If you read this, dear grinder, you probably have read many poker strategy articles. Or maybe you are recreational player who mostly lose and wonder how to fix your poker game, without reading ton of poker books. We promise you will not need a degree in advanced mathematics either. Our goal is to give you easy solutions to your leaks which prevent you from being a big winner in poker. The way to implement them does not require special training or knowledge. It is almost the secret sauce in poker, no one is speaking about.
The main thing that amateurs and even semi-pro players forget, is that poker is not a game where you can learn perfect strategy, which will allow to always dominate games. In fact, the most sure way to stop losing or improve your winrate is by adapting to the situation. As we like to say, imagine you are in the jungle, there is no rules, only the most adaptable survive. No certain way is always the best, you need to adapt every second and be observant to everything you see at the poker table.
All right, lets plug some leaks in your game and make your poker results something to bragg about.
4. DO NOT PLAY GTO POKER
We begin with poker leak, which many average and even solid players have. Yes you probably chuckle, as you just saw Doug Polk giving Daniel Negreanu expensive lessons in poker strategy and GTO. For the small percentage of you who do not know, GTO stands for Game Theory Optimal and advocates poker strategy which is purely based on the mathematical side of poker strategy.
While poker professional players often resort to this kind of strategy to have an edge, you should think twice before trying to implement it. There is nothing wrong with being good at calculating ranges and odds, but most games are beatable by pure ability to adapt. Remember the jungle comparison, yes you should definitely try to observe behaviours of players and figure out a way to exploit them.
Except for the nosebleed stakes, all others are beatable by you being extremely observant and adapting your bet sizes to player’s tendencies. Just play few dozen hands at certain table and notice which player is likely to fold to a bluff, which one is ignoring positions or maybe someone is paying off three streets with top pair always, not folding to overbets.
Sometimes GTO play, instructs you to bet 60% of pot, but you play NL10 and your opponent will pay off 200% of pot easily. You would lose tone of value by following some advice blindly, just because famous player X tells you to bet 60% at this spot.
To summarise exploit, exploit, exploit. 90% of opponents you play against do not adapt and follow one strategy. Do not be of those 90%.
3. LEARN NEW POKER FORMATS
How many of your fellow poker friends or friends in general play NLH ? What percentage of them mix in PLO ? Is there someone grinding PLO5. What about OFC or Short Deck ? Have they even heard of 3-1 Holdem ?
Yes this is not strategy leak, but it is big leak in your poker mindset. You continue to play the same format, players are tough, but you just continue to try and pay for receiving expensive poker lessons. There are many players who grind NLH and know preflop charts better than their own name.
Maybe on other table, you see some PLO6 players, who play any starting hand. They are estatic when they hit low flush and are donating whole stacks with bad hands. Yet you continue to play NLH. Do not do this ! Learn other formats, as many amateurs play the more fun ones like Omaha, Short Deck and many others.
2. DO NOT TILT ! HOW ? STOP OBSESSING ABOUT BAD BEATS !
What is the most talked about poker topic ? The question is rethorical – ofcourse it is the bad beats. How often you saw ( or participated in) a bad beat contest. Poker players love sharing stories of awfully unlucky spots and start complaining how often they were robbed by some fish player, who had 2 outs but managed to beat them.
Let me tell you, most of players who do this, if not all, are unsuccessful to put it mildly. They focus on these situations, which put them on tilt and poor fellas start losing much more. In poker there is not justice. Write it somewhere. Poker is not a place where always the good hands, beat the weaker hands. It is still game of chance. Learn to swallow bitter situations and continue to play, like it never happened.
On top of that, many poker enthusiasts forget when they bad beat themselves and hit their 1 outer on river. They focus only on bad spots, to have excuse when they lose.
Many times, you will win ridiculous amount of money with T2 from small button. Let’s say half of the table limped you limp as well because you get the right odds and flop a monster with this weird hand, stacking one or 2 guys with T2.
Recreational.poker players expect, that the only time they will stack someone is when they hold premium hand. Sometimes your position or table dynamics allow you to open with flexible starting hands, which in turn can give you unexpected positive results. God forbid aces to be cracked twice, tilt is so big, it destroys whole bankrolls. Do not be that guy !
1. CHOOSE THE RIGHT POKER ROOM ! CHOOSE THE RIGHT TABLE !
For the third and final time we will mention the jungle and poker similarities. Only the strongest and most adaptable survive, others lose because they could not figure out how the jungle works. Your main goal, after acquiring decent poker understanding, is to find players who have less knowledge than you. This is it. Find soft poker rooms. This is the secret sauce. Playing lesser opponents is the bread and butter of poker success. You can be the top 6 player in the world but if you sit against top 5, we wish you good luck, because this is your only chance.
It is the same with everyone else. Just find these tables where players are weaker than you. It is better to spend 30 minutes to table select , than 3 days trying to win back all you lost, just because you had no patience and sat down at first table you saw. In poker patient players usually dominate hot heads. Remember this as bonus tip to those 4 major ones we gave you.
You can check out our extremely soft online poker games. If you combine the newfound poker rooms with the knowledge we gave you, i guarantee long term winnings.
CONCLUSION
You see it right ? How easy to understand and straight forward poker strategy can be. Your leaks are not that you include few more startinf hands from your preflop chart. If you do not win, or do not win big, it is almost certainly the major problems. Not being adaptable, tilting and not table selecting. Or probably you need to switch to another poker format which is more suitable for you and full of incompetent players. We will leave that decision to you. Happy grinding !
