Moving Up in Stakes in Poker - A Step by Step Guide [2025]

Moving up in stakes is a big deal for a lot of poker players. It is the subject of plenty of conversation on forums for instance. People want to know what to expect at the next limit, what adjustments they should make and so on.

This article will argue that by making moving up less of an event, you will actually be more likely to succeed. I have a lot of experience from trial and error with this subject so I hope that I can offer some useful advice here.

Have a Good Sample Size Before Moving Up

First things first, make sure that you have an adequate sample at your current limit before moving up. If you only have 10k hands at your current limit and you are crushing it beyond belief, ready to challenge Ivey HU etc, you need to realize how wildly off the mark from your true winrate you might actually be. I would recommend playing at least 50k hands at your current limit with a decent winrate.

What is a decent winrate? Well this is hard to say because the games are always changing and therefore winrates are always changing. I think it was A.E. Jones who said that there is no such thing as a winrate when the games are in constant flux. I would tend to agree with that. However, you should have a winrate which is decent enough that you are more than a marginal winner in your current game.

Your winrate will drop at the next limit usually by at least half a big bet per hundred due to tougher competition and less fish. So if you are only winning at half a big bet per hundred at your current limit, you might be better served to delay moving up and instead focus on getting better at your current stakes because you will likely be breakeven at the higher one.

By the way, if you're new to poker and you just want to know exactly what hands to play, grab my free poker cheat sheet.

Memorize the charts. Stop guessing. Start winning.

The Players Aren't That Much Hard at Higher Stakes

Secondly, the most important thing to remember when playing at a new limit (assuming it is the very next one above where you currently play) is that the players there really aren't that much better. There is a natural inclination to think that it is going to be way tougher, no more kiddie pool, when you move up. This isn't true to anywhere near the extent that you think and it is in fact dangerous to your success.

While the players at the higher limit will be better it will only be by a marginal amount. There will be small differences in the best regs. They will have a few more advanced plays in their arsenal. However, most of the regs (breakeven nits for instance) will be at exactly the same level as at your former limit. And fish really are fish no matter the stakes. They just like to splash around a lot and play poorly. The only determining factor on where they play is what remains of their current bankroll.

Play Your Game, Don't Change Anything

So it is important to not go into your new limit all wild eyed and thinking that you have to change a bunch of stuff up in your game. Trust me, I have made this mistake many times myself.

The best thing that you can do at first when you move up is to just keep doing exactly what got you there in the first place.

And I do mean exactly. Do not change anything at all. Once you have several sessions under your belt and have a better feel for how the game plays, then you can look at finding new ways to exploit certain tendencies that you may have noticed.

Another good idea when you move up is to play less tables than you currently play at least for the first few sessions. This is another area that I am all too familiar with. Don't be like me and just fire up 24 tables at your new limit on a Monday afternoon when the games are at their worst and you have no info on anybody. Help yourself out. Make things as easy as possible. You didn't just jump on a bike right away right? Your parents put training wheels on it first and helped you get on and get going etc.

So play less tables than you are used to at first so that you will have extra time to think through hands and table select. Move up on a Saturday or Sunday when the games are the best. And if at all possible do some advanced scouting on your competition before you even sit down. You can use the top winners list on PTR for instance to easily identify who the best regs are before you ever even play a hand against them.

All of these things will give you a better chance at having some winning sessions right off the bat. Nothing is guaranteed with the short term variance in poker but as we know the best thing that we can do is just consistently put the odds in our favor and things will work out in the end.

Don't Be Discouraged If Moving Up Doesn't Work Out the First Time

If things do go bad during your first couple sessions at your new limit it is important not to get down on yourself and think that you aren't good enough. Variance will swing wildly over a couple of sessions and with the larger money amounts that could mean that you lose more than you are used to. It's just a part of the process. You were more likely to win more than you were used to and that is why you moved up in the first place!

But if things go bad it is important to move back down and just continue on grinding out your old stake for a week or two and then try again. As I said, this is a process and you will not always succeed on the first attempt or even the second or the third. You just have to keep putting the odds in your favor and you will stick up there eventually. Always remember that poker is a long term game. And it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. There is no rush.

If you want to take more time between move up attempts or not even move up at all then don't feel pressured. Do not allow other people to pressure you into doing something that you don't want to do. Poker is an individual game, not a team sport. If there is one thing that you will find in no shortage around poker communities it is opinions.

