ABSOLUTE POKER

Poker Mistake

Playing Weak Hands In Early Position

Position is often not considered amongst beginners. It is especially easy for online poker players to not really notice the position they play in. Playing marginal hands in early position will definitely hurt your bankroll.

The problem is you don't know what the other players are going to do. So you bet your speculative hand and then find that four players behind you raise you. You probably wouldn't have bet that J 10 if you had known you were going to have four raises behind you.

When you are in early position play tight, when you are in late position you can afford to play more loose because you have more information (the actions of the other players before you) to base your decision on. Position is a major consideration which all beginners overlook. Learn about position if you want to win.

Poker Mistake - Revenge

A cocky young player joins the table and starts typing crap in the chat box. He plays crazy hands and annoys the hell out of you. Then he puts a bad beat on you and gloats. Sure you were just about to go to bed, but that's not going to happen now.

You want revenge, you want pay back, you want to show this little punk who the real table captain is. So you start chasing hands trying to get that magic revenge hand. Unless the poker gods are smiling on you that day you're probably going to end up giving him more money.

The fact is what you took as an arrogant young player running his mouth could just be a good steady player in high spirits who is playing well that night. He may seem annoying and arrogant, but that is no reason to go on tilt and start giving more money to him.

The fact is he is probably in a very good mood after all his wins and is certainly not playing on tilt. You on the other hand are so intent on winning your money back that you are not playing your A game. Poker is a game, let people get under your skin and you are going to be a loser.

Poker Mistake - Raising With Flush Draws

Clearly, the way that you are going to make the most money from the pot is if most players are still involved in the pot when you hit your draw. Raising is often going to push people out of the pot which is fine if you miss your draw, but if someone has a pair that beats you what have you gained? Keep people in the pot, make your draw and walk off with the pot. This is the way to play a good flush draw.

Poker Mistake - Check Raising

Unless you are pretty certain that someone is going to bet this is a bad stratergy. In most cases the correct strategy is to bet if you have a good hand. The only exception to this is if you hold the absolute nuts and you don't want to frighten players out of the hand.

But over use the check raise and you are not only going to annoy other players but you are going to be giving them free cards and allowing them to stay in the hand long after they should have folded. They are then going to teach you that those free cards came at a price when they catch a nice hand that beats you out of the pot.

Poker Mistake - Calling With Second Pair After The Flop

You hold J 9 and the flop is K J 3. It is never correct to check and call. You should either check and fold, bet, raise or fold. If you are second on the flop the chances are you will be second when the hand is over. The chances of improving your hand are the same as the guy holding the King, and he already has you beaten without improving his hand.

Remember, good players lay down good hands when they know they are beaten. Don't throw your money after a weak hand with a check call like this, it shows weakness and anyone with a half decent hand is going to make you pay for that weakness.

Mistakes playing poker

Slow Play

Most beginners go though a phase of slow playing a little too much. To slow play a hand is to feign weakness on a hand, call instead of raise, check instead of bet. The idea being that by slow playing you keep a number of players in the game as long as possible and home that maybe one of them will start betting heavily believing your hand is weak.

The idea seems great and you can certainly see professionals use this technique on TV. The only problem is that too many players over use this concept.

Let’s say you’re playing Holdem, you hold pocket Aces and the flop comes A 4 5. So you have just flopped a nice set of Aces, a great position to be in. Instead of playing with the confidence of having the best hand you check on the flop.

Everyone around the table checks. The turn is a King, someone makes a minimum bet and everyone folds except you, you call. The river is a Deuce, and your opponent bets again and you call. When you and your opponent show your cards you show your trip Aces.

Your opponent turns over a King Three. Turns out he had a pair of Kings on the turn, so bet it, and then caught a miracle card on the river and made a straight (A 2 3 4 5). So you lose. If you had bet on the flop you may have taken the pot down right then instead of giving money away to your opponent.

There are several problems with slow playing. One is that your opponent might also be slow playing. Two is that you are giving free or cheap cards to an opponent who is on a draw.

In the above example it was cheap enough for your opponent to play his relatively weak second pair hand just to see what happened on the river. So the opponent won all the blinds, the bets and the additional bets that you gave him when you called the turn and river.

