The 3 Most Egregious Mistakes Of New Poker Players

New poker players are at a major disadvantage to their more experienced brethren for a variety of reasons, no matter how much studying and reading they have done. The problem boils down to experience, and perhaps to pinpoint that term a little better: More practical experience. Practical experience is gained by playing: Think of how NFL players are always saying how the game itself is so much faster than practice: Well the same holds true for poker.

It’s easy to read about a certain scenario in a book and think, “Well, that makes perfect sense!” Unfortunately, in the real world the scenarios are usually less black and white, and don’t allow you to flip back a page or two and rethink your strategy; you have to think on the fly.

With that in mind I will discuss the 5 most common mistakes made by new players because of their lack of experience. Hopefully, by making you aware of these three scenarios it will help you either avoid falling into the trap, or show you the error of your ways a lot sooner than if you were left to discover them on your own.

Playing too many marginal hands

It’s not so much that the hand in question is unprofitable: the problem is, the hand in question is most likely unprofitable in the hands of a new player. Face it, it takes a lot of time and effort to learn how to profitably play marginal hands; you simply can’t sit down at a poker table and expect to play like Daniel Negreanu or Doyle Brunson, it takes time.

It takes time to learn the nuances of the game and how to exploit certain circumstances, and that time comes through playing experience.

Over-betting/Under-betting

Another major faux-paus new players are guilty of is incorrectly sizing their bets in big-bet poker (No Limit and Pot Limit). There is a simple rule of thumb a player can follow -made famous by David Sklansky- ‘Big pots are for big hands’. The problem is most players have this backwards, and are often under-betting their strong hands, and over-betting their marginal hands.

A major factor in big-bet poker is the ability to control the size of the pot: By doing so you will be able to felt your opponents when you have a monster, while at the same time keeping the pot-size manageable with your weaker hands -which eliminates the possibility of your opponent moving you off the hand with a single raise on the turn or river.

Fearing the scare-card

A lot of new players make the mistake of always thinking their opponent was drawing to the hand that just got there on the river. The truth behind scare-cards is they are often just as scary to your opponent as they are to you!

Obviously I’m not advocating betting into your opponent whenever a scare card hits, but you should be cognizant that certain cards are a lot scarier than others: Don’t automatically assume your opponent just ‘got there’.