New Year's (Poker) Resolutions

I love New Year's, and not just for the ample opportunities to correct people when they write dates on things. I love making New Year's resolutions, for poker. I truly believe these resolutions help me refocus my energy and my priorities, reassess my strengths and weaknesses, and rededicate myself to thinking about the game and improving as a player.



Let's look back at some of the resolutions I made in January 2005 and evaluate how I did with them during the year. Then, I'll put a few new resolutions out there for 2006. Also, I once wrote in my poker journal (www.mattmatros.com/journal.htm) that I don't see a lot of pros celebrating milestones, and that it's easy to get frustrated when you play this game for a living. That's why I think every poker player should take a step back at the end of the year and pick at least one poker highlight. Here are some of my 2005 poker highlights:



1. Passing the $1 million mark in career poker winnings (before taxes and expenses, mind you).



2. Making my first World Series of Poker final table, in the $3,000 limit hold'em event.



3. Moving up in limits for my regular hold'em game from $30-$60 to $100-$200.



But because we take the good with the bad in this game, I'll throw in a lowlight, as well.



2005 poker lowlight: Failing to cash in six tournaments with buy-ins of $5,000 or more.



And now, on to the resolutions – the old and the new. You'll notice that I have no resolutions concerning results. I write resolutions only about things I have some ability to control.



2005 resolution: I'd like to open with, and call raises with, more hands.

Grade: B+. While I'm still no Phil Ivey, I definitely succeeded in opening up my game this year. I'm more willing to call raises in position with speculative hands, more willing to attack the blinds, and more willing to resteal than I was a year ago. There is still work to be done, however. I think I can play more hands for a profit if I just have the intestinal fortitude to enter the pot with them.

2006 resolution: I'd like to open with, and call raises with, even more hands.

2005 resolution: I'd like to bluff the river more.

Grade: B+. Similar to the above, I found more spots to bluff the river this year, but I still think I'm missing bets there.

2006 resolution: I'd like to bluff the river even more.

2005 resolution: I'd like to value-bet the river more.

Grade: A-. Value-betting is one of the strongest parts of my game. Maybe it's because I'm a young punk, but people often call me, especially on the end. Just the other day I moved in for twice the size of the pot on the river on a board of 5-5-5-A-6, absolutely certain my opponent would call with an ace. He did, and I won with quad fives. I'm convinced that 95 percent of players would've made less money than I did on that hand, and there were many other hands like that one this year.

2006 resolution: Keep up the value-betting on the river.

2005 resolution: I'd like to do a serious study of what my ranges are for various sequences of actions and cut down on my exploitability.

Grade: D+. While I try to think about this kind of thing as much as I can (see my column titled "Think Like a Game Theorist"), I haven't approached doing a "serious study" of the subject. Since I failed this resolution in 2005, I'll need a more specific one for the new year.

2006 resolution: Set aside and schedule time for poker study. Identify at least three typical poker situations in which my play is too exploitable.

2005 resolution: I'd like to keep better records.

Grade: B-. This was the first year that I actually understood the level of record-keeping that most full-time players employ. Although I was much better about it this year than in years past, there were still gaps in my log where I wasn't sure how many hours I played, which games I was playing, or what day I played them. And I'm still far behind some of my colleagues who have applications synched to their PokerTracker database, so they can instantly look at graphs of their rate of return, hourly earnings, and variance.

2006 resolution: To record time, date, hours, and location for every cash-game session I play. To record entrants, finishing position, buy-in amount, and net profit/loss for every tournament I play. To become more adept at using my data to analyze and find weaknesses in my game.

2005 resolution: I'd like to log more hours at the table.

Grade: C. In 2005, for the first time ever, poker was my primary occupation for all 12 months. That said, I didn't really dedicate myself to putting in the hours. I had stretches where I'd play five or six days a week online for the appropriate amount of time each day, and obviously I saw plenty of hands when I traveled to tournaments. But I got lazy for many weeks at a time. The occasional vacation is OK – it's one of the best perks of the job. I still need to be less lazy than I am now. I was lucky to catch good cards for most of the year. Given how rarely I played, my year could've been a disappointment if the cards had turned on me.

2006 resolution: Schedule time to play poker, to ensure that I play enough hours over the course of the year to withstand the negative swings.

2005 resolution: I'd like to improve my table instincts.

Grade: Incomplete. I'm giving myself an incomplete because I think improving table instincts is an ongoing process that can't really be evaluated, even after a year. To avoid having the same difficulty in evaluating myself in 2007, I'll come up with a more concrete resolution for 2006.

2006 resolution: Convert some of my "reads" at the table into numbers, postmortem. Keep a record of how close my reads come to my opponents' actual holdings, as much as possible. Experiment with relying more on instinct than I normally would for a few tournaments. Experiment with relying less on instinct than I normally would for a few tournaments.

And finally, here are some new resolutions for 2006.

2006 resolution: I want to enter more major tournaments than I did in 2005.

2006 resolution: I want to think more seriously about folding on the river in limit hold'em.

2006 resolution: I want to make a greater effort to work with other poker players to battle potential collusion in tournaments, and to make sure poker players are treated fairly, especially during televised events.



The two issues in that last resolution might need some explaining. I think it's time that players come together to make and enforce sensible rules about soft-playing, chip-dumping, and even percentage-swapping. And if poker players are a major part of a poker television broadcast, and if television networks make a ton of money broadcasting poker, do you think poker players should have to pay for the privilege of allowing the television networks to make money off them?



Me, neither.



But these are the subjects of future columns. For now, I wish you good luck in the coming poker year.



Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at http://www.cardplayer.com/.