As a small winner at microstakes over 150k sample size I definitely have some big leaks in my game but I have no idea what they are, the question is how exactly do I go about finding them and plugging them?

There are too many potential mistakes that will cause you to lose ev for me to list here. Here's an incomplete list:

missing preflop value by folding profitable hands.
losing preflop ev by raising unprofitable hands.
missing flop value by checking too many strong hands.
losing flop ev by betting too many hands.
etc.

A lot of players have improved their games by using tracking software, but I'm not one of them. I've never used trackers. This is why I think it's more important in the poker environment of today to just go ahead and learn what good players consider good poker; this doesn't mean to imply that you should copy good players. This means you should copy the thought process that they use when determining the best play.

First thing? Nail down your preflop ranges. I don't mean using a chart when you play and I don't mean having a rough idea of what your range should be. I mean have that **** memorized for typical game conditions. Me? I used flash cards to memorize standard ranges and I did lots of work with an equity calculator. Now I know where the margins are and when to deviate from my default strategy.

Second thing? Study pot odds and what the math represents: it's all about the size of your investment relative to the pot and how much you can win or lose later in the hand. Contrast these situations:

a) you have a clear bluffcatcher and your opponent is all in, you're closing the action getting ~3:2. You should almost immediately know that you're making a 40% pot investment, which means you need to win the pot 40% of the time or more to call profitably. If your hand doesn't have 40% equity, then it's junk and you should fold.

b) you have a clear bluffcatcher and your opponent has bet the flop after raising on the button. He bet 1/2 pot and has about 75 big blinds behind, which you cover. If you call, you're making a 25% pot investment, which means you need to win back 25% of the pot on average in order to show a long term profit.

The most important, and the most strategy influencing factor here should be the possibility of losing future bets in the second scenario. This results in very different calling ranges in each of the above situations. In the first situation, your bluffcatchers are benefiting from the lack of reverse implied odds, but your draws are suffering from a lack of implied odds. In the second scenario, even though the investment is smaller bluffcatchers are in a much tougher spot, while draws are benefiting from the big implied odds.

Then I think a brief history of poker theory will help to get you up to speed:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...08/?highlight=

After that you'll probably have some questions and you'll be in a better position to identify leaks on your own.

good luck.

Thanks for the reply Bob148, I feel I have my opening ranges pretty nailed down but I should probably be adjusting them more to specific tables/opponents than I do!

That linked thread is very interesting! A lot to consider.

Work on some default ranges especially preflop RFI and Cold call ranges and err on the tighter side to start with if i were you. Once you got them memorized and have a good understanding of them you can start to adjust far easier. 3bet and 4bet ranges can really be kept very basic to start with. Then it's just about learning some basic postflop strategies which aren't really to difficult to learn once pointed out . Knowing some basics and playing abc is enough to beat the micros.

There are some good videos and articles on this site well worth going through ill post the link below. I also noticed you were after a study partner so shoot me a pm in the near future and id be more than happy to discuss hands or general situations with you.

http://www.thepokerbank.com/

I feel I have my rfi ranges pretty locked down as well as a pretty standard tight ~7% 3 bet range and a purely for value 4 bet range (is this a mistake at NL5 should I have some 4 bet bluffs and if so what sort of combinations?).

Post flop I feel I have a lot of learning to do I think I play far too predictably and as a result get exploited quite a lot by regs I want to develop a more balanced post flop strategy. Checking out those videos now (Y).

Post hands, watch training videos, review hands yourself. If you do those 3 things regularly you'll undoubtedly identify leaks. They'r all pretty passive as well in learning terms. It doesn't take much effort to watch a training video. Consider coaching if you can afford it.

Find a friend who also plays, preferably better than you, play with them and ask what they think you can do to improve. The biggest jump in my game came after playing a significant number of hours heads up against another good player and seeing how they were exploiting me.

As far as 4 bet ranges, I don’t play 5NL but my guess is that people aren’t 3! enough to make 4! bluffing at all +EV in general

self fixing leaks is one of the hardest things to do - at least it is for me. The quickest and easiest way will be to get a better player looking over your hands.

If you’re on your own try looking st your winrates doing certain actions and in certain position, and then compare these to other players’

If you have no frame of reference then go by gut feel - which spots give you an uneasy feeling like you’re lost?

Would love to get some coaching but it seems all coaches are like $100+ per hour which for someone playing 5nl seems a lot! (about 3 hours for my entire poker bankroll o.0) Unfortunately don't have any friends playing/winning at poker high limits just a couple at the same limit and MTT's all of which probably no more qualified to help me than myself :P not really sure how to go about getting better players to help me/don't really see much in it for them but would love to get into say a 25nl poker study group or something but don't know how or if it's possible even for a small 5nl winner like me.

it saves you a lot of time in the long run, and of course it pays for itself.

A lot of poker players don’t even know the gaps in their poker knowledge - do you think you can figure these out easily and quickly alone? Maybe, but the odds aren’t very good.


I’ve personally never been coached but if I could go back in time and had the spare income for it, I would give it a shot.

hire a coach

An alternative to coaching, and the way I’ve fixed leaks, has been to invest in a solver and picked up one book on poker theory.

There are some cheap solvers out there - you’re not just limited to PIO! This is an engine that will give you an unbeatable strategy given certain parameters.

There’s a few problems with this:

1. It still doesn’t tell you where your biggest leaks are, you’ll have to sim a lot of spots and hope you come across a huge deviation from the solver to spot a leak
2. Some things in the solver will not make sense, and you might need the help of an expert player anyway to make sense of these.
3. Playing the way a solver recommends is impossible. We can approximate it, but you’ll have great difficulty executing the mixed starts it will recommend
4. The solver and GTO are not invincible in multiway pots
5. You might not know how to get full value from the solver, and again you might need the help of some better players to let you know this

Despite all these downsides the plus side for me is that the solver is unbeatable within the constraints it has and the parameters it has been given. I can’t understate how huge that is.

And unlike a coach it has a one time cost. Also, your coaches probably use one.

The tracking tools will help, if only to find which 2-card combos you are losing $$ with. I'm not familiar with the modern "trackers", but I'm sure you can figure out if say you are doing well "calling" on the turn. If you find you are winning 80% of the time when you raise, then clearly you are not raising enough.

I'm supposing, though, that you frequently find yourself in situations where you really don't know the right play and that you respond passively to these situations. Make sure that after every session you can reconstruct a particularly uncomfortable hand you contested, and work out as best you can what you should have done. If possible, narrow down what he can have in his "range", such as "9 combos of flush-draws, 12 combos of straight draws, 12 combos of top pair, 12 of pocket 2nd pair, etc. Compare those to how you figure this player plays. If you cannot do that, make up something that makes your decision close. You won't be good at it at first, but come up with SOMETHING. I think you will find that your decision was really clear cut quite often. Try to review that.

The other thing to do is to watch other's contesting the pot and try to guess each player's hand before the river card. When you get it wrong, reconstruct the player's actions with the hand. So you say "busted straight draw" and he raises and turns over top set, you need to make a mental note that this player will slow play monsters. If you see it again, you may be able to deduce he ALWAYS slow plays monsters, which is useful information when he doesn't slow play.

-Louie