It’s pretty easy if you’re a good player to make some mistakes, poker is a game of imperfect information, so no one is ever going to be 100% amazing, that’s why it’s a constant challenge and that’s why so many people fall in love with this game. Let’s look at some mistakes that even good players are making in their approach to the game…

Playing Too Tight

The easiest way of looking at these situations is to say, OK I have a strong hand this time, but how would I find Bluffs here?

Re-Jamming with 30BBs against a Middle Position raise with hands like A5s, JTs, AJo… seems aggressive, right?

Yeah, for sure, but try and ask yourself what you are doing in this spot with TT, AKo, AQs… well the answer should be re-jamming to… So if we are re-jamming with these strong hands, then we need to add in some other hands to mix up our play a little.

We don’t ever want to be predictable, most players are just re-jamming with the perfect strong range that they should have according to push fold charts. So if we are never going to play with anyone on that table again, that’s fine, but long term we don’t want to play like a robot, we need to offset some of our range with hands that perform well to this stack depth when called.

Folding Too Much

If your opponent is betting 25% Pot on the River then you will need to defend in this spot 80% of the time, so you need to mostly calling in this spot, you’ll be surprised what your opponent can find to bet with when they bet small.

They might just have a high card hand that is looking to block bet and fold-out small pocket pairs, or maybe they just have a hand with no showdown value and are looking to buy the pot but don’t want to risk too much of their stack in doing so.

I play against weak players all the time and a big part of my strategy when antes are in play is to limp in the small blind with pretty much any two cards, I will balance this with strong hands which I can limp-raise with, but in general, I will have any two cards here. Stabbing at flops when your opponent has shown no aggression works a huge amount of the time, so this is definitely one spot where opponents are over-folding.

Underestimating Variance

Players will have losing days, weeks, months and sometimes years due to the huge variance in poker. The bigger fields you play and most of us are hoping into fields of easily 1,000+ players daily, the more variance there is going to be.

It’s easy to go on runs playing lets say $20 buy-ins with a bankroll way too small for those stakes and when you are winning it’s all good, you are racking up buy-ins, but the second you start to run not so hot, lose a few coolers in big spots it feels like the world is falling down around you.

Pick your stakes, stick with them and grind it out, don’t worry about playing huge games and try not to worry too much about short term results, just take comfort in playing well and learning more about the game and know that your time and hot streak will come…. one day.

Feeling Entitled To Win

Nothing worth having comes easy and winning tournaments and cashing for thousands of dollars is just the same. If you are in a tournament with 500 other players and they are all working on their game, then you better be working on yours too.

Why do you think you should beat the game? Are you putting in the work or are you just relying on some past success where you ran hot in a few tournaments to get you by.

Winners are the same people that are trying to get better constantly, they are hungry and are constantly absorbing new information and applying it to their game. If you aren’t doing the same, but expecting success then your being a little delusional. The game is tougher than ever, everyone is a shark these days, there are players that have cashed for millions that are struggling to be winning players now, so take a serious look at your game and make sure that you are on the same page as your competition.

Not Studying

Studying poker can be a daunting task, but let’s remember one thing, people who study the game and learn solver paths are crushing it and earning millions of dollars at the highest stakes.

Players like Apestyles who hasn’t had the easiest poker road at all, in and out of rehab, burning through huge sums of money, partying way too much. Players like this have realised that you need to settle down, learn your lines, learn the boards, put in the time and the results will come.