.jpg "5 Obvious Reasons Why You’re Losing at Poker")
This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.
Experienced poker players can easily spot weaker players a mile away.
That’s because most amateur poker players make the same, predictable mistakes over and over again.
If you’re struggling to achieve good results in this game, there’s a good chance you’re doing some of the things listed in this article.
This article will show you 5 reasons most people lose at poker, and more importantly, how to fix it.
Let’s get right into it.
Obvious Losing Poker Mistake #1: You're Playing Too Many Hands
One of the most common amateur poker mistakes is playing too many hands.
In fact, the general rule is that the more hands someone plays, the worse poker player they are.
This is only true to an extent, of course.
Some players play very few starting hands, and they usually play them in a very straightforward manner.
These players rarely (if ever) bluff and can be beaten pretty easily with the right adjustments.
These players are called nits, and they’re usually breakeven or slightly losing players.
For a complete breakdown, check out my article on how to crush nitty poker players.
But when talking about bad poker players, we usually talk about players who play way too many hands instead.
This is typical for beginner poker players, who play just about any hand in hopes of smashing the flop and winning a big pot.
To smash the flop means to make a very strong combination on the flop, meaning two pair or better.
Their line of thinking usually goes something like this: how can you win if you don’t play?
This approach only makes sense if you don’t think about it for more than two seconds.
In no-limit hold’em, most hands miss most flops (2 out of 3 times, to be exact).
And since you have to pay money every time to see the flop, the more flops you see, the more money you lose over the long run.
And no, the times you do hit the flop won’t make up for all the misses.
That’s because not every hand in no-limit hold’em is created equal.
Some starting hands have a significantly better chance of connecting with the flop and making strong post flop combinations than others.
Let’s take a hand like T4 offsuit as an example.
This hand has no chance of making a straight or a flush, and it has a very weak chance of making a top pair on the flop.
The chance of hitting a top pair with T4o is just 6%.
And even then, you still have to contend with the weak kicker.
A kicker is the card in your hand that doesn’t help you make a certain hand combination, but can often determine the winner of the hand if both players have the same combination.
For example, if both players have a pair of Tens, the player with the better kicker wins the hand.
And yet, some players will still play trashy hands like these because they once hit a full house with it, or it’s their lucky hand because their birthday is on April 10th or something.
Now, compare this with a hand like JTs or T9s, for example.
These hands have a much better playability post flop because they can make strong combinations like straights and flushes, and they also have a decent kicker to boot.
So what makes a good starting hand in no-limit hold’em?
Three things you need to know...
a) high cards are better than low cards because they can make stronger pairs post flop
b) connected cards are better than unconnected cards because they can make a straight
c) suited cards are better than offsuit cards because they can make a flush.
I won’t go into too much detail on exactly which cards to play preflop, as I’ve already covered it in my previous articles.
If you want to know exactly which cards to play and how to play them, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
But in short, you should only play about the top 20% of cards that are dealt to you.
This may sound too restrictive at first, but it’s by far the best way to get an edge over players who play just about any two random cards.
This may sound too restrictive at first, but it’s by far the best way to get an edge over players who play just about any two random cards.
If you only play strong starting hands, you will make strong combinations post flop more often, and your hand will often dominate your opponent’s instead of the other way around.
A dominated hand is the one that’s unlikely to win against a stronger hand due to a weaker kicker.
Of course, the top 20% is just a general guideline.
The number of hands you can play profitably is going to depend on a lot of factors, namely your table position.
The closer you are to the button, the more hands you can play profitably and vice versa.
Also, as you get more experience with the winning tight and aggressive strategy, you can switch to a loose and aggressive (LAG) strategy.
LAG strategy allows you to play more starting hands preflop and put maximum pressure on your opponents, which makes it very effective no matter the stakes you’re playing.
By the way, if you're card dead and want to know how to play LAG, see my recent video below.
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Obvious Losing Poker Mistake #2: You’re Not Playing Aggressively Enough
One of the most common leaks for beginner and intermediate poker players alike is the fact that they’re not playing nearly as aggressively as they should.
There are some exceptions, of course. Some players play way too aggressively for their own good, and end up spewing a lot of chips for no reason.
But more often than not, struggling poker players usually play way too passively.
When asked about their playstyle, most players would say that they’re playing an aggressive style of poker.
But when you look at their results and their stats, that’s usually not the case.
One of the most common causes of this leak has to do with risk aversion and loss aversion.
