Leaking Beginner's Boats

Not much to report today. Only played a couple of low dollar SnG’s (didn’t money in either) and have been feeling a bit tired and not on my game. I will take this as a sign to cool it a bit until I’m back to 100%.

In other news, I attended the second class of the guru’s course last night at the local community college. He had 16 of the 17 first class attendees return for this second meeting, which was a good sign. It was a very lively class, with a lot of good discussion of basic poker theory and strategy. Even though it’s a beginner’s class, I still tend to get a lot out of attending it. For me, the most interesting thing discussed were what the guru calls the three biggest leaks that beginning poker players have in their game. They are:

1. Over-playing the blinds. A lot of people either think that the blinds are “theirs” and need to be defended against steal attempts, or they’re getting a good price to make a call (usually from the SB) with any two cards.

2. Playing ace-small. The big problem with this hand is what do you do when your ace hits on the flop and someone bets into you? Chances are they have an ace, too, but with a better kicker.

3. Playing “trap hands,” which include KJ, QJ, QT, suited cards, and other “shiny-shiny-bright” hands that look good, but are thoroughly dominated by a lot of other hands.

These three leaks are particularly noteworthy, as a poker playing friend of mine (who shall remain nameless, but for readability of this blog we will call “Bret” here) has been recently looking over his PT numbers and has discovered problems in all three areas. My early PT stats are long gone (due to various computer crashes), but I recall having a problem with these three areas, too. It’s amazing how much money can be lost to simple little problems like these. It’s also interesting to note that all three of the leaks are, in a sense, symptoms of too large of a VPIP number. The lesson? Tighten up your game, and your win rate will improve.

The other major leak we discussed was the tendency to play too much from early position (again, a VPIP issue). The guru suggests playing only AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AKs, AKo, AQs, and AQ from the first 3 seats of a 9 handed game. Fold everything else, and your win rate will improve, he said. One student said she played in a poker pub game this week and took that advice to heart; she credits taking first place in a 40-person starting field this week mostly to this basic advice. (On the other hand, she explained one hand where she did get involved in a pot with KQo from UTG and found herself up against two aggressive opponents. She managed to suck out a bad beat win against their big aces, but in hindsight knew that she shouldn’t have been in the hand in the first place.)

24-hour Bankroll Change: +0.48%
All-in for now…
-Bug