There are a tonne of ways to play Poker badly and only a few ways to win, we are going to want to have a pretty solid baseline strategy that we work on and occasionally deviate from slightly due to player tendencies, but we should try and avoid big mistakes that will ruin our average win rates.

In this post, we are going to share some of the most common biggest leaks in a cash game players game.

Leak 1: Betting too often when out of position

Let’s look at why this is, when we raise from early position and get called by a player in a later position to us, we will have a strong range that includes overpairs to most flops, however, our opponent to call us is also going to have a strong range that includes a tonne of pairs.

Another thing to take into consideration is that players aren’t just going to fold for one bet anyway, nearly every player in position will call at least one bet even if only to sniff out some weakness from a Turn check and steal the pot.

Let’s look at an example hand where we raise from Middle Position(MP) and get called by the Hi-Jack(HJ)

Flop: 9♣ 2♠ 3♥

We can have a tonne of good hands on this board including all the sets and overpairs, however, we will also have all the broadway combinations both suited and un-suited and a tonne of suited connectors like JTs & 87s that miss this board.

So when you think about it, we have a huge disadvantage on this board in general against a caller of our raise, because they can have all the sets and most of the overpairs, although JJ–KK would likely 3-Bet nearly always, AA would sometimes slow play however so that would still be in their flatting range.

Hi-Jack’s range isn’t going to have anywhere near as many offsuit combinations, so they will at least have a pair or overcards with a backdoor flush draw in this pot unless they have a suited hand in diamonds.

So we should be checking this board a tonne with our range, even the times we have a strong hand we can check here because this is what we would do as part of an overall strategy given our typical hand strength in this spot.

By checking here with our range, we are protected the times we have strong hands and we will allow our opponent to attempt to steal the pot more often than if we just bet.

It’s important not to only bet here when we are strong and always check here when we are weak, this is just playing our hand face up and we will allow our opponents to beat us in nearly every pot once they figure out that is how we are playing!

When should we bet? 
It makes sense to bet here with more hands if our opponent’s range is wide because then they can have all the offsuit and suited high card combinations that will just fold to one bet.

It can also make sense to start betting with hands that have good backdoor equity, so hands that can make straights and flushes on run-outs because even if we don’t hit our hands we can pick up equity on Turn cards that will allow us to bet our opponent off the pot with another bluff.

Leak 2: Getting Stolen From in the Big Blind

Chances are if you are reading this you are playing too tight and too passive from the Blinds, nearly all players do, even really good ones.

But let’s take a step back and look at the situation, people steal a lot in late position at the Poker table, therefore what are they going to do when they miss the flop but want to win the pot?

They are going to bet and it’s tough to hit a flop, so they are going to have a tonne of missed hands that are taking a stab most of the time.

Therefore we need to counter this with some Re-Steals of our own.

So which hands do we check-raise… well we will want to have some strong hands in the mix, like top pairs and any over pairs that we may have flat called with.

Then we want to mix in some bluffs, choose hands like good draws like flush draws or gutshots and other straight draws, because this way if we steal the pot, Great! But even when we get called we have a way to make a big hand in a bloated pot.

Other good hands to use are suited hands that have backdoor flush draws, this will give us more cards that we can barrel our opponent off the pot when we pick up a good card on the Turn.

It’s worth noting that we don’t want to go too crazy and check-raise all of our hands from the Blinds, we can still comfortably continue through other lines like calling with our marginal hands and folding our worst hands on the flop, but we will want to be getting aggressive some of the time at least!

Mis-Playing Borderline Hands in Smaller Pots

In this section of the post, we are going to reivew some information from our old post of 4 Easy Ways to Play Your Hands Post Flop

Which hands do we Bet?
Premium Made hands
Draws

Which hands do we Check?
Marginal hands
Missed hands

As a reminder we will want to have this as a general overview of how we want to be playing post-flop, this will allow us to have decent hands when we check not just give-ups and draws and good hands when we are betting so our opponent won’t know if we are bluffing or have a big hand.

Consider working in lines on the River that include bet-folding, this is a move that takes some getting used to as some players will always think, well I am likely beat here, so I will check and then decide depending on what my opponent does.

There are two big problems with this logic though, firstly we could always get called when we bet, we won’t always get raised so sometimes we will get value from worse hands and secondly, some of the time we check we will induce our opponent to bluff us out of the pot that we would have won with our bet because they just sense we are weak from checking.

Extra Tips on Considering our Hands on the River

We will want to make sure we are trying to think like this even in the small pots that we play. It’s important that we are trying to construct our ranges well and execute a water-tight plan even in smaller pots.

Good things to ask our selves when playing a pot and we are considering calling, which other better hands will we have in this spot that can call if there aren’t many other hands we can look to make hero calls.

Another good question to ask is, do I have a good hand to bluff with here, usually having hands that don’t block draws will make really good bluff candidates because it will unlock the draw potential in our opponent’s range.

In Summary

• Protect your ranges whilst out of position and don’t C-bet too often with any range dis-advantage
• Re-steal more from the Blinds post-flop to good candidate hands
• Be wary of playing hands correctly in small pots too, don’t just make losing plays because it’s for less money
• Lastly, remember to always think in terms of our Ranges in spots, not just your actual hand!

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