In poker, nobody plays perfectly. We all review hands after the fact and go "well that was stupid, wasn't it?" My recent revelation in putting a crap ton of volume in the last 23 days is that a large part of increasing my WR will come down to making less mistakes.

For example, in just the 1k hands I played this morning (and the 3k hands last night), I made 4 avoidable mistakes that turned a 300-400BB winning session into a break even session. The faster I can learn from these mistakes, the quicker I feel like I can maybe double my current WR.

My question is how many mistakes do you guys allow yourselves before you stop playing for a session and take a break to reset?

I've never thought about how many mistakes I've made during a session, so I can't really answer your question.

How are you defining a mistake? Are you just looking at it from a theoretical perspective?

Yeah it can be tough to define a mistake in poker. If you bet half pot when GTO Wizard said you should've checked 75% of the time or overbet the other 25%, is that a mistake? Tough to define. Though for me personally I've been doing much better treating each session I play as a way to learn. I'm not worried about volume, as I really don't have to use poker money to pay bills. I'm much more concerned about quality of play, and thinking things through while I play. I don't get mad at myself if I think plays through and after the fact realize my thinking was faulty. I then just learn from that, take notes, and move on. I get mad at myself though when I stop thinking and go into autopilot or half think something through and then just click a button. So playing less tables and less hands in a session and doing more thinking and analyzing has really helped me cut down on "mistakes" and to learn more from the sessions I do play.

I think calling river bets and missing value bets are the two biggest mistakes players make. I think both of those mistakes are made out of the irrational fear of getting raised or that we are getting bluffed.

Not giving up enough otr and blasting off when we know Vs are unlikely to fold is another costly mistake of which I am guilty.

I know those are sort of non-specific examples, but, making them frequently over a large sample adds up.

i think you're defining a mistake here as something that, upon review, your A-game self would not approve of, right? not a mistake according to pio that you learned about after the fact.

was probably one of a few less glamorous strengths i had that allowed me to get better results than players better than me.

Realize you made the mistake abd try not to make it again, I’m going through the exact same thing where I am playing profitably for hours and then make a bad river call and call off a chunk profit away, have to try and play a disciplined game and fold when I need to. Half of the solution is realizing your mistakes so your half-way there. Happy grinding

I think a pretty good definition of a mistake is choosing an option that a solver would virtually never pick (both "in theory" and vs a given real-life opponent)

Well put, I agree that would probably be a good basic definition in studying today's games. If you check and a solver says you should never check, then that sounds like a mistake to work on.

More solver lines in my usual nl25 games lead to worse wr in general

In that scenario, I'm talking about the solver output for an average player in your pool, not a theoretically optimal one

3k hands in an evening session and then 1k hands the next morning is a lot.

How many breaks are you having during these sessions?

I take breaks constantly. Not only when I've lost a pot, like, constantly. Even if it's for 2-3 minutes, getting up from my desk and doing/looking at something else.

I often feel like I don't "need" the little breaks but they are definitely +EV. They allow me to be 100% focused when playing hands, cause I know I'll have another break shortly. Also is a great way avoiding losing multiple stacks in a short space of time.

Like for the sake of 15-20mins of breaks added onto a session I think it's worth it.

yeh, i think this is very underrated.

This pretty much sums up what I was getting at. I personally have never used a solver.


I usually take a break every 500 hands (30-40 minutes). As of a week ago I restart my computer every 1k hands to avoid DC's and lag. I agree with you that 15 to 20 minute breaks are +EV, even if they're forced. I try to put in 3k+ hands a day. Blitz has been great for volume lol.

It was the first rule I learnt about microstakes: 'don't make mistakes'.

Trouble is, you HAVE to make mistakes if you're going to actually learn anything. Will a casual fish fold to my 33% river block? There is literally only one way to find out and even if it doesn't work out it doesn't mean it's 'a mistake'.

So yeah, very hard to define technically and I'd say smb's subjecive analysis is the better one to measure. Not all mistakes are equal. Did you learn something from the mistake? That's not so bad.

Sometimes I play for an hour and think, I played my best, no coolers phased me, I did all I could.