Everybody has one and they will be more than willing to tell you about it whether you asked them to or not. Listen to smart, winning players but at the end of the day listen to yourself and make the decisions that you feel comfortable with at the tables.

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Bluff Raising the Flop - A Step by Step Guide [2025]

This is a concept that I have wanted to talk about for awhile now. While I constantly preach about how keeping things simple at the micros is the way to go, we should always be looking for those little edges as well.

There is a greater issue, often referred to as "metagame," that has some bearing here as well. While players at the micros are generally paying less attention than those at higher limits, there are still benefits to building an aggressive image.

People will notice this even at the micros. And building an aggressive image will of course help you get paid off much easier. Here is a hand that I played a couple of months ago which really helps illustrate this.

Villain is an 8/3 supernit reg who I have 6k hands on (i.e. we have played a ton together)

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.02 BB (8 handed)

SB ($4.43)
Hero (BB) ($6.53)
UTG ($3.29)
UTG+1 ($2.40)
MP1 ($2.65)
MP2 ($0.71)
CO ($2.16)
Button ($1.30)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A♦, Q♣
6 folds, SB calls $0.01, Hero bets $0.08, SB calls $0.06

Flop: ($0.16) 6♦, J♦, 2♦ (2 players)
SB bets $0.02, Hero raises to $0.16, SB raises to $0.30, Hero calls $0.14

Turn: ($0.76) 5♦ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2.50, SB calls $2.50

River: ($5.76) Q♥ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $3.65 (All-In), SB calls $1.55 (All-In)

Total pot: $8.86 | Rake: $0.42

I have the chat turned off 99.9% of the time I am playing (very +EV and a good idea for a future blog post) but I turned it on after this hand to hopefully get an idea of what the hell happened here. Why on earth does an 8/3 nit lose his mind against me like this? Here is what he said (I didn't say anything before or after by the way):

xxxxxx said, "dint believe u)"
xxxxxx said, "seen u raise with 910 so :p"

So because he saw me make a loose raise one time in 6k hands he decided that I just had to be bluffing up a storm 200bb+ deep here. Maybe an extreme case (and it is NL2) but I think you get the point.

By the way, if you're new to poker and you just want to know exactly what hands to play, grab my free poker cheat sheet.

Memorize the charts. Stop guessing. Start winning.

Poker players tend to have a very selective memory.

Much like how people tend to remember a single bad beat late in a tournament for years, such can be the case in cash games as well. Nevermind the fact that I am a winning TAG reg, this guy saw me raise with T9 one time (could have been months before this hand who knows) and that stuck in his memory and caused him to play his hand here very poorly against me with very deep stacks.

So the point of all this discussion so far is that we need to view our play not just in the vacuum of this particular hand but also in the much wider sense of the long term against players we might see for months down the road.

Bluff raising flops allows us to cheaply and effectively win pots but it also allows us to build an aggressive image that may pay big dividends down the line for us. And it is great if you get caught every once in awhile. Because when they see you show up light just once (as we saw above) that can be enough to get you loads of loose future action.

By the way, if you just want to learn my simple no BS system for exactly what hands to play, when to bet, raise and bluff, I cover this all in my brand new training program, Play Fearless Poker.

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So when should you bluff raise?

Well this depends on a couple things.

• Perceived ranges
• Flop texture
• Player type

Let's explore these three ideas one at a time.

Perceived ranges

A perceived range is a spectrum of hands that a certain player is believed or assumed to have in some particular scenario. It doesn't mean that they will always have one of these hands. Rarely are there any absolutes in poker. It simply means that this is the range of hands that people expect them to show up with.

When somebody raises preflop their perceived range is big pairs and big broadways. Hands like,

A♦A♣, K♥K♠, A♣K♠, A♠Q♥ etc.

When somebody calls a preflop raise, their perceived range is small pairs, mid pairs, suited connectors and some weaker speculative broadway type hands. Hands like,

5♥5♠, 9♦9♣, 6♠7♠, A♣8♣ etc

Flop Textures

So this ties directly into flop textures. If I am the preflop caller and the board comes something like,

K♥Q♣T♥

This is not the kind of board that I want to be bluff raising. Why? Because this board absolutely nails the range of the preflop raiser. He is therefore unlikely to fold very often when I raise. Furthermore, I won't have many hands in my range that hit this board anyways. I would have 3bet preflop with a lot of the hands that connect with this board.

