New Year’s Day is a time to make resolutions. Is this the year you move improving at poker to the top of your list for the next 12 months? The team of poker champions and expert teachers at LearnWPT are here to help you achieve these goals.

It's time to turn the page and look ahead. The new year is full of possibilities.

Whether you are a pro or just started your poker journey, progress comes from setting both short-term and long-term goals that are necessary for success.

The journey to becoming a better poker player doesn't have an end, but there are critical milestones in continuously developing your skills. You need knowledge of how poker is played and what make someone a skilled player. You need the guidance of poker professionals who know how to take strategy knowledge and apply it to real-world poker situations.

How can you learn to play better poker in the new year?

The following list of Poker Resolutions will help jumpstart your poker game and teach you to think like a poker pro. Here are New Year’s Resolutions to play better poker from LearnWPT:

The Basics: Always Start With The 5 Keys 🔑

These 5 Key Factors are important for you to think about EVERY time you play a hand and they will guide your decisions on later streets:

1. Always be aware of your and your opponent's Position
2. Know the Stack Depth and Effective Stack in terms of big blinds
3. Assign Preflop Ranges (not a specific hand) based on each player’s position and how they entered the pot
4. Note the Number of Opponents seeing the flop
5. Understand the Board Texture and how it affects your next move

Changing your results in poker starts with thinking about hands with the same process used by professional poker players. Start with this process to immediately upgrade your poker play, and become tougher to play against. These foundational poker strategies will help any player get better at poker fast, whether you are experienced or brand new to poker.

Get a jumpstart on your New Year’s Poker Resolutions and watch these Free Strategy Episodes from LearnWPT! Watch and add the 5 Keys to your game plan now.

Now that you've got access to the process poker pros use to make tough decisions and bluff their opponents out of big pots, it’s time to add another resolution to the list - upgrading your Mental Game!

Set Goals and Measure Your Progress

Poker strategy knowledge is just one part of many that make up a poker champion. Stressful situations at the poker table affect every player differently, and in order to avoid going on tilt and making a big mistake you need to work on your mental game.

Setting poker goals allows you to accurately measure your learning process and have proper expectations for your performance. Poker goals create a framework for how you schedule your study and play and give you motivation to focus while at the table.

Think about and set Poker Goals by:

a) Reflecting on past goals and results

Tracking your play and being honest with yourself about your performance is fundamental to success. Poker players must understand their current skill level so they know when to move up to a higher-stakes game.

b) Setting process and results-oriented goals

If you want to be successful at poker, it's important that your mindset is in the right place. Many people make unrealistic goals that lack structure and are non-specific. Instead, try making more concrete, measurable, realistic resolutions that highlight your progress.

Having big goals is a key to staying motivated for many poker players, however developing sub-goals that will allow you to feel and measure progress is essential to being a winner in the long term.

c) Understanding "why" poker is important

What is it about poker that excites and motivates you? What do you like most about it and why do you want to perform as well as possible?

Poker is a challenging strategy game that brings players together from all over the world to sit at the same table and compete. Some play for the prestige of winning a World Poker Tour® Championship, while others want to have more fun in their local home game while getting the best of their friends.

No matter why you play No-Limit Texas Hold’em, understanding your motivation will help you have more fun wherever you play.

If you are loving these Poker Resolutions and want to make them part of your game, then a Membership with LearnWPT is the easiest and fastest way to start learning poker strategy from poker champions who are also expert teachers.

Even if you are just starting to learn poker as a new player, LearnWPT has an easy-to-use membership system with tools and coaching for players like you who are looking to learn skills directly from poker professionals.

Poker is a competitive game where strategy is constantly evolving and there is always something new to learn. Embracing a cycle of constant improvement means you can beat your competition in the long run. No matter where you are right now in your poker game, there are additional skills and concepts that you can learn and improve. We’ve got you covered at LearnWPT with more than 500 video poker strategy tutorials available.

Keeping track of your results, making notes, and creating your own system of self-analysis can be one of the best things you can do for yourself as a player. If you haven't tracked your results before or you are a beginner, this New Year’s Poker Resolution Starter Guide might be the most important one.

Setup a Feedback Loop

Evaluate play to improve faster by:

a) Creating a journal to keep track of hands

b) Writing down key details for troublesome hands

c) Setting up a feedback loop using the Hand Input Tool to record, save, and share hands that you have played so they can be analyzed by the LearnWPT Pros

Every player needs their own feedback system. Developing a process for your own hand analysis can help you uncover leaks and fix mistakes in your game. Making mistakes is part of poker. Eliminating those mistakes with a trusted community of players who will respond to your questions and offer advice is vital to growth and success in the game of poker.

Paying attention to specific details of each hand (See the 5 Keys) and capturing them for study and analysis later will have very powerful implications for your game. Record these details in shorthand on your smartphone or even bring a small notepad to the table so you can review them when you are not in the heat of battle.

Allow sufficient time to pass between play and study, as you want to remove any emotion from the situation when you analyze poker hands. This process will help you stay more objective in your analysis, especially if you exclude the results of the hand so that you and your trusted community of experts (like the Pros at Team LearnWPT) are not biased by the ultimate outcome. Focus on the decisions that lead up to the outcome instead of whether you won or lost any one specific hand in order to dramatically improve your play at the poker table.

Will these poker resolutions help you? Want to upgrade your poker game?

Training online with Strategy Episodes, the Ask A Pro Forum, and the WPT GTO Trainer are excellent ways to start improving your game today. That’s not the only way LearnWPT can help your poker game.

If you want to jumpstart your play and become a force at the poker table, the LearnWPT Strategy Workshops are an amazing opportunity to train in person with legends of poker and receive hands-on training from poker champions. Live Training Workshops are the fastest, most comprehensive, and most fun way to radically change the way you play poker. You can even win a seat to live tournaments like the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas.

Online poker is a great way to play the game wherever you are. You can test the skills you gain from training on LearnWPT and play for real prizes on sites like ClubWPT. Playing online allows for flexibility in scheduling and offers a wide range of events to accommodate many players. When playing online be certain to eliminate distractions such as watching TV or engaging in social media while playing. Your focus should be on the challenge of the game, your opponents, and making the best decision in the moment. When playing and practicing poker, being present in the moment is crucial to your success in learning new concepts and making winning plays.

Now that you’ve read our Poker Resolutions Guide, what are your Poker Resolutions?

Post your answers in the comments below. Writing down your goals is a powerful way to focus your intention, and sharing them with your poker friends can help keep you motivated. You may even inspire and help others to play better poker.

It's been an excellent year for LearnWPT and the game of poker. Are you ready to see what the new one has in store?

Here's to making winning decisions in 2023!

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