In one of the great facts about Holdem is it is possible to know that your hand is unbeatable based on looking at the board cards. If there are no pairs on the board you can rule out four of a kind and even a full house as just one example.

You might hold the best hand (the nuts) and be slow playing a player who thinks they too hold the best hand. If he starts to slow play you while you are slow playing him it’s going to be a very weak pot that you win.

This Slow Play mistake is part of the problem phase that many beginners go though when they play all their strong hands weakly and all their weak hands strongly. Most decent poker players can see right through this strategy. It is simply not sophisticated enough to fool good players. As with most tricks in poker, use the slow play very sparingly and it may give you some good results. Over use it at your peril.

Playing Suited Hands

We all remember a great win we had with an Ace high flush. It's a nice hand, someone who is smug because they have an Ace high straight or a nice set of Kings are blown out of the water by a flush. If you are chasing that feeling with a J 4 of spades you are wasting your money and your time. The chances of flopping two spades is around 8-1.

Then you still need to find another spade whilst all the time fighting the possibility of a better flush or the board pairing and someone getting a full house. This is especially true in Omaha where the chances of your being beaten is greater because of the additional hole cards. If you play hands just because they are suited you're going to be a loser in the long term.

Protecting Your Blinds

Some books tell you to do it, some players might tell you to do it. DON'T DO IT! Think of blinds as an entry fee for playing the game, an ante if you will. Consider that every time the button comes around to you you are going to be once in the big blind and once in the small blind, it is just the nature of the game.

If everyone at the table folds while you are in the blinds and the man on the button raises your blind what exactly are you trying to protect? A few cents, maybe a few dollars? Once you start protecting your blinds by reraising or staying in a hand you have no business to be in you are opening yourself up for defeat.

If you flow a top pair with a weak kicker or a draw you find an excuse to throw even more money at the pot. It's a bad play, protecting your blinds is NEVER a reason to stay in a hand.

Playing A Good Starting Hand When You Miss The Flop

Good starting hands are always nice, after an hour playing with hands like J 6 offsuit or a pair of fives it is wonderful to look down and see a suited AK. So you proudly bet out with big slick and the flop comes J 9 2. Guess what? You missed the flop. You have nothing. Lay it down now!

So you refuse to lay it down. You keep in the hand looking for a Queen Ten to make you a straight or maybe an Ace or King to give you top pair. The problem is your opponent has Ace Nine or Ace Deuce. You are chasing a hand, he already has one. The odds are against you, you are gambling. Play like this all the time and you are fighting the odds. Learn to play craps.

Bluffing A Weak Player

If you try to bluff a weak player, you are a weak player. The problem with weak players is they don't like to lay down their hands. They lack the knowledge and ability to know when the odds are really bad, they just keep chasing that winning hand, and sometimes they might get it. Even if you do bluff a weak player once, this will turn them into calling stations.

They are never going to get caught out like that again. Remember the article about calling too much? This is a beginner mistake, so while you lay the sneakyest bluff you can, the beginner totally misses it and just keeps calling with his low pair.

While good players play their opponents and not the cards, while good players know when to holdem and foldem, bad players do not. Bad players see a mediocre hand and think all about the miracle cards that could turn their hands supernova. They are not thinking about your subtle and brilliant play, the way you just bet enough to turn the pot odds against them. You think they can calculate pot odds? Ha!

This is why bluffing is a common mistake in online poker. There are so many bad players out there who call too much. If a weak player is still in the hand be careful with that bluff.

Poker mistakes at bluffing

As a beginner learns the game, one of their early mistakes is often the over use of the bluff.

Most beginners believe, having watched some poker on TV, that bluffing is an essential part of the game. They believe that sometimes the only way to win is with a bluff. Of course, they would be correct in this belief. However, the bluff is frequently over-rated in low stakes poker for the simple reason that it is not that expensive for an opponent to call, 'to keep them honest.'

It is for this reason that caution should be used when bluffing. Many beginners will play a hand cautiously and then suddenly bet on the river to try and buy the pot, and such a bluff will almost always be called.