Even though poker players may be less risk-averse compared to the rest of the population, nobody particularly enjoys losing money.
So a lot of poker players don’t really play to win, and instead just play not to lose.
This subtle distinction manifests itself in a lot of potentially missed opportunities at the felt.
Here’s how risk aversion and loss aversion may negatively impact your poker results:
a) quitting when ahead and chasing losses when behind
b) calling down too much because you’ve already invested a lot of money in the pot
c) not bluffing enough for the fear of getting looked up
d) waiting around for the nuts before putting money in the pot.
As poker players who are trying to improve their game, we may scoff at maniacs who just splash chips around with no regard for their financial well being.
But oddly enough, these maniacs may just have the right idea.
If you’ve encountered a maniacal player at your table, you already know how frustrating they can be to play against.
And one of the reasons why that’s the case is because they don’t really care if they win or lose.
I’m not suggesting you should adopt maniacal strategies into your repertoire, because these players are by far the biggest long term losers in this game.
By the way, if you're struggling to play against overly aggressive players, make sure to check out my article on how to beat crazy poker players.
But you can still take away something from their playstyle.
And that’s the mindset that it doesn’t really matter if you win or lose at a given moment.
What matters is how you play the game.
If you play better than your opponents, you will win more money than them over the long run, and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.
And playing well means making the best possible decision despite the risk of losing.
Think about how much your game would improve if you didn’t care so much about losing.
There’s a reason poker solvers and engines often outperform humans.
It’s because they have no prejudice about risking money if that means increasing the expected value of their plays.
To them, it’s not about making or losing money, it’s about maximizing expected value.
This means making a big river bluff, or calling down your opponent with a marginal holding without the fear of looking stupid or busting out of a tournament.
So the next time you find yourself in a difficult spot at the felt, ask yourself: what would happen if I bet or raise here?
Chances are, you’d be surprised by how many profitable spots you will find by adopting this mindset.
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Obvious Losing Poker Mistake #3: You Have Poor Bankroll Management
Even if you’re the best poker player at your table, you’re not going to win 100% of the time.
This short term luck element makes poker exciting and accessible to beginner poker players, but it can also be incredibly frustrating when you’re on the receiving end of bad luck.
So if you want to win at poker at least somewhat consistently, it is crucial to follow proper bankroll management rules to avoid the risk of going broke.
Your poker bankroll is the set amount of money you specifically set aside for playing poker.
Having enough buyins in your bankroll will help you ride out the downswings and keep playing your best no matter how you’re running session to session.
All things being equal, having a great bankroll and playing solid poker is better than having a solid bankroll and playing great poker.
Not only will a good bankroll help you prevent going broke, it will also give you a peace of mind to keep playing your best despite the short term losses.
As a general rule, it is advised to have at least 30 buyins in your bankroll if you’re playing cash games.
For example, if you’re playing NL10 online, you should have no less than $300 in your bankroll.
If you’re playing multitable tournaments, on the other hand, you should have a substantially bigger bankroll to eliminate the risk of going broke.
If you’re playing poker tournaments, you should have 100 buyins for the stakes you’re playing.
This may seem excessive, but the reason you need more buyins for tournaments is the fact that poker tournaments inherently have more variance built into the format.
This means you can experience long stretches where you’re not able to cash out.
This is true even for professional poker players.
If you’re playing MTTs, you can sometimes play for months without making any significant cash payout.
Of course, if you’re just playing poker recreationally, you really don’t need to worry too much about bankroll management.
But if you want to take the game a bit more seriously, having a proper bankroll is a must.
Even if you have a significant skill edge over your competition, it may take time for that skill edge to fully manifest.
It’s also worth noting that adhering to proper bankroll management only works if you’re a winning poker player to begin with.
If you’re a losing player, the biggest bankroll in the world is not going to help you.
It will just take you longer to go broke.
So if you’re first starting out, you should focus on improving your poker skills and eliminating leaks from your game.
But if you’re beating the field over a significant sample size, following proper bankroll management rules is a must.
So if you’re currently underrrolled for the stakes you’re playing, you should either increase your bankroll or drop down in stakes to the point where you have enough buyins to play comfortably.
Dropping down in stakes may feel like a huge step back, but it’s better than risking your entire bankroll and having to start all over again.
Obvious Losing Poker Mistake #4: You're Calling Too Much
Another common reason most players lose at poker also has to do with playing the game too passively, i.e. calling down too much.
As a general rule, calling is the last option you should consider, both preflop and post flop.