So we will want to bluff raise flops that hit our perceived range. If we are the preflop caller then these are going to be boards like:

6♠7♥9♠

or

3♣4♦6♣

These boards contain a lot of small and middle cards (which we are supposed to have in our range) and they are also very wet (flush draws, straight draws). When our opponent cbets with his big pair or big broadway, he will not be enjoying life very much when he gets raised on these types of boards.

Conversely, if we are the preflop raiser and someone donks into us, the boards that we should be bluff raising are ones that contain lots of big broadway cards such as:

A♥K♣J♥

or

Q♥8♠8♦

We are supposed to have these cards in our range when we raise preflop so if somebody donks into us we can credibly represent them. The second board only has one broadway card but remember our range also has a lot of big pairs in it which don't need to improve.

Player Type

So the last thing to consider when bluff-raising is the player type. Against call stationy recreational types players who go to showdown a lot it isn't going to make a whole lot of sense to be bluff raising at any point during a hand, let alone on the flop. Similarly against nitty players who have a very tight range in any given situation I will be less inclined to bluff raise as well.

So this leaves that big middle category of players from nitty TAG's (13/10), TAG's (16/14), LAG's (20/18) and SLP's (semi loose passive, 24/6) who we will want to be doing this against. Now I feel compelled to stress again that bluff raising is not a standard play of mine at all at the micros. But let's see if we can create a couple of hypothetical scenarios here where we might want to think about employing this play.

Example #1

An SLP raises from MP and we call in LP with,

7♥7♦

The flop comes,

4♣5♣8♦

He cbets and we raise.

Instead of just calling here we can entertain raising because this is the kind of board that is going to be hard for him to hit, and presumably easy for us to hit, given our perceived range. Raising isn't completely necessary here but it is an option. We probably have some decent equity against his range with a gutshot and a midpair. But more importantly we have position and a board that looks scary to him.

The added benefit here is that even when he does call we are going to secure a free card on the turn most of the time since we have position. If he wants to station up and call us down we can just foil those plans by checking back the turn and seeing if we can hit something. A lot of the time with passive players at this limit they will even check the river here as well. There is no need to continue on with our bluff.

We can possibly value bet in some spots if we think that he is stationy enough to have called the flop with just overs or a worse pair. But there is nothing wrong with seeing a showdown as well. Remember that other players at the table will then get to see our hand and realize that we are capable of raising with stuff that isn't exactly the nuts. This might pay off in the future.

Example #2

Let's look at another sort of scenario.

A TAG raises from the button and we just call from the SB with,

A♣J♣

We just called because there is a fish in the BB and we didn't want to blow him out of the pot by 3betting. The fish unfortunately folds anyways.

The flop comes,

4♥5♣7♦

We check and the TAG cbets. We should raise.

There are a couple of things here. First, we should raise because this flop represents cards that hit our preflop calling range. Even though the TAG's range is going to be really wide from the button, in theory this flop should still be better for us than it is for him.

Secondly we have a hand that has a lot of hidden equity. Since we know that our opponent's range here is going to be pretty wide, we expect to have the best hand when we hit our ace or jack. We will also hit our backdoor flush about 1 in 20 times. And we will pick up another club on the turn 1/4 times which we can continue bluffing with.

But also, we could easily be bluffing with the best hand here. This is why we want to make these plays against players who have a wider range and not against supernits or fish whose range is incredibly wide but their ability to fold even bottom pair is low.

It is important to note here that we are raising with a hand that has equity. Something that I like to always mention when bluffing is that you should always have some equity. There is just no need to run stone cold bluffs in full ring poker at any level in my opinion. If you have 6 high with no draw just fold and don't even think about doing anything.

The same thing goes with small pairs. Don't bluff with your small pairs when all you have is an underpair. Your chances to improve (2 outs) are just so slim. We always want to be "semi- bluffing" even if it is as weak as a gutshot when we are bluffing because why not? Why not have some equity in the hand? You are going to get called more often at the micros and we at least want to have some chance to dish out a nice beat and put them on tilt.

I guess that would be a good topic for another article as well. But another added benefit of bluff raising with some outs is that we will hit them from time to time and there is nothing more tilt inducing in poker than when somebody raises you with a weak draw and hits. And obviously when we put people at our table on tilt this is a very good thing for our bottom line.

