Motivation
 

In the poll we had of posters' ages, there were a lot of people under 25. I'm running really well at 5/10, and I'm making way too much money for a 20-year old kid. The problem I have is playing enough. The avatar open challenge on the general board does nothing to me; I don't care in the slightest. I offered to buy about a dozen friends dinner for every month I miss 40k hands; I made it in May and failed in June and July, and am way behind pace in August.

How do other young guns motivate themselves? I have tuition and living expenses for the rest of undergrad safely stored away, so I don't have an immediate need for money. It seems poker is a lot like studying for me, but I don't have an exam tomorrow, so I procrastinate instead.

I realize that online poker won't be around in its current form forever, so it would be a good idea to make as much as possible this summer while I have nothing else to do, but I find it really hard to put in the hours. Anyone else in a similar situation?

Re: Motivation
 

My motivation used to be growing my bankroll to play high stakes. I'm not really going to have the time this year to put in the work to doing that, so I'm starting to take sizeable chunks of bankroll and invest/buy toys. I've found that after I take a sizeable amount away, I get this feeling that I need to play to rebuild my roll. Also I've started playing less in exchange for juicier games. Poker is boring when you just open party and load 4 tables, but if you only play when specific fish play, it's much more enjoyable/ start making more money and feel good about playing. Make any sense?

Re: Motivation
 

Just try to always get your bankroll to play the next limits and then try to beat that game. I'm a pretty competive person by nature so a new challenge usually does it for me.

Re: Motivation
 

I have the same problem sometimes too. At first I worked really hard and wanted to get better because I thought I could make a career out of poker. Then I realized that the reason why it's so easy to make money now is because it's just a fad and won't last until I have a family I need to support. Plus, I have to focus on school and obtaining a business degree.

All in all, I don't think it's such a bad thing to take some time off poker if you're a teenager or in your early twenties, because the money's gonna run out eventually and when you get older you're gonna wish you had focused more on school. Or, you could always ride the poker boom now and plan on going to school later...but due to parental constraints, that's not an option for me :<

Re: Motivation
 

hey man, I'm having your same problem. It's even worse for me cause I dropped out of school to play for a living. My "goal" is to make $2K a week, but that's so easy, that I play 3 times a week for 4 hours and hit. But when I raise my goal to say 6K a week, I have a hard week, make 2-3K and then I just get unmotivated and drop my goal again. I don't know man, if you find a good answer hit me up. On a side note, how long do you think internet poker is goign to continue to be "easy" I'm not sure, hopefully we have a good 5 years left.

Re: Motivation
 

If online poker stays around like this for 5 years, I may be playing something absurd like 500/1000 NL and I can play one hour a week, so that would be pretty cool.

Edit: But then I'll feel dumb for only making 10k a week when I could be making 100 and the problem will still be there, except I'll have skin made out of platinum.

Re: Motivation
 

[ QUOTE ]
hey man, I'm having your same problem. It's even worse for me cause I dropped out of school to play for a living. My "goal" is to make $2K a week, but that's so easy, that I play 3 times a week for 4 hours and hit. But when I raise my goal to say 6K a week, I have a hard week, make 2-3K and then I just get unmotivated and drop my goal again. I don't know man, if you find a good answer hit me up. On a side note, how long do you think internet poker is goign to continue to be "easy" I'm not sure, hopefully we have a good 5 years left.

[/ QUOTE ]

Personally I go through periods of time when I hate poker and would rather do something else. Oftentimes I'll make enough money for a week in a few hours and then just sort of find other things to do the rest of the week, even though I know this is wrong. After the initial poker obsession phase (which for me was like 6 years ago) it's hard to play for 12 hours straight on the internet. In live games I can get in a lot more hours, but those are less profitable.

I have an addition to the family coming and that seems to have helped motivate me, so you might want to try having some kids. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

As for poker, I don't think it's going anywhere for a while. It's possible that online poker will fizzle someday, but just look at the prize pools for the online tournaments-they keep getting bigger and bigger.

Re: Motivation
 

i know exactly what you are talking about. the last 2 hours i've just been sitting here on my laptop chatting with people and surfing the web not making money that i could be making every minute that goes by. at the beginning of the summer i could easily put in 6-10 hours/day. the last 6 weeks or so i haven't been motivated at all to play near as much.

i also got so bored with cash games that i played in multi tables tournaments for a month, but i didn't enjoy breaking even for a month straight.

once i go back to school and actually have a life outside of poker i'll probably be much more motivated to play.

Re: Motivation
 

i have trouble putting in 1k hands a day, its really ridiculous. the weird part is that 6 months ago when i was a much worse player with a much lower winrate and less suitable mindset i could play much more, and now that i can consistently win what is a lot of money to me i have trouble playing as much. youd think that now id have less trouble playing more since now im making more money and poker is easier for me. that said i do have a lot of non poker stuff going on in life so its not like im sitting around jerking off all day.

what do people aim for? 10k hands a week? more?

Re: Motivation
 

If you are living comfortably, then the only reason to keep playing more is personal enjoyment, or obviously to plan for your future retirement/investments so you can come back here and post about ducks.