It's rare, because I'm not good enough yet to coast. But it happens more often these days and that makes sessions truly enjoyable. Once you can switch off against inferior opponents, confident that your knowledge gap is wide enough that the rare, maybe two a day, signficant mistakes will never completely destroy your WR, then I think you're doing ok.

me neither. and i'm extremely sure that i committed many disgusting solver crimes every session. there's a lot to be said for being able to execute your personal A-game strategies all session, every session, though. and it's something that people don't give enough weight to with their work on poker development and improvement, imo.

i'd link it to the way i always used simplified strategies in-game. even if i knew a spot benefited from 2 or 3 different sizings, i'd sacrifice some of that ev to balance as best as i could in real-time. i can't tell you how much i must've exploited regs transparently failing to execute complicated strategies. it counts for nothing that if we had 15 minutes to play out the hand in review that i'd get theoretically ass-blasted if you can't do it when it matters.

Grunch.

I don't think the number of mistakes really matters. It's more about the severity of the mistakes and what is causing you to make mistakes. I don't even think that mistakes is the right word.. Blunders is probably way better.

If you recognize you're not playing as well as you can be to the point where you assess that you are not profitable in your pool, then you sit out.

I make blunders but if the tables are still great, I'm not going anywhere. Had a session like this today where I got owned like 3 hands in a row by a 94/60 fish but still hung around because I knew there was money to be made.

I am just learning at my current stakes and don't care too much about the money. So I will continue even if I know I am playing my D game. Last week, I played during a bad thunderstorm knowing that my power and internet would probably get knocked out more than once. I got one power outage and 3 internet disconnects in 4 hours lol. 3 of them were minor, but on the last internet disconnect I had the pleasure of seeing my pocket aces disappear in the BB against an UTG open and a CO 3bet. CO had AKs, so he wasn't going anywhere lol. I also kept playing recently when I was so tired that I timed out in the SB with AKo because I couldn't calculate 2.5x of $4.75 and was too braindead to just click raise with the goofy amount I had entered instead. These are examples of times when one should not keep playing if the money is at all meaningful.

I am blessed in that I only extremely rarely suffer major tilt issues. I am almost always somewhere between my C game and my A game. When playing seriously, I would happily keep playing my C game if the games are soft. Otherwise, I would take a break once my C game comes along. I think it was Sklansky who onces said that we should continue playing with position on a 90 VPIP whale even if we have to pry our eyelids open with toothpicks to stay awake. I pretty much agree, but in reality I still stop when I am feeling totally miserable even if the game is amazing.

Those of you who have never used solvers... I think you are really missing out even if you have no interest in playing a GTO style. One awesome thing about solvers is that they can quantify our mistakes. I often find that what I thought were huge mistakes were actually pretty minor. And sometimes mistakes that I think are minor are actually outright theoretical punts.

yeah we all make mistakes all the time, poker is hard. Watched this review from GuerillaPoker recently where he reviewed some high stakes hand histories, and he talks about even the high stakes sickos on pokerstars make mistakes all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wmMJJjm9ZQ&t=310s

In The Mental Game of Poker, he talks about how mistakes are inevitable, and our play is mostly going to be a bell curve, where we sometimes play our F game, and sometimes play our A game, but mostly play our B-C game. Our goal shouldn't be to play our A game all the time and get upset when we're not a total machine, but to shift the bell curve to the right, so that our C/D/F games are better (and by extension, our A game is better too).

The best way to increase your winrate is probably to spend less time grinding out volume at micros, and more time learning. 4k hands a day is a lot, and you start to hit diminishing returns from a learning perspective relatively quickly IMO. Goal at micros should be to learn and get out of the rake trap ASAP, not prove beyond a doubt you're a winner with a 500k hand sample or whatever

Well said, I really like Uri's videos. Has anyone purchased the Redline Play course?

One other thing is that if you’re playing a lot, playing your A game all the time is really mentally draining. It might be higher EV to play your B game for 3 hours, rather than your A game for 1 hour and get mentally tired, and either quit playing or play your C game for 2 hours

It depends if it's a Frequency mistake or Fundamental mistake.

I allow myself a lot more Frequency mistakes during a session. But if I start making a bunch of Fundamental Mistakes and getting stacked - I'll call it early and review the hands.

There's also spots where you just don't know what to do. I write those down during the session and then review them later.

You guys should check out Finding Equilibrium's new video of Jarretman playing a 2kNL session. It is very impressive and show's just how good some people are at this game.

I'm probably making hundreds of mistakes a session. Getting stuff like sizing correct is hard.

How do you distinguish between a "mistake" and a "soundly reasoned decision that happened to cost you a buyin or more"?

Ignore this at your peril.