Plugging leaks

Every single poker player on the planet makes mistakes at some point during a typical session but the better players amongst us make less frequent errors than the weaker set of players. Most of the money you make from poker comes from the mistakes made by others, which is why the opening sentence of this article is so obvious and why learning from and correcting mistakes is so important.

Poker players sometimes refer to their mistakes as leaks, as in leaks a plumber would face in their daily routine. Leaks can be large and obvious or they can be small, almost insignificant at the time but in the long term more costly that a big leak.

Big leaks, or mistakes, are easy to spot and rectify and although usually expensive at the time they are usually uncommon. A perfect example would be if you folded a Royal Flush each time you were dealt one. Whilst the mistake itself would be huge as you would be folding an unbeatable hand, the cost over a typical year would be minimal as you would only expect to be dealt one such hand every 700,000 hands, or there abouts.

However, a small leak, one that does not cost much at the time but is made frequently can be extremely damaging to your bankroll and overall profits. Imagine you make a small mistake that costs you just £0.50 each time you make it but you make it every 100 hands you play, then over time this seemingly insignificant loss will cost you much more than folding a Royal Flush. If you played just 10,000 hands a month then this mistake would cost you £600 every year, imagine what you could do with that money.

One major advantage of playing online poker compared to live poker is that there is a plethora of poker software that can be used to analyse your game in minute detail. A program such as Holdem Manager will help you to go through every single hand you play and find areas where you made a mistake. Maybe you should have raised instead of called when you were on a flush draw, maybe you should have let go of your pocket jacks preflop, who knows but it is important to plug those small leaks as soon as humanly possible before you haemorrhage away your hard earned poker bankroll.