Major Poker Mistakes:
How to avoid them.

Even the best poker players make mistakes. Two key things separate the best poker players from the rest of the pack, though. First off, excellent poker players don’t make mistakes very often. Secondly, strong poker players know how to avoid making big mistakes.

The difference between a small mistake and a big mistake is critical to improving your game and minimizing your losses. 

It all boils down to expected value since you will inevitably win some games and lose some game. All poker players know that regardless of how well you play, sometimes the cards are just not in your favor. 

Making a play that has a negative expected value is a mistake in poker, since this will result in a losing hand in the long run. However, making a play with a large negative expected value is a big mistake. In fact, the larger the negative expected value, the proportionally larger the mistake.

Example 1: A Small Mistake

You are playing $5 / $10 no-limit Texas Holdem, and make a decision that has an expected value of -$1. Regardless of whether you win or lose this particular hand, repeating this decision again and again, will cost you $1 in the long run. However, $1 loss in a $5 / $10 game is not a significant loss. This is a small mistake.

Example 2: A Big Mistake

You are playing the same $5 / $10 no-limit Texas Holdem game, but this time you make a decision that has an expected value of -$50. As with the previous example, the outcome of this game will cost you in the long run. However, in this case, it will cost you $50, a very big loss considering you are playing a $5 / $10 no-limit game. This is a big mistake.

Sometimes a mistake may seem like just a small mistake until the outcome of the hand is uncovered. Tight players may be reluctant to make any mistakes at all, but the reality is that playing poker is a gamble and that players gamble big so that they can win big. So the question arises then: exactly how do you know if you are making a small mistake or a big mistake? 

There are three factors to consider when evaluating a decision:

1. How strong is your hand versus your opponent's hand?

2. What is the probability that your opponent would have that same exact hand (versus having another hand) under similar circumstances? What’s the likelihood that this could happen again?

3 How large is the pot?



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