathematical edge that in the long run, they’re can’t overcome.

How do I know this mathematical edge exists? I do range versus range analysis with Flopzilla Pro, as demonstrated in this video:

Let’s say you’re a tight-aggressive player and your total VPIP is 15% over the last 20,000 hands (lower in EP, higher in LP but averages 15%). Your 15% VPIP range may look like this:

The average VPIP for most of your opponents is 25%-35%. Let’s say 30% is the average player VPIP:

So, your average opponent plays about double the hands you play, which makes their 30% VPIP range much weaker than yours.

Quick Quiz: How much preflop equity do you think your 15% VPIP range has against their 30% VPIP range? Is it 50% 55%? 65%?

In Flopzilla Pro, using the “multi-player mode” (red circle below), you can pit the 15% range versus the 30% range and you’ll see this:

Wow, your tighter range gives you 56% preflop equity (rounded) against them. What does this mean?

It means the math is on your side!

Vegas casinos built their billion-dollar empires over the long run with a 1-5% edge in their various games. You hold a 12.5% mathematical edge against your opponents (56.257% – 43.743%). In the long run, they can’t beat you! (assuming you’re making good post-flop decisions)

The takeaway lesson here:

Tighter ranges give you an unbeatable mathematical edge in the long run.

Do you want a mathematical preflop edge against your opponents? Get the Kiss Cash Game Ranges here:

Respect the Math of Position

You probably know that position is king. But, do you play with this in mind?

Filter in your PT4 database right now for Saw Flop In Position and record the # of hands and your win rate:

Now, run a filter for Saw Flop NOT In Position and record the # of hands and your win rate:

Most likely, you’ll find your win rate is much higher when in position (IP). Why is this? Because:

“Position is king”

With position you have more information to work with and your opponent has to contend with your positional advantage on the flop, turn and river. When IP, it’s easier to pot control, easier to bet or raise for value and it’s easier to bluff.

And you might not realize this, but being IP gives you more time to think about the situation when you’re in. When they act first, the time they take to make a decision is a gift to you. You have extra precious seconds to think about things like range/board texture interaction, their tendencies, the stack and pot sizes and all other important information.

How often are you in position on the flop? If it’s not at least 40% of the time, you’re not striving to play in position as much as possible.

Why the heck aren’t you?!

You see that mathematically, IP > OOP, so if you want to make poker easier on yourself, more enjoyable and more profitable, you MUST strive for IP play as much as possible.

This means you’ll play tighter in the early positions and call less frequently from the blinds, even if you’re up against a weak player who you have ∅ respect for.

Need help running PokerTracker 4 filters?

Respect the Math of HUD Statistics

Your opponent Folds to Flop Cbets 70% of the time? Why didn’t you cbet bluff the flop just now? I understand if you flopped the nuts and don’t want them to fold, but most of the time you’re not flopping the nuts and you fail to flop a pair or a draw. You should be firing flop or turn bluffs when they’ve shown a tendency to fold. The math of their flop folding tendency is on your side.

Should you still cbet the flop for value even if you flop a monster? Totally because…

“Get value while the gettin’s good.”

Value Gettin’ Example: Flopping a Monster

You flop TP or better and you’re up against a player who, the math shows, only folds on the flop 45% of the time? You’ve got to value bet here. Sure, you might flop quads 5’s on the 655 flop and you don’t want your opponent to fold so I can go along with checking one street.

However, what if you’re against is a strong and capable player with 55 on the 655 flop? They’re looking at that flop and the math is telling them it’s a hard to hit board. If you bet into them at 1/2 pot, they might think you’re bluffing and they can call with their 2 overcards (KT, QJ, etc.). Or maybe, they’re capable of bluff-raising on hard-to-hit boards. You bet 1/2 pot, they think they can hit your pain threshold by 3x’ing you and bam! Your tiny 1/2 pot value bet gets at least 3x value. You can now either call or re-raise, whichever you think will earn you even more chips.

The Math Helps you Listen to What Their Actions Tell You

If you’re on the BTN and hold ATs and the BB 3bets you, what do you do? First, you look at his positional 3bet % in the BB. If it’s only 1% over 100 opportunities, the math is telling you he’s doing it with AA or KK only. Easy fold.

However, if the math is telling you he 3bets from the BB 15% over 100 opportunities, he’s got loads of bluffs in his range. Folding is still an option if you want, but you’ve also got the option to call with ATs which is ahead of some of his bluffing hands, plus you’ve got position. Or, you can 4bet re-bluff him off his BB 3bet stealing range. If you’ve seen him 3bet/fold a few times from the BB, the math is again on your side and he’s likely folding. Just size your 4bet big enough to hit his pain threshold and get him to fold.

