Top 5 Most common mistakes I see mid-limit NL players make…

I get some emails from people asking why I don’t post more poker stuff. This is because poker is incredibly boring. However, as this is supposed to be a poker blog rather than a rambling travel and lifestyle blog, I feel guilty when I get these complaints and feel I should talk a little poker. I got two emails today about this, so here is some poker stuff for you lucky retards who actually enjoy the game.

One of the emails asked me about the most common mistakes I see mid-limit NL players make, so here is my late-night ad hoc list of what I believe the most common mistakes are. If this list sucks or has no value, that will teach you to come looking here for poker content.

5. Playing Out of Position Without a Plan for the Hand - This is a really common mistake I see weak players make. When playing with position, its a lot easier to enter pots without a fixed plan for how you will react to a wide variety of variables. You can play with more freedom, casually assessing each street on its merits. Out of position, especially against good players, you really need a solid plan for how the hand will develop against particular opponents on a wide range of board textures, facing certain opponent actions and, of course, always taking stack sizes into account.

I’m not thrilled about my own OOP ability but, fortunately for me, a lot of players really suck OOP. I think their biggest mistake is entering inflated pots OOP without any real tangible plan for how they want the hand to go down, and thereby giving up a lot of control by missing spots where they could easily exert some real pressure. Of all the big mistakes I see players make OOP, I think the most common is opening with a small/medium pair or suited connectors and then calling a pot 3bet with a plan that is often comprised of nothing more than “hope to hit a set or combo draw”. Against my 3betting range (and that of most half-decent NL players), this play is suicide. I’ll often call 3bets OOP with small/medium pairs and SC’s but really only when I have a legitimate plan for how I will proceed on a range of flop textures where I don’t hit a gin flop. If I’m playing an opponent who seems to get his percentages right postflop a lot and is tricky and skilled postflop with his use of pot control, I’ll mostly just fold to the 3bet.

In blind defence situations, I’ve experimented a lot with light 3betting as opposed to flatcalling. I think you have to be a lot more talented and skilled to flatcall a wide range. The reason for this is that most of the time, your opponents will be playing with the 80-130bb range and 3betting makes all hands a lot easier to play as the all-in point is reached a lot quicker. 3betting out of the blinds allows you to define hands a lot easier and cuts down on your opponents’ positional advantage. Even when 3betting, you still need a structured plan which takes into account a range of variables. Its just that 3betting makes your plan a lot shorter and simpler.

Unless you are pretty confident you can outplay your opponent postflop, getting involved in a lot of pots OOP without a decent plan is suicide. This is the 5th most common mistake I see at the mid-limits.

4. Playing to a Card - So many players at the mid-limits, including a lot of winners, are guilty of playing a particular style that is comprised of decisions that they believe to be optimal but which are not really all that optimal as they are so predictable. In some respects, this is a big weakness in my game and something I’m actively working on addressing.

It can be very easy to learn a simple style of winning NL play without ever fully understanding why you’re taking certain lines. For someone like me who basically learned NL through forums and HH’s, it can be very easy to fall back into a set way of doing things, opening with x range in y position, c-betting z flops, shutting down here when called, always checkraising certain flops with certain hands and always floating others. I’m a strong believer in optimal lines, but in the current nature of NL games where skill levels across the board are increasing much faster relative to your own increase in skill, optimal or textbook lines can quickly become suboptimal as players adjust to you. Playing to a card is rapidly becoming very exploitable.

For many players, playing to a card is all they have. They don’t have the ability to adjust and choose from a range of lines which disguise their play. Inexperience is often the reason for this, but more often its simply laziness. It’s extremely easy to play to a card and it requires a LOT of hard work to be creative. When I’m playing with no inspiration or with disinterest, I find it hard to be even mildly creative. The 4th most common mistake I see mid-limit NL players make is playing without creativity.

3. Failing to Fully Grasp the Power of Variance - the vast majority of winning NL players that have worked their way up to 5/10 will have a decent understanding of the power of variance, but very few will ever fully grasp how truly sick random events stacked on top of one another can really be. I think you need about 1 million hands and a very cool head to begin to understand the truly brutal nature of swings.