When you call, you’re automatically putting yourself at a disadvantage for a few reasons.
First of all, you’re agreeing to play the hand on someone else’s terms.
You’re letting your opponents dictate the price of the pot, meaning you’re playing reactively instead of proactively.
Another reason calling is usually a losing proposition is the fact that calling is a range-capping action.
A capped range is the one that has less strong hands in it compared to an uncapped range.
For example, when you call preflop, your range is capped, meaning you’re unlikely to have strong hands like pocket Aces, pocket Kings, Ace-King and so on.
If you had any of these strong hands, you would have likely 3-bet them instead of calling.
A 3-bet preflop is a raise against another player's open-raise.
On the other hand, your opponent’s open-raising range remains uncapped, meaning they theoretically can still have all those strong hands.
Uncapped ranges are stronger than capped ranges, which gives your opponent the range advantage.
This means they can credibly represent a number of strong hands on the flop.
For example, let’s say you call preflop and you see an Ace-high flop like this:
A♥9♦4♣
This flop is better for your opponent’s range, because you’re less likely to have strong Ax hands like AK, AQ and so on.
So if your opponent makes a standard c-bet, you’ll just be forced to fold most of the time unless you actually connected with the board.
Calling post flop is also a losing proposition most of the time.
This has to do with the range disadvantage you have if you are the preflop caller.
A lot of amateur poker players make the mistake of staying in the hand for way too long, which ends up costing them a ton of money.
This can happen in a number of post flop situations, like:
a) chasing draws with incorrect pot odds or implied odds
b) calling with a seemingly strong hand when your opponent likely has the nuts
c) calling too widely on the flop just to give up on the turn
d) bluff catching because “they can’t have it all the time”
e) calling by default because raising is too uncomfortable.
The list goes on, but you get the point.
Some of these have to do with insufficient understanding of basic poker concepts like the pot odds or the difference between absolute and relative hand strength.
But others may have to do more with some mental game issues, like not believing your opponents, chasing losses, or the fear of playing big pots.
Whatever the reason may be, calling down too much is absolutely devastating to your bottom line.
Of course, there are plenty of situations where calling is actually the best option.
But more often than not, playing more aggressively is likely to yield better results, and it will definitely make life more difficult for your opponents.
Example Poker Hand #1
You are dealt A♥8♥ in the BB (big blind). Villain open-raises to 2.5 BB from the CO (cutoff).
You call.
Pot: 6.5 BB
Flop: J♥7♠2♥
You check. Villain bets 3 BB.
You: ???
You should raise to 10 BB.
This is a textbook spot where it pays to play your hand very aggressively.
A number of players will just opt for a call here, but raising is a much more profitable option.
As a general rule, the stronger your draw, the more aggressively you can play it.
In this spot, your draw is as strong as it gets, since you’re drawing to the nuts flush.
If you raise here, you can often win the pot right then and there if your opponent folds.
Remember, you don’t need to rely on hitting your outs if you make your opponent fold.
Even if you get called, you still have plenty of equity to fall back on.
If you hit one of your outs on the future streets, you stand to win quite a substantial pot.
There is another reason to fastplay your strong draws in spots like these.
Suppose you just flat call on the flop and hit your flush on the turn. Then what?
If you donk bet (i.e. bet into the previous street’s aggressor), it will become painfully obvious you’ve hit your draw, and your opponent will just fold all their marginal holdings.
If you decide to go for a check-raise instead, there’s nothing stopping your opponent from just checking behind.
So even if you hit your flush draw, you’re not immediately guaranteed to win a big pot, given that you’re playing the hand out of position.
In today’s games, it takes more than waiting around for the nuts to be a profitable long term winner.
You also need to learn how to play in less than ideal circumstances, like playing out of position without the initiative.
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Obvious Losing Poker Mistake #5: You’re Playing on Autopilot
Maybe you already know the basics of the tight and aggressive strategy.
You’re disciplined with your preflop hand selection, you’re using the power of position to your advantage, and you’re playing aggressively to put pressure on your opponents.
And yet, you’re still losing or breaking even at best despite grinding it out for months.
If this feels familiar, the reason you’re not seeing the results you were hoping for may have nothing to do with the strategy aspect of the game.
Having a superior technical knowledge of poker strategy is by far the most important aspect of the game.
It doesn’t matter how you feel about your game, or how lucky or unlucky you think you are.
Over the long run, it all comes down to skill.
But this is not all it takes to succeed in this game.