Respect the Math of Your History

Let’s dive into your PokerTracker 4 database of hands. Filter through your last 20,000 hands and record the # of hands and win rates for:

  • Preflop 2bet
  • Call Preflop 2bet
  • Preflop 3bet
  • Call Preflop 3bet

Most likely, you win more money with aggressive plays (making 2bets or 3bets) than the passive plays (calling 2bets or 3bets).

So, the math of your own history is telling you that Aggression > Passivity. So, why do you call preflop so much? I’m not saying don’t call at all, but because Aggression > Passivity, you MUST make more preflop raises than calls.

Look at the #’s of hands you wrote down. If you’re calling more 2bets than you are making 2bets, you’re NOT respecting the math. If you’re calling more 3bets than you making 3bets, you’re NOT respecting the math. Get it through your thick skull that Aggression > Passivity… so stop calling so much and start raising more.

Post-flop History Repeats

Run 4 more filters and record the # of hands and win rates once again:

  • Flop Cbet
  • Turn Cbet
  • Call Flop Cbet
  • Call Turn Cbet

I’m pretty sure you’ll find that making the cbet is more profitable than calling the cbet. So, stop calling so much preflop which gives your opponents the opportunity to cbet into you. Another way to look at this, be the preflop aggressor so you’re the one making cbets, not facing them.

Respect the math of Aggression > Passivity.

Conclusion:

“In the long run, a respect for the math paired with good decision-making skills will make you a winner.”

Challenge

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:

Get the KISS Cash Game Ranges (above) and print them out. Do it now!!! These will give you a mathematical edge against most of your low and micro stakes opponents. The ranges come with directions to help you learn them. I recommend playing with them through your next 5,000 hands. Good luck!

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Support the Show

These super poker peeps picked up my first book: JV, Simone Leiter, Mr. Baby Bigz, Raul Mirabel and Jarvi Jyri. They got How to Study Poker Volume 1 in PDF, audiobook or they saved $$$ by getting both.

And Byron Hernandez, David Backham, Bret Burns, Jarvi Jyri and Mr. Baby Bigz picked up How to Study Poker Volume 2 direct from me as well. You’ve got your choice of PDF, audiobook or save $$$ by getting both.

Curiosity Kills Your Winnings

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There is a common issue among all losing players… curiosity causes them to call rivers way too frequently with subpar hands. How many times have you reached the river with 1 pair, your opponent bets, and based on the player, the board, their range and their bet size, you knew you were beat but you called anyways? I bet your answer is, “Waaayyy too many times.”

This curiosity, to know that they actually did have you beat, is killing your winnings.

In this post, I’m going to help you satisfy your curiosity off-the-felt so that you can fold more often on the river in order to improve your winnings.

Listen to podcast #323 as you follow along below:

Just imagine if you are able to fold when you know you are beat. How many blinds would you save? How high would your win rate be? I’ve always believed that a penny saved is a penny earned in poker, and I’m going to help increase your poker earning below.

Curiosity Kills Your Winnings

Yeppers, curiosity kills cats and it also kills your winnings. But it doesn’t just kill your winnings, it kills your bankroll and your enjoyment of the game. When you call on the river to verify your read when you already know you’re beat, you’re going against all your poker training and instincts, and you’re just handing your chips to your opponent.

You end up berating yourself for your terrible call and your chip stack hates you because it just lost some hard-won friends. Now it’s smaller and weaker due to your curiosity.

This bad call can lead to anger and tilt and further losses as well. So, let me help you ditch your curiosity on-the-felt. Here are some strategies that I use to make better river calling decisions.

Trust Your Gut

That’s right. Your gut has developed of sense of when you’re beat or when you’re ahead. This gut instinct comes from spending months or even years playing and studying poker.

How often do you observe a hand after you folded preflop, and you see a player make a bet, and you just instinctively know they have it? All the time, I bet. You say to yourself, “Wow, he’s got it. The other player should fold.” And at showdown, your gut is often proved correct.

Why is it easier to listen to your gut when you’re not involved in the hand? It’s because your emotions aren’t blocking the connection between your mind and gut. When you hold that TP hand, you want to win. That emotion drives you to ignore your gut which is telling you to fold.

