Professional poker coaches have analysed the databases and games of thousands of players. Guess what? Common poker mistakes are widespread and appear at all skill levels.
Although players occasionally face unique issues, most leaks share surprisingly similar patterns – a poker board pattern.
Some leaks appear all of the time, affect the majority of players, and account for most of the winrate loss.
Chances are, you have some of the same leaks, and you can greatly improve your winrate by focusing on the list in this 888poker article.
1. Missing Value
There are many different profitable poker styles. The core of every style, and the backbone of any winrate, is the ability to extract maximum value for made poker hands.
Weak players slowplay too often, bet too small and miss thin value opportunities.
- The best players only slowplay in very specific situations and make large value bets when they are strong.
- The best players can also extract thin value with smaller bet sizings in situations where a weaker player would check.
2. BB Defence
Most poker players underestimate how wide (which poker combos) to defend out of the big blind when facing an open raise.
Good players defend a wide range of hands out of the big blind. However, they understand that a slight change in the size of the initial open raise can significantly impact the correct defending range.
An inexperienced player might defend the same range whether their opponent open-raises to 2bb or 3bb.
A good player, however, knows the two defending strategies will be considerably different.
3. SB Completes
The biggest winners often have a pronounced SB completing strategy (both heads-up and multi-way). Not only is it GTO correct to have a SB completing range, but it can be very profitable exploitatively.
Less experienced players fear the SB complete option because they have learned that limping preflop is a weak strategy.
Indeed, limping preflop unopened is usually not the best option. However, completing from the SB is different and can provide a nice winrate boost when employed correctly.
4. General VPIP/PFR Issues
Taking a broader overview, many players have issues across their entire approach to preflop play. Even though each preflop issue may be minor, the mistakes add up quickly if they are too widespread.
A 6max cash player should likely have a VIP between 23 and 30 and a PFR between 19 and 23.
Many players end up below or above these acceptable ranges due to a culmination of preflop errors.
Common preflop issues include -
- Missing late position steals and re-steals.
- Defending too wide/tight against 3bets/4bets.
- 3betting/4betting too tight or too aggressively.
5. Missed Bluff Opportunities
Many players are reluctant to pull the trigger (or struggle to recognise) good bluff spots.
Although bluffing is less crucial than value betting, a lot of winrate is lost due to passively checking down trash hands that should bluff at some point.
6. Forced Aggression
Forced aggression refers to bluffing/semi-bluffing with hands or in situations that don’t make sense.
A simple example would be double-barrelling the turn with total garbage when we have better semi-bluffs in our range, such as draws.
Ironically, a player may miss many good bluff opportunities (mentioned above) but then force the aggression when they do bluff.
The combination of missing good bluffs and then bluffing in non-profitable spots slowly eats away at the overall winrate.
7. Unprincipled Continuing Ranges
This broad leak refers to poorly constructed continuing ranges when facing bets and raises across preflop/flop/turn situations.
Continuing ranges should change based on the bet/raise sizing, the board texture, and the situation.
This skill takes a while to learn, and even good players continue to fine-tune their game long after generating a profitable winrate. There’s no magical poker cheat sheet as a shortcut to this ability.
The average player continues too wide or tight against bets and raises, ultimately resulting in winrate loss.
8. Stationing
Stationing refers to the two following scenarios;
- Calling down significantly too wide (calling station).
- Relentlessly folding against aggression (folding station), especially in river scenarios.
Some players always assume their opponent is bluffing and make extremely wide river calls.
Other players are risk averse and tend towards folding almost everything against aggression, even if the chance of being beat is small.
9. BRM – Bankroll Management
Most players know that we need a specific number of buy-ins in our bankroll, or we risk going broke.
Unfortunately, many players suffer from the opposite problem. Building up a massive bankroll before shooting the next limit is a huge opportunity cost in terms of wasted time.
Most sources of poker BRM advice are overly conservative. After facing initial losses, they fail to account for a player’s ability to move down stakes.
Ultimately, it takes players much longer to reach high stakes than it should in theory.
10. Mindset
Poker is a rigorous, high-level mental sport. If we hope to reach our maximum potential, our mental game needs to be in top condition – and take down that WPT Poker Tour title!
This is far easier said than done, and many poker players' careers never get off the ground because they don't invest the needed time and resources into mental game development.
11. Weak Bet Sizing
Bet sizing is easily one of the most complex areas of poker and takes time to master.
It's one of the areas where we see the most common poker mistakes. It’s the difference between experienced and weak players.
- A common trend is that weaker players will nearly always bet between 35% and 80% pot without considering various larger and smaller sizings.
- Weaker players are also extremely unbalanced with individual bet sizings.
For example, a weak player may always select a 70% pot sizing when bluffing the river, no matter what.
Working with poker analysis tools such as a solver can help improve our understanding of when to incentivise very large and when very small bet sizings.
So, if you find yourself making any of the above common poker mistakes, make sure to plug these holes. It’s the only way to be a success!