Even if you’re the most skilled player at your table, there are other factors that are going to make or break your results.
These other factors have to do with the mental game and the bankroll management.
The mental game is all about how you handle adversity, i.e. how you handle the inevitable periods where the proven winning strategy is not producing the results you’re hoping for.
Put more simply, it’s about how you handle the times where your opponents just seem to keep getting lucky against you.
Maybe you’re not going off on an insane monkey tilt every time you lose a coinflip, but there’s another, more insidious form of mental game leak that doesn’t get talked about all that often.
And this mental game leak is playing on autopilot.
Playing poker on autopilot means just going through the motions without thinking deeper about why you’re making certain actions at the felt.
The most common causes of this issue are boredom, lack of motivation, lack of interest, or even burnout.
When you first started out playing poker, you had to think deeply about every aspect of your game.
You had to think about whether or not to play a certain hand in a certain position, you had to think about the bet sizing you should use, the board runout, the effective stack sizes and so on.
But after you’ve been playing for a while, some decisions simply become automatic.
Now you already know you should be folding mediocre hands in early position, you know roughly which bet sizing to use on certain board textures and so on.
Think of it as driving a car.
When you first learn to drive, you have to consciously think about every minute detail like steering the wheel, switching gears, putting just enough pressure on the gas pedal and so on.
But after a while, you don’t really have to think about it, because you’ve mastered the skill to the point of unconscious competence.
You don’t really have to think about doing the thing, you just do it.
Poker is similar in a way that you can automate some decisions after enough practice.
Starting hand selection is a good example, because after a while, you don’t have to think about whether or not to play a certain hand in a certain position.
This is great because it frees up your mental resources to think about other aspects of the game.
But the problem arises when you start playing in a way where you actually don’t think about your decisions at all.
What used to be an advantage becomes a detriment when you start playing with a lack of focus.
For example, you may start multitasking by checking your phone between hands, zoning out and thinking about the errands you need to run, or watching the game on TV.
The problem with this approach is not only that you may be missing key pieces of information, but there’s also a deeper problem beneath the surface.
If you’re constantly playing poker on autopilot, it means you’ve stopped learning.
In a way, you think you already have it all figured out, and you’re just waiting for your luck to turn around before you achieve the results you’re hoping for.
This is obviously wrong, because everyone has leaks in their game, and there is always something you can work on to improve.
If you constantly find yourself playing on autopilot, the solution is to cultivate a sense of curiousity.
Start asking why you're making certain actions at the felt.
This will challenge you to think about your decision making at the deeper level.
If you get stuck at some point in the hand, it may be a good indicator there's some potential areas for improvement.
Bottom line: even if you've been playing poker for a while, try to cultivate a beginner's mindset.
This is guaranteed to make you more interested in the game, and it will make the process of improvement much more enjoyable.
I discuss this in greater detail in my latest video.
5 Obvious Reasons Why You’re Losing at Poker - Summary
Most amateur players lose at poker for similar, predictable reasons.
Fortunately, you don’t have to learn a lot of advanced poker strategy to be a long term winner in this game.
All you have to do is identify and fix common leaks that are holding most poker players back.
To sum up, here are 5 obvious reasons most people lose at poker.
1. Playing too many hands
Most hands miss most flops in no-limit hold’em, so you should only play hands that have a reasonable chance of connecting with the flop.
This includes pocket pairs, broadway hands, suited Aces and suited connectors. The rest is trash and should be thrown away.
2. Not playing aggressively enough
Winning poker is not about just knowing which hands to play, it also matters how you play them.
By playing aggressively (i.e. betting and raising a lot), you will win more money with your strong hands, but you’ll also be able to push your opponents out of pots when you don’t have the best hand.
3. Poor bankroll management
Even if you’re the best poker player at your table, you can still experience prolonged losing periods due to variance.
If you want to win at poker over the long run, you need to have a healthy bankroll that will allow you to weather negative variance without the risk of going broke.
4. Calling down too much
As a general rule, calling is the last option you should consider in any given spot.
Calling is usually the weakest option because you’re playing the hand at someone else’s terms, and you’re allowing your opponents to dictate the tempo.
5. Playing on autopilot
Playing poker at a high level requires a deep level of focus. You can’t expect to achieve great results if you’re constantly bored or distracted at the felt.
The best antidote to this is to cultivate a sense of curiosity. This will keep you engaged in the game, and it will motivate you to improve your skills, both on and off the felt.
Stop the bleed now, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet and start winning!
