Common Poker Mistakes

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend, congrats to Mr Acorn and his football team for their remarkale efforts in winning their first 3 games in the Euro champs qualifiers. No disrespect intended, but I had to look twice when the score came in whilst watching England v The Mighty Macedonia. Normal service resumed, is all I will say about the England game. A team full of alleged world class players at home, versus a team of footballing nobodies, and we hardly make their keeper make a save. Where are we going wrong?
Well, a distinct lack of world class strikers and a Zidane type create midfielder are two things that jump out.

Anyway, back to more Pokery topics, and I was reading a magazine article talking about the top ten most expensive mistakes a poker player makes. It didn't say they were in any particular order, and I think they missed one out, but here we go:

1 - Playing too many hands
People want action, they pay their money to play poker, not to fold, and God bless'em for it. K3 can beat AA, so they try to keep that VPIP around the 90% mark.
2 - Playing your position wrong
Most of our opponents probably give no thought to position at all, nor to how players will act after them.
3 - Thinking your a 'natural'
Apparantly, lots of people think 'I'm a natural poker player'. I don't even know what one is.
4 - Getting too emotional
Guilty, let's just move on.
5 - Playing at the wrong stakes
Works at the 'playing too low', as well as too high. Feel like you want to step up a level? Try it, you can always move back down.
6 - Focusing too much on the cards
You've got to play the player as well as the cards.
7 - Not knowing when to quit
Heard this from a few bloggers - last hand syndrome, stop loss / stop win works well for me.
8 - Not knowing the odds
Seems that many players online make no consideration for odds and probability.
9 - Being too predictable
No variance in raises, high pairs = 6 x bb raise? Good players pick this up pretty quick.
10 - Not getting help
Read a poker book? Ha ha, not me, I'm too busy calling. There's a wealth of knowledge out there - yet so many never take advantage.

The only one I would add to this list is: Not betting your hand when you make it. So many times I see players check when hitting their flush or str8, hoping to induce a check/raise. Not the worst strategy in the world I know, but if there's an obvious flush or str8 draw - a good player is going to check his two pair or set, and you make nothing more. A value bet here is going to be called if you're opponent has a strong hand against your stronger one.

Right, off to get Mia ready - we are off to a birthday party this afternoon, and I've just spent 20 minutes getting a knot out of her hair. She's going through a phase of twirling her hair with her fingers when she gets tired, and is getting it into all sorts of knots that would take a well trained scout leader to untie. Hopefully, the place we are going will be large and contained, so I just just sit quietly in the corner and watch her wreak havoc amongst the toys and other children.
I'm suffering with a bit of a chest infection, and having asthma, means I sound (and feel) like I'm a 30-a-day smoker! I'm not a sickly person and rarely go to the doctors, but think I might have to see him next week and get something stronger to clear it up. Don't want to take any time off work though, with me being new, and as my Doctors doesn't have early or late appointments, I'll probably just soilder on.

Hopefully it will clear up soon, I have a very nice bottle of red wine in the rack, and am really looking forward to getting it open!