Example #3

We raise from MP with,

K♥Q♣

And get called by a LAG in the BB.

The flop comes,

J♣5♠5♦

He donks into us. We should raise.

We should raise in this spot because this board is very dry and therefore very hard to hit. When a board is very hard to hit it favors the preflop raiser because the perception is that he doesn't need to improve his/her hand to the extent that the caller does.

And in cases like this it would be especially useful to just have a quick look at the opponent's donk bet stat. This can be found on the bottom left of the full popup in Hold'em Manager. If you have a decent size sample (the number to the right in brackets which represents opportunities to donk bet is around 5 or more) and it is 30% or more we can probably safely assume that he is doing this pretty wide.

And especially on a flop like this, all types of players love to donk out with their marginal strength hands because they don't think that you can have anything either. The issue that you must be aware of with these types of boards however is that you will often have to fire multiple barrels in order to win the pot.

Players at the micros don't like to fold marginal hands so we expect to get called here by a wide range of middle pair type hands.

9♣9♥, 8♠8♦, 7♥7♠ etc

As well as all the Jx hands.

We will need to fire again on a lot of turn cards, especially big broadway ones. However, if your opponent is a straight fish (55/5) type player you would be much better served to just give up as they will often just call anyways. Or even more mind bending, that broadway card (especially an ace) on the turn actually hit them because they floated your bluff raise on the flop here with

A♦4♣

So I hope this discussion was helpful to you. My approach to the micros is one based largely off of exploiting bad players with big hands. I don't do a whole lot of bluffing. But we should always be looking to maximize our edge to the fullest no matter what game we are playing in.

Situations where we can cheaply bluff raise the flop and possibly win the pot will arise from time to time. And at the very least we might be able to develop a bit of a bad image for ourselves and get a bunch of loose action later.

If you enjoyed this article please "Like" or "Tweet" it below!

Crushing the Microstakes Bonus Materials

Hey guys,

Hope all is good. I have finished with the last of the free stuff to go along with my book. As I have said all along Crushing the Microstakes is simply a guide on how to start doing exactly what the title suggests. I am not going to be winning a Pullitzer prize anytime soon (although please vote for me by all means!). The book is a strategy guide first and foremost. I am very happy that there have been so many good reviews so far. But as I keep saying the best reviews to me are graphs that go up and to the right.

So I wanted to create some bonus materials for anyone who has bought my book past, present or future firstly as a thank you, but more importantly to help you achieve that goal of winning big at these stakes. I want to go so far beyond the expectations that you are used to with every other poker book that you will have no choice but to start turning your results around immediately. I think the poker book market is flooded with a lot of products that might read well. However they apparently don't always have that much practical application at the tables.

I see people that have extensive libraries of poker books and yet they can barely beat NL10 or even lower. This is ridiculous in my eyes. So I will be offering an unprecedented amount of support AFTER your purchase in order to make sure that my book is different.

Enough talk, on to the bonuses.

The first of these (as mentioned in the last post) is a couple of private sections in my forum where I will personally help you with your hand histories and answer questions about the book every day. Plenty of people have signed up so far and the majority of the posts by far are in the private hand history forum.

This is a friendly environment meant for you to learn. And you can post any hand you want. There are no "dumb" or "too obvious" hands. Please just don't post 10 a day. That's all I ask :p

You can just click the "forum" tab above to go there.

Now I want to go further though. I am just going to give you a ton of information on my stats so that you can compare it to your own. You will be given access to screenshots that show my VPIP, PFR, AF, 3bet, fold to 3bet, cbet, turn cbet, fold to cbet, fold to turn cbet, 4bet, attempt to steal, positional stats, aggression by street and much more. And it will cover an enormous sample of well over 1 million hands all played within the last year and a bit.

Also included will be numerous graphs showing my red line, blue line and AIEV over this same sample size. This will allow you to see that variance really does work itself out over big sample sizes. And also that it really is ok to have a downward sloping redline at the micros. As I always say, the green line is the only one that matters!

People ask me sometimes why do I give away all this free information? Why do I waste my time on all this low limit stuff, blogging, coaching etc? They are right, I am not getting rich. Although I am doing ok.

However most of these people have probably never received something like the following. I have been wanting to post this for quite some time. It was sent to me in a pm on DragTheBar over 3 months ago and I asked him permission right away but I couldn't find a blog post to put it in until now.

