Leakfinder thread for common beginner mistakes

ChrisB · Reader of Souls Joined: 15 May 2010 Posts: 625

Hey

It's been a long day for me, getting in 90 games AND a small badminton match, that I sadly lost. It has also been a while since my last huge strategy post was posted here on Tagpoker, particularly the "Fold more" It was posted in May 2010 so here we are, almost a year later.

I've been working intensely on self-leakfinding during my so far 3 days of very hardcore grind, and every day I play, I learn more about my strengths and weaknesses.

I have been thinking a lot about leaks and therefore I felt it would be a nice service to the TagPoker forums and its members to provide a strategy article that looks at some of the common leaks that the "fish" you play will have, you will undoubtedly have done some of them at some point and maybe even do them now.

There is no specific order in the Top10 - It's just kinda what comes to my mind kinda order, although I call it TOP 10 it should probably be more like "10 mistakes/leaks"

No 1 - Position
Position in heads up is extremely important. You've heard this before and now I'm repeating it. You could probably be a winning hu sng player if you played every button and folded every BB except for pairs and AK - Obviously playing this tight OOP is also a major leak, but my point is if you are calling hands like K6 and Q3 oop you are making your life hell. Likewise if you are not opening said hands from the button you are losing out on value.

LEAKFIND YOURSELF: Go to HEM - REPORTS - chose "Preflop - Position" from the menu and take a look at how much you win or lose in the BB, breaking even should be quite good whilst a slight loss should be O.K. Specific % depends entirely on your opponent but I strive not to play more than 30-40% of my hands OOP against most opponents but at least 10% of that will be 3bets, so my cold-calling range is probably around 20-25% Notice that I'm not saying that my range is correct or is even optimal against X opponent, I'm just saying that I play very tight OOP and it helps me stay out of trouble. Some seasoned pros like Croixdawg like to play a lot of hands OOP because they have a very strong post flop game - Nothing wrong with that.

2 - Overvaluing weak hands
Something that I constantly see when playing sub par players is super overvaluing weak hands in spots where it really makes no sense. This trait is very common in the calling station player type where they will just call multiple bets with a weak made hand or even ace. Sometimes better players will do this as well. I have multiple times caught myself calling way too much trying to bluff catch (I guess that's the cool players way of saying being a call station) which can be alright, but make sure you have the correct reads and you don't JUST do it based on "I have XX hand" A little note on this is when you see people call your c-bets with ace high no draw on like K7T make sure NOT to c-bet unless you have at least a pair Smile

HEM Leakfind: Goto REPORTS - HAND AT SHOWDOWN (DETAILED) to get a really good overview of the different hand strengths you have on the flop and how you have performed with them so far.

3 - Slowplaying

Bad players often slowplay so much that they never get any value from decent players unless the hand turns into some kind of setup. You have seen it so many times the hand goes check all the way to the river and the fish suddenly decides to bet 5x pot in a desperate attempt to get some value - Be sure never to mistake this for a random/hopeless bluff, it really often isn't in my experience.

Fish never really tend to regard board texture either when slowplaying - It could be as simple as a top pair on really coordinated board.

Slowplaying is a biiig part of my game, but I do it when it makes sense. Let's say a frequent button opener opens the button 6-8 hands into the match and I decide to flat with KQo - the flop comes Q26 with no flushdraw and I decide to check-call. This is a spot where I often find that fish/bad players will click it back or do something silly, when their hand is really well protected.

My point is, slowplaying is a really powerful tool and can win you many buyins, but often I find that fastplaying induces a lot more than slowplaying. Let's say you have A5 and the flop comes 554, as with the other 8 times you raised pre you c-bet half pot, you don't check behind just because you flopped trips. If he truly has nothing he will fold, which he would have anyway, unless he magically improved enough to continue, but not enough to beat us. You'd be surprised how little people believe you when you bet half pot on 554.