You MUST begin training yourself to listen to your gut. Before your next session, give your gut permission to direct your actions (sounds hokey, but it works). If your gut is telling you that you’re beat on the river? Fold. If it’s telling you the other player will fold to a 3bet? Make a 3bet bluff. If it’s telling you that they have a 1 pair hand and will call your 2 pair river value bet? Make the value bet.

Before Taking Action, Ask Yourself Poker’s Ultimate Question

What are they doing this with?

If you ask and answer this question every time before taking action, especially before you call somebody’s bet or raise on the river, the answer is going to guide your button click. In order to answer the question properly, you must take into account the type of player you’re up against, their range and the board, and the actions they’ve made. If the answer to the question is, “They’re only doing this with 2 pair or better”, then no gut instinct needed. You only have 1 pair, you obviously lose to any 2 pair hand… easy fold.

Curiosity isn’t even a factor when you use your intellect and reasoning to answer Poker’s Ultimate Question. Just remember to allow the answer to the question to guide your response.

Hand Reading is Critical

In order to properly answer Poker’s Ultimate Question, you must put them on a preflop range of hands and narrow it through the streets. This is a skill called Hand Reading and it’s the most important skill you can develop. In order to become the poker player you want to be, you must be able to hand read every opponent in every situation. With a good idea of your opponent’s range, folding, betting, raising and calling are all easier to do and you’re more likely to be making the correct play.

To help you learn how to hand, I created an epic 3,700-word Hand Reading post with loads of videos and action steps that will teach you how to do hand reading.

Play the Player

Are they acting contrary to their tendencies? This is especially noticeable when you’re up against Fish, TAG or Nit players. When these players are aggressively committing chips to the pot with big bets and big raises, especially on the river, they’re acting contrary to their natural tendencies.

  • Fish naturally just want to win at showdown with their 1 pair hands and only raise with the nuts.
  • Nits and TAG players like to play for smaller pots unless they’ve got a very strong hand worthy of committing lots of chips, especially with big bets or raises on the river.

So, when a generally calling, checking or pot controlling player commits a lot of river chips, leave curiosity behind and just fold.

Call When Your Hand > Their Betting Range

The only reason to call on the river is if your hand is ahead of their betting range. This means that you must be able to name hands that they’re betting that are worse than your hand.

You have AQ on the AJ983 board. They bet ¾ pot on the river. If they can do it with AT, A7, A6, KJ, and QJ, then calling is okay. But, if they’re only doing it with AK or 2 pair hands or better, then calling is a terrible choice.

So, if you ask the question, “What are they doing this with?” and you can’t name any worse hands, just fold. If you can name lots of worse hands, then calling is absolutely fine.

Before I tell you how to satisfy your curiosity off-the-felt, one last tip for you…

Learn from Your Mistakes

Those who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

So, finally get this lesson through your thick skull! You’ve called too many rivers when you knew you were beat and you berated yourself afterwards. Commit to never doing this again. Your goal, when you know you’re beat, is to fold.

Your past curiosity, and the fact that you still haven’t learned from these repeated mistakes, has caused you to lose 20/30/100bb’s over and over again on the river. Ditch the curiosity, learn from your past mistakes and start folding more often.

Satisfy Your Curiosity Off-the-felt

I want to help you satisfy your curiosity, but it’s gonna take some off-the-felt work. Presumably, you’re an online player with a database of PokerTracker 4 hands. Let’s use this database to learn from your river calling mistakes of the past. Here’s the 4-step process:

Step 1: Filter for Losing River Calls

Step 2: Count the # of Losing 1 Pair Hands

You can see your final hand easily in the “Final Hand” column in PokerTracker 4. So, you can count this without going through each and every hand.

In the picture above, the 2nd hand has the Final Hand labeled as “Two Pair, Kings and Sixes”. But, if you look closely, you’ll see the board was 8K52K. With the pair of Kings on the board, I would count this as a 1 pair river calling hand.

Step 3: Count the Hands Strengths that Beat You

Again, you can do this without reviewing each hand. Look at the “Winning Hand” column in PT4 (picture above). Because you filtered for all losing hands, this column will show the hand strengths that beat you.

In the picture above, there was one straight that beat me, a better 1 pair hand and a three of a kind hand.

You’ll probably find that most of the hands that beat you are 2 pair or better, many of them being trips, straights or flushes.

Step 4: Review 50+ Losing Hands

I know it sounds like a lot of reviewing to do, and you can space it out over a few days. The goal here is to satisfy your curiosity off-the-felt so you don’t feel the need to do it in-game. Reviewing lots of hand will hopefully satisfy your curiosity and it will help this lesson sink in.

