Common Beginner Mistakes [11.05.2005]
This article appears in Card Player College magazine � Volume 1, Issue #5
When I first started playing poker, I wasn�t fortunate enough to have a mentor. It would have been very helpful to have someone telling me what I was doing wrong. I always figured I was making small mistakes here and there. In actuality, I was making several huge mistakes, and it�s a fact that virtually every beginning poker player makes the exact same mistakes. If you want to make the leap to become a winning poker player, then this article is for you.
Beginners play too many starting hands
In virtually all forms of poker, the first decision you have is one of the most important. Do you want to play your hand? The easiest way to win at small-stakes poker games is to play extremely tight. In Texas hold�em, for example, a beginner should be playing only about 15 percent of his hands at a full table. Hands like K-J offsuit and A-10 offsuit may seem like strong hands, but the truth is they should be folded far more often than they should be played. The key to poker is getting as much as possible into the pot when you have the best hand and losing as little money as possible when you don�t have the best hand.
Since you won�t have the best hand very often, you should often simply fold without losing any money.
Beginners don�t understand the value of position
Position is a very powerful tool in all forms of poker. If you have position on any given round of betting, it means you are the last person to make a decision. Every action your opponents make before you gives you more information about their hands. This concept is easiest to understand before the flop. Let�s say you have A-J offsuit in a 10-player game. Against nine other random hands, A-J offsuit is rarely the best hand. For this and other reasons, you should almost always fold it in early position. However, if you are instead on the button and the first seven players fold, you now have much more information. There are now only two hands you have to worry about being better than yours instead of as many as nine, and, statistically, A-J is way better than those two random hands. The converse is also true. If a player before you raises and another player raises him, you know that two players liked their hands and played them strongly. This information tells you that your A-J is no good. You can now fold and save some money.
After the flop, position is just as important. If there is a bet before you, you can easily fold a weak pair. If there is a bet and a raise you can often fold top pair with a not-so-good kicker. If it is checked to you, you can sometimes bet and steal the pot (if you have what otherwise might not be the best hand) because no one else has represented a real hand. All of this is due to the extra information that your opponents give you when they decide what to do before you.
In the simplest situations, a check indicates weakness and a bet or a raise indicates strength. Obviously, people are capable of bluffing and slow-playing, but the more action there is, the more likely you are up against at least one real hand.
Beginners don�t manage their money well
You can be the best player in the world, but, if you don�t have proper money management skills, you will spend many of your days penniless and in debt. You may have heard that most poker players go bust from time to time, and that there�s nothing wrong with this, but this is simply not so. At times, money comes easily to poker players, and they forget the hard times and become careless with their money.
Many poker players have no respect for the value of money at all, but as someone climbing the ladder of poker success, you cannot let this be you.
There is a lot of luck in poker in the short run. On any given hand, anyone at the table can win. Anyone can crack your pocket aces with pocket kings. Anyone can hit a flush draw. Anyone can river your three aces with a gutshot. The key is always to leave yourself enough money so that you can simply ride out these bad runs until your luck evens out.
This means that you need to keep a proper bankroll, but most players don�t even know what this entails. Occasional shots at higher stakes are fine as long as you are prepared to lose what you sit down with. If you want to play a game regularly, however, your bankroll should be big enough to ride out a serious run of bad luck. This means having more than 300 big bets for a limit hold�em game and at least 15 full buy-ins for a no-limit game. If you play sit-and-gos, you should have 30 full buy-ins, and if you play multitable tournaments, the unfortunate truth is that the variance is so high that you are not on the right path for steady bankroll growth.
The numbers I have listed above are somewhat arbitrary. If you don�t really mind losing all your money, feel free to ignore them completely.
However, if you are conservative, you should keep an even bigger bankroll than what is suggested above. Also, as your bankroll gets bigger, and losing everything becomes more disastrous, it naturally makes sense to become more risk-averse and decide to play with a bigger, more conservative bankroll.
These three simple tips might not seem like much now, but they are very important. Instead of looking for excuses to play your hands, look for excuses to fold them. Start playing only premium hands from early position, and save those speculative hands for the late positions. And most important, never play with money that you cannot afford to lose.
These tips may seem only a little helpful now, but, as you progress as a poker player, you will realize how paramount this advice is for anyone who wants to be a consistent winner at poker.