4 - No concept of endgame
This is something that I again have run into a lot in the turbos. When playing the regular speeds getting into end-game (10bb effective stacks or below) happens somewhat infrequently. At the turbos this is almost a guarantee and so often I see people just play waaay too tight when blinds are high and stacks are really low. Against a lot of these I just jam any two cards from the button. They will sometimes wake up with a hand, but percentage-wise we are cruising. A typical tight endgame player will have a calling range based on all Ax, KQ, KJ, KT and all pairs, and this range might even be slightly generous.

Be sure to learn end-game even if you play deep stack hu sng, people never have anything in heads up and 89s is 48.6% against A4o and is rarely dominated where if you jam stuff like A2 you are just setting yourself up for domination against their Ax and pairs calling range. Learning how different hands (like 89s) perform against their calling range will tell you how to play them. 89s for instance plays like a dream and will almost always be at least 40% - This is GREAT news when people fold so often on top of that Smile

Once blinds get high enough we have to start calling wider, but in general I like to keep my bb call% very low based on monsters primarily, unless I can tell from the villains frequencies that he is minraising/jamming wide. If he is minraising every button we can start jamming over with a really wide range, if he is jamming really often then we need to widen our calling range to include better/suited Kx, good Qx and some suited connectors JTs, 9Ts etc play really well here.

HEM Leakfind: If you go to the REPORTS tab and click filters you can in other set "All-In Preflop = TRUE" and then all the data will be based on only your all-in situations. My favourite is to go to the "Expected Value - By Stakes" where I can see my avg. EV PF (which is 50.1% FWIW over all blind-levels) I'm 49.7% avg EV ai pre at the 75-150 which IMO is the most important level in this turbo format. I'm about 48.8 at the 50-100 level which to me indicates that I'm jamming/calling slightly too wide.

5 - No agression

This is really self-explanatory. To get action when we get really good cards we need to be aggressive the times we dont. Winning pots without the best hand is a really big thing in this format.

Raising most buttons whilst staying aggressive postflop (c-betting a ton, checkraising many flops etc) is such a key element that many players seem to miss. Many of the fish just either go completely crazy donking every flop or they just sit back passively and wait for some kind of hand (and then most likely slowplay it)

No one ever has anything heads up, thats a fact. Don't get blinded down early, stay aggressive!

It's important thought not to be mindlessly aggressive. For instance when a limper limps in and you have some trash like K3 - No reason to bloat the pot here OOP with that trash when he is so often calling you and making life hell for you on most flops.

Anyway, I hope you could use any of the above and I wish you the best of luck on the journey towards heads up poker greatness. This thread is WORK IN PROGRESS and I plan to add a few more points.

NinjaReads · Grinder Joined: 14 Sep 2010 Posts: 164 Skype: ninjareads

ChrisB · Reader of Souls Joined: 15 May 2010 Posts: 625

NinjaReads · Grinder Joined: 14 Sep 2010 Posts: 164 Skype: ninjareads

[quote="ChrisB:27049"][quote="NinjaReads:27048"]

U Cook Socks · Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 2:47 pm Post subject:

Ninjaread, I am loving those stats. They remind me of how mine used to look. Very tight oop, not a huge 3 bet % just generally solid aggressive play. It shot me from the $2s to the $30s- $50s. Just lately I really think I should revert to this basic but effective strategy. It seemed to work so much better.

I think I thought I was to tight oop, but you know, it's so difficult to play out of position, it can't really be that big a mistake.
_________________
"Cos that's what I do"

ChrisB · Reader of Souls Joined: 15 May 2010 Posts: 625

Ljava · Newbie Joined: 09 Mar 2011 Posts: 22

Very nice and useful post. Tnx mate Very Happy

U Cook Socks · Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:14 pm Post subject:

Ljava · Newbie Joined: 09 Mar 2011 Posts: 22

Here are my stats. Hope someone will comment it so i could change things which i am doing wrong. Tnx Smile

http://img822.imageshack.us/i/unled1kb.jpg/

ChrisB · Reader of Souls Joined: 15 May 2010 Posts: 625

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