some mistakes new players make

You play too many hands
You ignore the size of the pot (including chasing with bad pot odds)
You call 2+ small bets cold pre-flop with unpaired offsuit hands (AQo, AJo, QJo, KTo, etc.)
You don't raise AKo,JJ,TT
You don't 3-bet/cap AA,KK,QQ,AK
You fold pretty good hands for 1 bet in big pots
You open the pot for a limp outside of UTG/UTG+1 at a full table.
You think you can push out a flush draw
You play unsuited cards with one big card and a little one
You play suited crap out of position and for more than one bet outside of your blinds
You jam your draws without enough pot equity (callers) and/or with very little fold equity destroying your implied odds in the process.
You raise the flop "for a free card" too often and then proceed to semi-bluff the turn anyway.
You play your blinds too much when facing a raise (particularly heads-up)
You think playing over-cards is your biggest leak
You don't bet the river often enough
You go all-in
You over-value deception against poor players
You under-estimate how much of your profit comes from AA,KK,AK
You under-estimate how much of your profit comes from players that suck worse than you and fail to seek them out.
You under-estimate the impact and diverse forms of luck over the short term.
You under-estimate what long term is. 10,000 hands isn't long-term.
You expect to beat the rake for a healthy rate in any live game smaller than 4/8.


There, I've saved you the $30-$50 it costs to buy half of the Poker Books on the market today

Great post trucker and so may true statements. I am definitely not a new player but I can see me in some of your points. Always nice to read where you go wrong in a game cause it will help improve it. Thanks for the tips.

Great post trucker....i liked it so much i put it in the strategy section...hope you dont mind.

Very nice post. Short version of some really long books. Like giving beginners cheat sheets, lol.

Good luck on the felts

Clint B

Love the post! Should help new players to give them a guide line to go by. Now... if we could get them donkeys to read all of this and perhaps some of it sink in..... oh.. what am I saying...DONKEYS CAN'T READ!

Admin wrote:Great post trucker....i liked it so much i put it in the strategy section...hope you dont mind.

you the man in charge ya know i would agree just tryin to help some of the forum with there game .

Great post trucker, we've all made a few or for some even all the mistakes you can make in poker. For some the learning can come from articals on the web, books or even reading a tread like this. I am starting to see more and more good stagety threads in here. Myself I learned poker at a very young age by observation. I was a card shark by the time I was 12, there wasn't a game I could lose at lol.
Thanks for the post trucker keep up the good work

Good luck on da felts

Trucker103 wrote:
you the man in charge ya know i would agree just tryin to help some of the forum with there game .

poker gods know i need some help lately!!!!

This is the second time today I have posted a healthy HELL YEAH to one of your posts...

As I was reading down your list, I was mentally marking off things I used to do, but no longer do, and the things I KNOW I need to work on and then I got to

trucker103 wrote:
You over-value deception against poor players

and I realized that your list was not only VERY HELPFUL but a good source of laughter as well! I don't know why... but that just struck me funny, I am pretty sure I nearly pissed myself!

Thanks for another great post!