"All this lead to me starting to watch your videos....

MAN everything you say in your videos has registered IMMEDIATELY. I just seem to understand everything your talking about, and I feel like I am at another level after every video I have watched. Somehow you explain advanced concepts in a simplistic way that hits home and stays there. Since starting watching your videos, I have gone from a losing player, to a break even player, and I am now breaking into being a winning player. I won't really know until I get the volume in, but I really feel like a completely different player, and I have been achieving a winrate seemed impossible 6 months ago. I was also uncomfortable posting hands in the forums in the past because I really had no thought process before while playing, but watching your videos has helped me to form my own thought process while playing.

Poker at times is a very independent process, and there isnt always someone there to pat you on the back for a good fold, or to celebrate the monster pot you just dragged in. That's why I wanted to take the time to thank you. I am sure there are plenty of people who learn from you and your videos, and go on to make money without ever saying thanks for spending YOUR time teaching ME. Maybe Im wrong haha but I wanted to make sure that you arent going unnoticed. I wanted you to know that you have made a difference in the life of someone you have never met, and have never had a conversation with. I want to be more active in the forums and become a bigger part of the DTB community here, and I really look forward to discussing more hands and poker topics with you, other DTB coaches, and the DTB community.

Again, thanks for everything, and I hope that finding out you have helped someone without knowing it brightens your day a bit. GL with everything in the future!"

You seriously can't beat stuff like that. And ya, it absolutely did make my day.

Sometimes if you just be nice to people and honestly try your best to help them, it will come back to you anyways. I have had several people for instance buy my book, not because they needed it, but purely as a thank you for the blog, videos etc. One guy even sent me too much money on purpose! It works :)

I will have lots more content coming soon. I have a ton of mini-video ideas for the blog. And lots of ideas for posts as well. But I write this for you guys. Let me know on the forums, email, Twitter, DragTheBar, (*new* Facebook), wherever.

And like I said it is hard to get the word out from this little blog. If you like the content, the book, the forum, anything please like it, tweet it, share it. It helps me a lot.

Until next time, keep crushing.

New BlackRain79 Poker Forum

This blog gets a fair amount of traffic and comments. I am constantly trying to think of new ways to engage my readers more and provide better content. A good poker friend of mine from France convinced me that a forum is a good idea. I thought he was on drugs at first. How can you put a forum on a blog? Well I just did. Check the forum tab above.

2018 Edit: This is now a private forum which is ONLY available for purchasers of my poker books and poker videos.

Ideally I would like it to be just a small little corner for people to discuss a whole bunch of things poker and non poker related. I think it may interest a few people. Like most forums there is no anonymous posting so you will have to register to participate. You can view without registering.

I mentioned previously that I want to create some bonuses for those who purchase Crushing the Microstakes. So the first of these will be two private sections within the forum for posting hand histories and discussing Crushing the Microstakes that only they will have access to. I will answer every post in those forums.

For access please register and reply to the "Access to the Private Forums" thread.

That is about all I have for now. Oh actually I just put up an ad in my local Craigslist for my coaching I think around a month ago. I don't really use Craigslist much and I just did it to see if I got any responses. I was contacted oddly enough by some local film makers who are shooting a documentary on online poker!

The plot is that they are going to go rent a cabin in Tofino on Vancouver Island (stunningly beautiful place) and try to run up a starting bankroll of $1200 playing SnG's on Stars. They wanted to interview a bunch of local "pros" and they thought I fit the bill.

I said sure why not as I thought their film was a pretty awesome idea. So they filmed me 24 tabling last night and I did a bunch of interview style questions afterwards. If or when it gets released I will be sure to let you all know haha!

Apparently they contacted Brad Booth for the film (he is from this area). But I think I read on NVG that he was playing in the big game in Vegas recently so I guess he was a bit busy! =(

Stackin' Fish

Hey guys,

Hope all is well. I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor. If you bought Crushing the Microstakes and have read the whole thing I would really appreciate if you could leave your thoughts here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/33/books-publications/any-reviews-crushing-microstakes-1133780/

As a first time author only promoting and selling off of my own little blog it is very difficult to get the word out. If you do review my book please be completely honest. If you hated it I'd like you to say as much. The reason is because nobody is going to buy it in the long run if it sucks anyways.

