Common Real Money Mistakes

There’s no such thing as a perfect real money poker player. Everyone in the world, from top pros to complete beginners, will make mistakes during play. The difference is in how often they make mistakes, and how big those mistakes tend to be. Here are a few of the most common mistakes made by real money poker players.

Passive Play

While many different styles of play have proven effective in poker, they almost all share one thing in common: aggressive play. Put simply, an aggressive player is one who bets and raises frequently; a passive player is one who usually just calls.

For new players, aggressive play is difficult and intimidating. It feels a lot safer to simply call bets when the outcome of a hand is uncertain, since they don’t want to lose extra bets in case of a loss. The fact that their loose, passive opponents often catch hands on the turn and river to beat them and rarely fold to raises makes them even more cautious.

But this attitude costs money; in fact, in most games, it is nearly impossible for a passive player to come out ahead in the long run. Real money poker is a game of small advantages, and it’s important to get as much money into the pot with the advantage. If there are four players in the pot, and you have a 30% chance of winning, you’re getting 3-1 odds each all three of your opponents call one of your bets. This is a profitable situation, despite the fact that you’ll lose your hand 70% of the time! Betting and raising also gives you another way to win – your opponents might fold the best hand after you apply pressure by betting into them.

Loose Play

While experienced players can sometimes use their excellent post-flop skills to justify playing somewhat loosely preflop, players new to real money poker should be playing a tight strategy that includes folding most of the hands they’re dealt before the flop. There are two major issues with playing too many hands preflop: the tough situations you can get into immediately, and the difficulty of playing post-flop.

It can seem very tempting to play almost any hand if you get to limp in with it. However, immediate problems can arise if you hold a poor hand and someone then raises behind you. In limit hold’em (or no limit, if the raise is small), you’ll probably feel obligated to call, even though you know you’re likely to be way behind in the hand. Alternately, if you’re forced to fold, you’ll have wasted a bet without even getting to see a flop with a hand that had little chance of winning anyway.

Post-flop play creates even more trouble for a player playing loosely. With mediocre hands, it’s rare that you’ll flop a hand that gives you much confidence about where you stand compared to your opponents. While top notch players may do well enough in these situations to justify playing weaker hands, most players will lose a lot of real money in these tricky spots – both from paying off better hands, and by folding potential winners.

Ignoring Position

Perhaps the most important factor in deciding whether or not you should play a given hand is your position in relation to the button. Unfortunately, too many real money players ignore this, and make costly mistakes because they do not understand the importance of position.

Although we advised tight play above, you should not play the same way from every position. In early position – that is, the spots that act first before the flop – you should restrict yourself to playing only very strong hands. With so many players to act behind you, there is too much risk of a raise or two behind you to play mediocre hands. Conversely, in late position (on the button, or one or two seats off), you can afford to play many more speculative hands if nobody has raised yet; there’s a good chance that nobody has a strong hand, and there are few players behind you to worry about.

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