As you review these hands, ask yourself if they’re betting any worse hands on the river. Think about their range and player type to help you find your calling mistakes.

My guess is that at least 80% of the time, you should’ve known you were beat and folding was the correct play.

I also recommend that as you go, you keep track of the # of BB’s you would’ve saved if you had folded when you knew you were beat. I bet you could’ve saved hundreds of BB’s. If you add up 400bb’s you could’ve saved, that’s 4 full buy-ins that could’ve been in your bankroll right now.

Do you need to learn how to find the fold more often? Check out my Finding the Fold Course within the Poker Forge:

This is THE COURSE that will help you finally learn to find the fold! Too many of us call and give loads of value to our opponents because we don’t want to be bluffed, we hope we’re ahead or we just don’t know what else to do.

This course will help you save money in post-flop play by avoiding terrible money-losing calls. Saving money in poker is just as good as making money, so be ready for your win rates and bottom line to increase with this one. The course contains:

  • 18 strategy, review or demonstration videos
  • 3 quizzes
  • LIVE Q&A Recording
  • Statistics and Win Rate tracker to gauge your progress

Join the Poker Forge today for access to this and 7 other Masterclass courses that will help you become the player you want to be.

Challenge

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:  Satisfy your curiosity off-the-felt by completing the 4 steps I outlined above. This is a critical action to take that will help you save money on your poker journey, and every BB saved is a BB earned.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Silverio Catenacci, Robert Monighetti, Marco De Maria, John Barry, Chris Moody, Josh Swenski, taconight, Adam Wiklo, Paul Griffin, Leo Messmer, Alexander Godborg, Dominik Gasser, Cole Hanke, Larry Leonard, Logan Yu, Jeff Catalano and Nigel McWilliams picked up PokerTracker 4 (get it here to support the show), the best poker tracking software.  I love it and use it everyday!  In appreciation, I sent all these awesome poker peeps a copy of my Smart HUD for PT4.  With an ever-growing database of hands to study and all the helpful features, PT4 is the go-to software for serious poker players.

3 Steps for Achieving Your 2021 Poker Goals

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I want to help you achieve your 2021 poker goals. The new year is always an opportunity to make some important changes in your life and to strive for new things that are important to you. This post will help you do exactly that within your poker journey.

Maybe you’ve played poker for years and you’ve finally decided to take this game seriously in 2021. Or, you’ve always taken it seriously and you want 2021 to be your best poker year ever.

In this post, I’ll give you the 3 steps you must follow to have a successful 2021 poker journey. You’re going to record your recent results, make SMART goals and determine what you must study and work on to achieve your 2021 poker goals.

Listen to podcast #322 as you follow along below:

Step 1: Record Current Results

You have to do an honest assessment of where you are in poker at the start of your 2021 journey. What areas do you know you need to work on? Where are your skills lacking? What are your poker leaks?

To help you track your results, in episode #320, I gave you a list of 41 different statistics and win rates to monitor that will help you find your areas of opportunity. You can download the 41 Stats & Win Rates Tracker here.

Download the tracker, open up PokerTracker 4 and record the stats and win rates for your last 20K hands. No hesitation! Stop reading and do it right now!

The results you record are your yardstick for measuring your 2021 progress. Every 2 weeks you’re going to re-record all of these stats and win rates to see how your journey is progressing. You’re doing this because the only way to know if your skills and results are actually improving is to track your progress in these important measurements.

When you look at your numbers, you’ll see some that downright disgust you. “I’m losing 2.5bb’s every time I call a raise from the BB?!” Or, “I’m losing 18bb’s on average every time I call on the river!?” These natural reactions to bad numbers indicate exactly what you need to work on.

Step 2: Make SMART 2021 Poker Goals

Now that you know your current results and spot some areas of opportunity, you need to set some SMART poker goals around those areas. To begin, set just one SMART goal at a time and strive to achieve it before you set your next one.

SMART is an acronym that stands for:

  • Specific – it details exactly what you want to accomplish.
  • Measurable – you can track your progress to see if you’ve accomplished it or how close you got.
  • Achievable – it must be in the realm of possibility and challenge you to work hard to achieve it.
  • Relevant – the goal must matter to you and fit within your overall aim.
  • Time-bound – deadlines add a sense of urgency. Also, I recommend that your goals be either weekly, bi-weekly or at most monthly. It’s so much easier to stay focused on short-term goals as opposed to year-long goals.