I am of course biased. I know that it's awesome. The reviews have been about 95% glowing so far but most of them are in my email box, PM's on DragTheBar, or on Skype. Nobody sees them but me! So if you guys get a chance I would really appreciate it.

So I made a short video. It isn't exactly meant to be highly instructive. I actually plan on making a number of short, free videos for this blog soon. I think its a pretty cool way to talk about some hands. If you guys could give me some specific spots that you want to see I will filter in HEM, grab a couple hands, stick them in the replayer and record.

This video as I said though is not really meant to be that informative. It's more comedy than anything. It's just a bunch of random big hands that I won at NL2 and NL25 this year (almost all of my hands were at either of these two limits in 2011).

*Note the presence of massive fish or regs on tilt in pretty much every single hand.

As I preach all the time, the best way to improve your winrate, is and always will be, to sit with bad players.

I'll be happy to answer any questions about particular hands. Especially the ones where I cooler the crap out of someone. That's my secret weapon :)

Future Plans and an Interesting Discussion That I Had Last Night

Well I can finally get back to playing poker here again soon! I have had a couple of others things on my plate as of late lol, but now my schedule is clear. It's not a huge deal because I knew I didn't have enough time to regain supernova again before the end of the year anyway. And I won't be attempting any kind of sick three week grind like I did last year. So I'd much rather just start anew in January. But my plan is to try and largely abandon 24 tabling.

I have experimented with 8 tabling and playing lots of short handed full ring tables and I really much prefer it to mass tabling. Too many years of mindless clicking. Now I think I have said this before in this blog, probably several times, but that's what new year's resolutions are for right?

So my tentative plan is just to get back to grinding some NL2 or NL5 (I haven't played in a month, longest streak in 5 years) and then hit up the NL10 deep tables starting in January. I have long since known that these tables are a gold mine. And there are many specialists out there these days who concentrate on playing only them with vigorous table selection. The kind of winrates that are possible when doing this are pretty sick.

On another topic, last night I had a long and interesting discussion with a student and friend of mine about what the difference is between his winrate and mine at NL2. He is a hardcore grinder 24 tabling 6max for about 3BB/100. I 24 table full ring at 9 or 10BB/100.

Previously we had worked at length on his big winning and losing hands. This is something that I like to do with all my students. And I do consistently see tilt and more crazy flip out blow ups with marginal hands than I would make. And I usually say to them. Well you know you can't do that blah, blah, blah.

But is it really just a question of me being a bit more disciplined in some situations? I have also worked with him, like all my other students on maximizing their gains with monsters at the lowest stakes. And this usually just involves getting them to bet bigger amounts and more often.

But again, is that the end of it? So we got to comparing our winrates with all sorts of hands over huge samples in HEM. As expected I was winning more than him with AA and KK. And the same thing when we filtered for all pairs and for big aces. However, the difference was not enormous. It was usually around a 5 to 4 ratio at best. If I am winning at say 5BB/100 with some hand, he was at 4BB/100 etc.

However, when we finally filtered for all hands that weren't premium (basically everything BUT the hands above) this is where we found a big difference. Both of us had lossrates but I was losing only half as much as him. So a 2 to 1 ratio in this case.

Over time this adds up in a big way. Whereas he was losing $500 every 200k hands with these hands I was only losing $250. That represents a difference of 3BB/100 between our overall winrates!

So while I will have to dig further with him to find out more information I was pretty surprised by these findings. And I will have to perhaps change up the way that I coach a bit. I guess the point of all this is that if you are having trouble maintaining the winrate that you want, it's probably best to start looking at the more simple, everyday decisions that you are making.

There is probably some issue with your fundamentals such as calling 3bets too much, not getting thin value on the river, not cbetting enough. I think people tend to focus too much on the big all in hands, myself included. You see this all the time in forums. Rarely do people post hands such as "do I cbet this board against this particular player type?" etc.

No it's usually "omg! I have top two pair in a 3bet pot against a nit and he has raised me all in on the turn!" These hands generally play themselves and you won't be making a huge mistake in the long run no matter what action you decide upon.

If you are making significant fundamental mistakes for a couple bb's here and there in the smaller pots that you play, this is probably what is really going to affect your winrate in a big way over time. And this is because these pots happen FAR more frequently than your big cooler hands.

Something to consider next time you are reviewing your play. If you enjoyed this article please "Like" or "Tweet" it below!