Beginners Common Mistakes

[JJNJustin]

Post mistakes you see beginners making frequently. Identifying these errors not only helps us improve our game, but helps us identify profitable tables where some or many players are frequently making these mistakes.

-J

[Acein8ter]

Playing too many hands
Not reading the board
Does not put the other person on a hand (Just see's their own)
Playing above bankroll
Calling too much
Playing to draws that will not win. (Str8 w/flush board)
Slowplaying too many hands and allowing other opponents to catch their card for the win
Slowplaying AA, not raising PF which allows 3,4,5,6+ people see the flop. Need to isolate 1 or 2 max seeing the flop.

[trontron]

in addition to acein8ter:
beginners often are...
- not regarding position
- not regarding stack size
- overplaying small pocket pairs in generall
- overplaying middle pair, underpair
- not aware of domination (i.e. overplaying Aces with small kicker, drawing for flush with 5h 2h)

[KurtSF]

[ QUOTE ]
Calling too much

[/ QUOTE ]

In NL I agree. In FL I think beginers don't call enough and fold too many potential winners.

And I'll add failing to valuebet, a hole I just recently discovered in my game. Can't be scared of monsters under the bed.

[f1shermanjim]

My biggest mistake is when I raise pre-flop and bet the flop and get called and I keep pushing(especially on a wet board). This is where I lose big pots.

[gobbledygeek]

I'm pretty sure this is a mistake: Going "all-in" in limit hold'em. I'm thinking before any hand you should always make sure you have enough chips in front of you that you can cap every betting round (or at least pretty close to that), both for value and for protecting your hand. I constantly see people sit down at the $2/$4 poker table with $20 buy ins, just to hit their motherlode hand when they have $3 to bet.

In one of my beginning sessions I did this and flopped the nut straight by the turn and went all in vs 3 other players who were going nutso with the betting. I could only stupidly sit there on the river as my hand improved to the nut flush and watch chips go into the side pot. Swore I'd never do that again.

[OziBattler]

ill add these

1. buying in with 10BB (this just about always signifies a bad player IMHO)
2. stacking off with their last few BB (If I have a half decent hand Ill try and do whatever I can to get the stackerofferer heads up)
3. open completing in late position (if your hands is good enough to limp first in then you can usually raise)
4. defending blinds with any two cards (by this I dont mean playing good blind defence..I mean calling calling calling with total junk)
5. Cold calling too much

there are many more but these are the general ones that I see often.

note: I play limit

Finally, by using pokertracker and a heads up display you can often get enough stats on really bad players after relatively few hands which will tell you that they are idiots. The worse the player the more quickly you will see stats that reflect this.

[UATrewqaz]

Same things others have notice

(in order imho btw)

1. Playing too many hands
2. Playing too pasively
3. 0th level thinking (focusing only on what they have)
4. Not understanding or utilizing position

[Poker Plan]

cold calling and over-cold calling
Raising from LP with junk
Capping PF with (eg) medium PP's (3 or 4 players in!)

Mind you- this is only at 10c20c!

Ian

[VBCurtis]

Dogma: not exactly accurate, but fixes the biggest leaks my beginning friends have:

Never open-limp offsuit hands.
Never cold-call offsuit hands.
It's legal to fold a pair before the flop.
Find loose tables.
Do not try to outplay tight players-- that's what fish are for.

If you are tutoring someone, have them try a session where they are never allowed to limp preflop. Either a hand is good enough to raise, or it is folded. Afterward, discuss the hands that were folded that they really wanted to play; if these can be categorized easily (suited connector or small pairs or small suited aces, etc), the student has a grasp of preflop concepts. If the student ends up a 30/30, review why Q8o isn't worth a raise. This has worked to change some friends from 25/5 to 20/10.

Once preflop is in the ballpark, then pot odds become the great conquest.
-Curtis