Simple Mistakes That Make You A Losing Player

None of us play perfect poker. Only a machine can do that. Equally, many relatively inexperienced players make a multitude of small mistakes. The good news is that these mistakes seem to permeate much of the player pool, and are easily corrected.

Let’s start by outlining what a correct preflop strategy looks like. As you read through the following, ask yourself if your current strategy is consistent with the one described below.

Strategic Overview

• Your initial goal is to steal pots you enter preflop for a good price
• If you see a flop, your strong range creates many profitable postflop opportunities
• 3-betting preflop is a key element of your strategy
• You should rarely call raises (<10% of the time outside of the big blind)

Specific lines and actions

• Never open limp; always open raise instead (or fold)
• 3-bet or fold in 6-max as a default strategy (except from the big blind)
• In position, c-bet around 1/3-pot 100% of the time in a heads-up pot
• In multiway pots, your c-bets should be less frequent and even smaller

As you begin your poker journey, identifying and eliminating mistakes is the fastest way to improve. Additionally, understanding fundamental poker mistakes allows you to identify them in others and profit from them. Here is a video on the topic. We will return to the specific mistake of calling too much preflop

in a subsequent lesson.

Editorial note: When we first published this content, the above and other videos in L1 were not included. We’ve added them as a response to comments we received from those of you who desire a bit more context, or who simply prefer to learn from videos. Once you move on to Level 2, you’ll find videos that were custom built for the CORE program.