Here is a goal from one of my students that fits the SMART criteria:

Improve my BB calling results in the next two weeks from -265bb/100 hands to better than -100bb/100 hands which is what it would be if I had folded every BB hand.

Step 3: Determine What You Need to Do

The key to achieving your 2021 poker goals is to do the things that will get you there.

As a simple example, here’s one of my own SMART goals for January:

I will finish the “Analyzing Your Opponents Course” within the Poker Forge by doing one of the 11 remaining videos every day before I work on anything else.

So, with 16 days remaining in the month, I need to make one video per day with a few missed days thrown in. If I do it, I’ll be done by January 31st and will have completed one of my January goals.

The Problem: Too many people make a goal just in hopes that they’ll achieve it.

But here’s the thing, hoping or wishing for something won’t make it happen. You may have heard this old expression before: “Wish in one hand, take a crap in the other, and see which one fills up first.”

There’s no substance to hoping or wishing for something to happen. You’re better off taking action as you’ll be more likely to get what you want.

So, let’s discuss what you would need to do to achieve a better BB calling win rate (the example goal above).

You decide to study and play with purpose over the next two weeks. Everything will revolve around calling out of the BB.

Here’s how you will purposefully take action:

  1. Find 3 videos to study, one every 4 days.
  2. Day one, you’ll watch the first video and take notes on important strategies that you want to practice for yourself.
  3. Over the first 4 days you’ll play one session per day where you will review your notes before you begin your session. Then, you’ll play with the strategies in mind and try to implement them as you strive to make better BB calling decisions. You’ll tag all relevant hands to study later.
  4. Each morning before work you’ll review your tagged hands along with your strategy notes and figure out what you’re doing right and wrong.
  5. That night after work, you’ll play another session with improved strategies.
  6. After 4 days of this, you’ll repeat the process with the next video and then the third video after that.
  7. Re-record all your stats and win rates at the end of 14 days to see how you’ve improved.

Review Results

Let’s say that after 2 weeks you improved your BB calling win rate from -265bb/100 hands to -75bb/100 hands. Success!

But is it good enough for you? Do you want to improve your win rate even further or move on to your next goal? That decision’s up to you but either way, you’ll repeat the same process: Find an area of opportunity, make a SMART goal, figure out what you need to do to achieve it then work smartly to do so.

If you continue with this process through 2021, you’ll have the best year ever and your results will blow you away.

Challenge

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:

Follow the 3 steps outlined above to achieve you 2021 poker goals:

  1. Record your current results so you can figure out what you need to work on. (download the 41 Stats & Win Rates tracker)
  2. Set a SMART goal for the next week or two.
  3. Determine what actions will help you achieve your goal… and get to work!

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker journey.

Support the Show

Rodney Salsa, J Brink, Jamison Anderson, Bjorn Beyers, HJ, Nick Henderson, Peg, Martin Murray, Ströller, Matej, Victor Candeias, Paul Fleischer, V, Amarra, Stonemonk, Greg Vogelsperger, soupmarine and Chris Dobson bought the Smart HUD with a 1.5 hour webinar for PokerTracker 4.  It’s the best online poker HUD in the business with every critical stat in the HUD and the 7 custom popups. This is what every online journey needs for maximum player exploitation.

The 12 Days of Christmas 2020 Podcast Episodes

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It’s the 12 Days of Christmas… Merry Christmas!

My gift to you, a new podcast episode every day through Christmas Day. Give ’em a listen below.

The 12 Days of Christmas

🎄 The First Day of Christmas 🎄

I ain’t got time for that!

🎅 The Second Day of Christmas 🎅

Money is tight

🤶 The Third Day of Christmas 🤶

My honey-buns won’t let me

🦌 The Fourth Day of Christmas 🦌

I’m NOT a math person

✨ The Fifth Day of Christmas ✨

Is it even possible?

❄️ The Sixth Day of Christmas ❄️

What’s the best format?

⛄ The Seventh Day of Christmas ⛄

I’m not tech savvy

🌟 The Eighth Day of Christmas 🌟

I’ll study eventually

🕯️ The Ninth Day of Christmas 🕯️

I’m overwhelmed all the time

🔔 The Tenth Day of Christmas 🔔

How can I compete?

🍪🥛 The Eleventh Day of Christmas 🥛🍪

Easy for you to say!

🎁 The Twelfth Day of Christmas 🎁

I’m too old!