[pfkaok]

this was also probably lost in the length of my other post.

when you look at the most viewed posts, most of the highest up ones contain very little content. and i know i participated in the contest last week, but i think that was my final step in realizing how dumb and actually harmful a lot of these contests/challenges can be. one post that jumps out to have a large number of replies, and was horrible is the *november goals thread*. i was going to make this point in that, but it was already so huge that it would get ignored, as it probably will anyways in this long post of mine. but that whole thread was moronic. if only fossilma could still post here i guarantee he would agree with me 100%. i've never met the guy, but i read almost all his posts, and from that, and his interview, i'm certain that he would say you're all dumb for making up "goals" like that. the fact that it wasn't mentioned in the thread how bad of an idea it was shows the level of understanding of the game by most people here. fossilman, as well as any other top player will tell you... the only goal that you should ever have is to make good decisions. putting in a lot of hours, or hard studying also of course makes sense, but almost everyone in there had some sort of monetary goals. or winning goals. that is an increadibly bad thing to do. as much as everyone on here swears they're not results oriented(b/c they know thats bad), this thread shows that most still are to some degree. setting goals like that in something as highly variant as MTT play is awful. it will usually hurt you. if you start off well you might lose some edge and not feel like you need to play quite as much. if you start off bad you could start having bits of selfdoubt creep in, which could lead to subtle tilt, and lack of confidence. i don't see how anything positive could come of it, except for maybe after you see how it hurt you it could be a learning experience. this is also the case in LHE, as has been seen here several times. i myself did a monthlong challenge, and it did help me quite a bit to see how futile and bad of an idea it was. it was good though, since i did put in tons of hands, and learned from it. but at the same time, if i had put in all those hands without the stupid goal i almost cerainly would have done better. see also shneids and gonores. both increadibly good players who had similar problems with monetary goal challenges. and alobar couldn't even make it though his b/c he knew it was hurting his game too much.

poker is a game. its a very fun game, but its a game of chance, and its unique in the amount of luck in contains. re-reading the gigabet success/failure thread earlier this week made this even more clear to me. you can't worry about winning and losing. if you do then you'll never be able to fully enjoy the game. and enjoy the randomness. let me tell you, its fun. once i finally grasped this i've been able to put in way more hours, and often have to stop myself when i realize how long i've been at it. and everyday i'm excited to "go to work". not many people can say that. even a lot of poker pros are horribly depressed people when they're "running bad". but the truly world class, great players, like chip reese(probably all the biggame longterm winners) actually understand what it means to be a game of chance. and they can put in tons of hours b/c they truly love the game, and the randomness is fun for them. i'm nowhere near their level, and probably never will be, but i feel like i'm finally starting to have a similar love for the game. the fact is, that most people who are pro's, or very good poker players, are usually just good at games in general. and most people never can fully grasp just how much chance there is at poker. for me, i've always been into video games, and have always been pretty good. but if i'm better than my friend in a video game, i probably win 90% of the time or so, unless its hadicapped in some fashion. with poker its so close to 50% sometimes, that it'd be really hard to tell if you are in fact winning if you didn't keep records. it took me a very long time, combined with hundreds of thousands of hands, probably 50+ books, and tons of lurking/posting. but now i finally appreciate it a lot. it is what ensures that games will always be good. no way that even most good players will ever fully understand that.