Things Poker Players Should Evaluate for the New Year

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The year is almost over and most of us are already making our plans for 2020. As poker players, you should also take the time to make poker plans for the new year. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a pro player or an amateur player, a little pre-planning can lead to improved results in the new year.

Today, we will look at a few things poker players should evaluate heading into the new year. Don’t think of these as New Year’s Resolutions, but rather a blueprint for next year.

Evaluate Your Play From the Previous Year

One of the things you should be doing on a regular basis is evaluating your play at the poker tables to try and identify any leaks in your game. With the poker year concluded, this is a great time to look at your play and see if there are any areas where you can improve your game.

For those that play online poker, you can do this through hand evaluations. Hand histories and other tracking software can help you find problem areas in your game. Once you identify those areas, you can then start making plans to fix those leaks.

Begin Tax Preparations

Many poker players make the mistake of waiting until March or even April before working on their taxes. However, the end of the year is a great time to start working on your 2020 taxes. One area I worked on when I played semi-professionally was to start gathering my data on expenses. I played in a lot of poker tournaments around the country and the money you spend at the events and traveling can add up.

When gathering your paperwork for taxes, don’t just include receipts. Grab your bank statements, statements from e-wallets, or anything that you can use to track your expenses for the previous year. For many of you, you will not be able to start crunching final numbers as you’re still waiting on 1099 forms and other financial documents. However, you can start doing some of the legwork for tracking and validating expenses, which will save you some time when you finally file your taxes in 2020.

Consider Investing in Poker Training

When you evaluate your play, consider employing poker training as part of your strategy to fix leaks. There are many poker training websites out there that you can use and there are also courses you can sign up for. For example, Daniel Negreanu now offers a masterclass on poker. Fedor Holz now also offers poker training.

You can also go the old school route of hitting the books and various poker websites to try and improve your game. For some of you, hiring a poker coach may be the best option. They can personally evaluate your play and give you guidance on becoming a better player. Keep in mind that poker training can be written off as a business expense if you’re a pro poker player. For the rest of you, the investment will pay off when you win rate improves.

Evaluate Revenue Streams

Depending on where you play, you may want to evaluate alternative revenue streams. For those that play NL Hold’em games, you may want to look into learning other forms of poker. When you learn other games, you give yourself more opportunities to increase your earnings.

For some of you, it may be time to pursue other revenue streams outside of playing poker. For successful players, you may want to look into poker coaching or some other poker-related business venture that can give you a static income. Poker sponsorship could be a possible option for winning players with the right connections or that can offer poker companies something special.

We all know the variance that poker brings and creating additional revenue streams can help you meet bills when you’re running bad at the poker tables.