You can go your whole poker life without fully understanding the sickness of variance and you’ll be fine if you are mentally strong enough to not let the worst of your downswings negatively effect your play. 99.99% of us do not have this Zen ability. Almost all big downswings are compounded by bad play. I’m not talking about tilt here specifically, although tilted play by definition, is bad play. The 3rd most common mistake I see mid-limit players make is assuming they need to adjust their play when they really don’t.

All winning poker players are trying to make optimal decisions all the time, but its very easy to misinterpret a simple downswing as a cosmic shift in the playing ability of your opponents en masse, and then make the assumption that you’re getting run over and need to change your decisions. Logically, this assumption is obviously incorrect. Players don’t simply get drastically better in a short period of time. If a regular you play with has played a certain style for 6 months, but all of a sudden, he seems to be walking all over you, chances are he’s just hitting cards. All my big downswings are directly compounded by my assumption that I need to drastically alter my long-term proven winning playing style to adjust to increased aggression.

2. Tilt and the Ability to Recognise the Pattern and Take Steps to Minimise Exposure to Tilt - I don’t really tilt in the traditional sense of blood rushing to the head making me lose my mind and play horribly. But I definitely tilt just like most players - for me, tilt usually means I begin to play too aggressively. I might move up a gear and start playing 28/23 when the situation doesn’t call for it. This obviously results in sub-optimal play which can be very damaging when playing with small edges. It can be really damaging against good players as upping the aggression level gets you in a lot of tricky spots postflop. As I’m already playing sub-optimally, the damage gets exponentially compounded.

The ability to rapidly recognise the slow buildup of tilt is something that I’ve gotten a lot better at over the last year. But recognition means nothing if you don’t have the discipline to take drastic steps to limit your exposure on the slow buildup to tilt, let alone when you’re completely tilting. It takes a lot of self-control and discipline to rapidly assess a situation and state, “I no longer have positive expectation in this game.” The 2nd most common mistake I see mid-limit players make is failing to effectively recognise the buildup to tilt and take steps to limit their exposure to it.

1. Poor Game Selection - If you are not actively practising quality game selection, you are either a genius or you’re giving up a lot of edge. There is a common saying which is very true: “You could be the 6th best player in the world, but if you always play the top 5….”

Game selection is more than simply avoiding tables stacked with good players. You need to understand how your playing style stacks up against the table’s playing style. To use my game as an example, I play about 22/17 preflop and postflop I’m very aggressive early but a lot nittier overall postflop than I would like my opponents to realise. If I’m sitting in a game where the table is playing very loose-aggressive postflop, I have the tools to adjust - but only when I’m playing well. When I’m not playing well, my postflop decisions can be poor, and playing in a game like this will result in a lot of situations where I feel I’m getting run over and I respond with poor decisions.

Depending on my mood and how I’m playing, I will occasionally have greater expectation playing on laggy tables, particularly HU or short; but on most days, I’m better off playing with the nits.

The ability to (quickly) assess the skill level of your opponents is important. As a general rule, regulars are often skilled whilst unknowns or transients are more likely to be “taking a shot” or blowing off steam. However, you should be well aware of how your game matches up against all the regulars at the site you play. There are many winning regulars that I have high expectation against as they are mostly trying to avoid me and target transients. I probably have greater expectation against these regulars than I do against randoms. On the flipside, there are many regulars who match up very well against me and against whom I have painfully high negative expectation. To be a consistent winner, you need to be able to objectively assess whether your negative expectation against these guys is outweighed by any positive expectation you have against the rest of the field on any particular table.

The most common mistake I see mid-limit players make is grossly mis-judging their net expectation against the field.

Posted in Online Cash |

4 Responses to “Top 5 Most common mistakes I see mid-limit NL players make…”

4 Comments »

1. Great post. Makes me want to give you a handjob in a crowded elevator.

   Comment by Harley — November 19, 2007 @ 8:34 am

2. Great post. Makes me want to give you a handjob in an empty elevator. I’m just not as brave as Harley I guess

   Comment by Jordan — November 19, 2007 @ 8:53 am

3. Mate no one cares about poker… we want more Australia day Bogan stories!

   Comment by HU.GEWANG — November 21, 2007 @ 5:19 am

4. I have a number of crazy adventures I would like to share, but I discovered my family reads my blog so everything has to be slightly PG - I’m sorry

   Comment by Jonny Vincent — November 21, 2007 @ 10:26 am

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