Aiming Low: The Greatest Thing for Your Poker Development
Aiming low?
It sounds silly, but at least it’s a bold statement in a world where we are told from all sides that the only way is to set ourselves big dreams and goals. Those who make these claims typically paint a grand vision of the future, full of positive sentiment, but leave out the crucial part of the formula: concrete action.
Of course, they do because these things drag us back to dull reality, which is a way harder sell than a dreamy (although most likely impossible) future.
If you think you’ve had enough of dreaming and want to get down to the business of making things happen, we’ve got some tips on how to do it.
What Are You Actually Playing For?
Most players never stop to answer this question. They assume it’s obvious: play more, win more, move up. But if you ask why you’re chasing those numbers, the answer usually reveals something else entirely.
Here’s the paradox. The players who focus hardest on winning tend to make worse decisions than the ones who focus on playing well. That’s not a motivational platitude, it’s a direct consequence of how poker works. Results over any short stretch are dominated by variance. You can play a session perfectly and lose. You can misplay half your hands and run hot. If your sense of progress is tied to the scoreboard, you’re measuring yourself against noise.
What poker actually rewards, over the long run, is decision quality. Not the outcome of any single hand, session, or even month, but whether you consistently made the better choice available to you at the time. That shift in focus changes everything about how you set goals. It’s why the 25% rule below isn’t about hitting bigger numbers faster. It’s about building a process you can trust, one that holds up whether variance is on your side or not.
This is also where the “aiming low” idea earns its name. Aiming low isn’t about lowering your ambition. It’s about aiming at the right target: the process, not the scoreboard. Once that clicks, the smaller, more realistic goals stop feeling like a compromise and start feeling like the only version of the goal that was ever actually achievable.
Realistic Goals
Of course, it’s great to dream of playing three times as many Spin & Go games next month, with at least twice the ROI but put your hand on your heart. What are the realistic chances of achieving these? If you don’t see any, don’t be discouraged, just set goals that will help you to really move your poker career forward and not just daydream.
As a first step, the concept of Type I and Type II thinking, developed by Israeli psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman, can help a lot.
Type I could also be called intuition, a quick decision based on the emotions felt at the moment. This type of thinking is exploited in grocery stores with sweets strategically placed near the checkout. A good proportion of shoppers probably didn’t intend to buy chocolate in the store but will buy it anyway because of a split-second decision based on emotions.
Type II thinking, on the other hand, is a process of looking at the pros and cons of a decision and really thinking it through.
So, when you say you’ve played 1500 games so far, but you’re going to play 2500 next month, that’s a Type I thought because there’s no logical explanation for why (and how) you’d play almost twice as many games as you had. On the other hand, if you think carefully and perhaps ask for help about the right direction for you and apply some self-awareness, you can set yourself on a trajectory of progress that could end up with you achieving goals that currently seem unrealistic.
What Should I Do Then?
Once you realize that your “goals” may have been dreams, bitB Spins’ system helps you to set new, genuine, and achievable goals. It’s a good idea to take stock of where you are now and perhaps ask for help to identify areas where you need to improve.
When you know where you want to go, it’s worth applying the “25% rule”. Let’s take the example mentioned earlier: someone who has played 1500 games a month so far, but now wants to play 2500. So the goal is 1000 more. Just take 25% of that, which means 250 more games in the first month (1750 total). Many people say: ‘But that’s not enough!’. Indeed, it may not be enough (at least for the time being), but it is at least a feasible target.
In many cases, when someone sets an over-ambitious goal, the huge gap between where they are and where they want to be, simply destroys their motivation and they may not even be able to play 1500 games. The 25% rule also helps to prevent this. By applying this strategy, you can stay motivated without being overwhelmed by the burden of an unrealistic goal, plus you can play/analyze/learn more and more every month.
Staying Motivated Through the Grind
Setting a realistic goal is one thing, sticking with it when the results aren’t cooperating is another.
Motivation dips are predictable, not random. They tend to show up in the same few situations: a downswing that stretches longer than expected, a plateau where volume goes up but results don’t, or the gap between where you are and where you started to feel a moment ago now feeling too slow to matter. None of these mean you’re doing something wrong. They’re just part of the process, and knowing that in advance makes them easier to sit through.
A few things help more than willpower alone:
Tie your sense of progress to the process metrics you actually control, not to results. If you hit your volume target and stuck to your study plan this month, that’s a win, regardless of what the graph looked like. Reserving your sense of accomplishment for outcomes you can’t fully control is a losing strategy, motivationally as much as financially.
Revisit the 25% rule when things feel slow. It’s not just a pacing tool, it’s also a reminder that slow, compounding progress is still progress. A month where you played 250 more games than last month is a real result, even if it doesn’t feel dramatic in the moment.
Don’t grind through burnout. If you’re playing tired, frustrated, or on tilt, more volume isn’t helping you, it’s usually working against you. Recognizing that early and stepping back for a session, a day, or longer, is part of staying in this for the long run, not a failure to push through.
Finally, don’t do this alone. Motivation is a lot easier to sustain when you’re not the only one managing it.
In our 30-day commitment-free trial period a Player Manager with vast amount of experience in guiding poker players will help you find the best way to improve your spin game.
In addition to that you will find yourself in a community of like-minded people, many of whom are further along in their poker careers than you, so you can ask them what realistic goals are for your level and brainstorm with them about what might be the right path for you.
