Online Poker Action Plans

In our article on Goal Setting for Poker Players we discussed how setting goals could help poker players to gain a sense of direction and thereby develop themselves and their game more effectively than someone who played the game with no clearly defined goals. Now we will look at improving your chances of reaching your personal set goals by developing online poker action plans.

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This will give you a step-by-step route that you can follow in a logical manner.

Creating an online poker action plan isn’t a complicated business, but it will require some time and thought. Focus on one goal at a time and proceed as follows:

1 - Start by breaking the goal down into a series of smaller sub-goals that you will need to achieve in order to achieve the main goal. For example, if you want to turn a £100 bankroll into £1,000, you will need to turn it into £200, £500 and £750 (to list just a few of the possible sub-goals) along the way. Or, if your goal is to learn to play Omaha, sub-goals might include reading particular books on the subject and playing at free Omaha tables. You can set as many sub-goals as you prefer but, generally speaking, the more sub-goals you have, the more useful your online poker action plan will be.

2 – When you have listed all of the sub-goals for your selected main goal, arrange them into the order in which they need to be achieved. Again, using the bankroll goal as an example, you would need to turn your £100 into £200 before you would turn it into £500, and so on.

3 – Take a sheet of paper (or open a new document if you would prefer to have your online poker action plans in electronic format) and use your main goal as a heading. That done, write down all of your sub-goals in order with each sub-goal on a separate line. You now have an action plan that you can follow to help you achieve your main goal.

Following your action plan is a simple matter or taking each sub-goal in turn and focusing on that one sub-goal – and only on that one sub-goal – until it has been achieved. For example, if your main goal is to turn £100 into £1,000 and your first sub-goal is to turn your bankroll into £200, you should forget the £1,000 and focus all of your efforts on turning £100 into £200. When you have achieved your first sub-goal, mark it as achieved and then switch your focus to the next sub-goal on the list, and so on.

By focusing on one sub-goal at a time, you avoid the problem of allowing the much larger main goal to intimidate you in any way. At the same time, focusing on smaller sub-goals will make it a lot easier for you to muster the level of self-belief and self-confidence that is required to succeed.

Achieving your goals as an online poker player will always require plenty of skill, effort and discipline, but by breaking them down into manageable action plans you will give yourself the best possible chance of succeeding. Follow your online poker action plans step-by-step and we think you will be pleasantly surprised at how much progress you can make when you approach your game in this way.

William Briggs