The reason good players get away with bluffs is that they are more sophisticated in setting up a bluff. They may have raised before the flop and again on the flop and again on the turn. If the turn brings a third diamond, for example, then it might be considered that the player holds two diamonds and they were looking to make a flush.

Now that they have made their flush they are raising. Of course they might have a 7 2 off suit and no diamonds, but a bluff like this is going to be more successful because it is consistent. All the information the other players can see leads them to believe that the player has a good hand.

If you’re going to bluff you need to make the story seem convincing, make it seem like you have a good drawing hand and you made your draw, or represent strength from the beginning. Either way a sudden stab at winning the pot, especially in low limit poker is unlikely to have the effect you are looking for.

If you are going to bluff do it for the right reasons. Do it to create the image of a loose player (i.e. get caught bluffing a few times). Do it in a way that is believable. But most tables are not going to let you get away with a buy attempt at the pot near the end of a hand when none of your actions up to that point are consistent with you having a good hand.

In no limit games you can make some pretty big bluffs that put your opponent to a serious decision regarding some or often all of their chips. But you can still expect to get called if your play does not seem consistent.

Bluffing like many other tools that good poker player’s use has a time and a place, and is certainly an important part of the game. But learn to use it sparingly and for the right reasons in order for it to be a useful tool. Remember that the lower the limits and the smaller the bet, the less likely it is to pull off a bluff.

Poker mistakes at Calling

Almost without exception, every beginner will go through a phase of calling too much during games of poker. Many players will never lose this habit and will never take their game to the next level.

Calling too much is probably what separates beginners from intermediate and advanced poker players. If you watch any game, for any length of time you’ll see players at a showdown with pathetic hands. It’s easy to wonder why that player is still in the hand especially when they are so easily beaten time after time.

Probably, one of the most overplayed hands is an Ace with a low kicker. You’ll frequently see beginners showing Ace high and being beaten by a low pair. The mistake these players are making (and what is keeping them from progressing to the next level of play) is that they are overly optimistic about their hand.

They stay in the game pre-flop just to see what happens on the flop. The flop comes and gives them no help, so they call bets on the turn and river just to see what cards come along. Maybe they will catch two running Aces to give them trip Aces! Of course in reality, they will probably catch nothing and will have wasted a series of call bets only to give the pot away to a low, but better hand.

In Holdem, it is important to have a game plan. Most hands should be thrown away before the flop to save having to call the blinds. If the hand is good enough to take to the flop, it should be pretty obvious what to do with it on the flop. If you hold J 6 and the flop comes K 9 6, you have lowest pair. Anyone with a King or Nine has you beaten at this point, so if some aggressive betting starts to take place you probably want to get out of the hand.

Waiting in to catch a Jack or another six is rather futile since there are only three potential Jacks and two potential sixes left in the deck. So the chance of this hand improving is 5 in 47 (47 is the number of unseen cards left in the deck).

With two cards to come you might have slightly better than a 1 in 5 chance of hitting a good hand, and none of this takes into account that other players may already have you beaten by a pocket pair or a pair with one of the two over cards on the board. If you hold A 4 and the flop comes rainbow K Q 7, should you continue to stay in the hand you are really going to need an Ace to have a reasonable chance of winning.

There is a very slim chance of getting a straight, and even then there are three other Aces out there that one of your opponents may hold. If you continue to play to the end of this hand you have very poor odds of winning such a hand.

But it is surprising just how many beginners see that Ace and cannot help putting more bets into the pot, just to see what happens at the end. Over time this kind of play will only lead to disappointment.

So to vastly improve your game, evaluate the strength of your starting hand very seriously before electing to play.

Once you see the flop, if you have nothing and people are betting into you, get out of the hand and don’t rely on the turn and river to miraculously change your hand into a winner, because most of the time it won’t. What separates the 'men from the boys' in poker is the ability to lay down a monster hand when you know you are beaten.

In Holdem you either want to have a hand that has a good potential to improve (a good drawing hand) where lots of cards could bring you a win (such as an open ended straight or four cards to a flush) or a hand that is already strong. Why bet on a long shot over and over again? Sometimes you’ll catch the cards, but over time you will always be the loser. If you want to play a fun game with long odds, learn to play roulette.