Biggest mistake most poker amateurs still make today? That's easy, bad calls.
I see it with my students almost every day!
In poker, calling is usually the last option you should be considering.
As the old adage goes: "if it's good enough for a call, then it's good enough
for a raise."
While there are certainly a few spots where calling is the best play, most of
the time raising or even folding is the far superior play.
This is literally the main thesis of my entire 3rd poker book. And it has been
the key to my success as a 10+ year pro.
In this article I will show you 3 common spots where most poker amateurs still
make bad calls these days. And more importantly, how to make sure this isn't
costing you money as well!
Let's jump into it.
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1. Calling 3-bets Out of Position = Lighting Money on Fire
In No-limit Texas Hold’em, knowing which hands to play preflop and how to play
them is already winning half the battle.
If you play the hand correctly preflop, it automatically converts to easier
and more profitable spots postflop. Conversely, making a preflop mistake often leads to the snowball effect
postflop.
In other words, the mistakes compound, and what starts off as a
small mistake can lead to a costly disaster that could have easily been
avoided.
One such mistake a lot of amateur poker players make is calling a 3-bet out of
position preflop. A 3-bet preflop by the way is when you raise and then somebody else re-raises (or vice versa).
And being "out of position" means you will be acting first on the flop, turn and river (postflop streets). This is statistically proven to be a bad idea in poker.
This is because poker is a game of incomplete information, and therefore, when you get to see what your opponent does first, you simply have a massive advantage over them.
And when you have to act first, they have a massive advantage over you. More in this in a bit.
So, calling 3-bets out of position is generally a bad idea, especially
when you do it with an easily dominated hand. A dominated hand is a when your opponent has a stronger kicker for example.
For example:
If you have A♥️Q♠️ and your opponent has a hand like A♣️K♦️
Your hand is dominated, as you only have roughly 25% hand equity (odds
to win). Clearly you always want your hand to dominate your opponent's
hand, instead of the other way around!
When you call any bet, it is implied that you have a weaker hand than your
opponent, otherwise you would have probably raised. You could be slowplaying,
of course, but that’s a different issue altogether.
Slowplaying means playing your hand deceptively. I don't want to get sidetracked here though because I have already written an entire article on the 5 common situations where you should slowplay in poker.
So, when you call instead of raising, you are perceived to have a weaker hand,
whether or not that's actually the case in reality. This means your opponent has the range
advantage.
A range advantage means they theoretically have more strong hands in their
range than you do.
And just so we are totally clear here, a "range" in poker is the entire spectrum of hands that somebody can have in any situation.
For Example:
When I raise before the flop, you might put me on a range of [AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88, 77, AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, KJ, QJ, JT, 98].
This is just an example, in reality most people will play more hands than this. In fact, I show you exactly what hands to play in my free poker cheat sheet.
So, when somebody raises preflop they also have the initiative going forward in the hand. Since they are the
one who is "perceived" to have a stronger hand, they can (and often do) continue applying
the pressure on the postflop streets (flop, turn and river).
This means they can fire another bet on the flop (a continuation bet, or c-bet
for short). This forces you to react to their aggression, instead of the other
way around.
In other words, you are not in the driver’s seat in the hand, meaning you are
not the one who is able to dictate the tempo of the hand.
This is not good in most situations, and that is why I highly recommend that you enter the pot with a raise most of the time you play a hand.
On top of that, you’re playing the hand out of position, meaning you are not
the last one to act in each betting round.
As mentioned already, playing in position is a huge advantage in poker, because you get to see what
your opponents do first, while they have no idea what you will do.
I talked about this in much more detail in my recent video:
How to Realistically Improve at Poker as a Beginner
I put out new YouTube poker strategy videos every week. Join 150,000+ who are already subscribed.
Playing out of position, on the other hand, puts you at an informational
disadvantage. If you ever feel stumped in a hand and have no idea what you
should do, chances are you’re playing out of position.
Statistically speaking, the most profitable situation in poker is when you’re
playing in position as a preflop aggressor.
Calling a 3-bet out of position is
the exact opposite of that! I hope you are starting to realize by now why this is such a big mistake in most situations.
You're basically giving your opponent every single advantage possible in a hand of poker. That's not how we win.
For Example:
You with K♥️J♠️ on the button and a tight regular player re-raises (3-bets) you on the button.
Please just fold your hand here! Do not call.
You are at a significant range disadvantage vs a tight player who has hands like: AA, KK, AK, KQ, QQ, JJ here. And you are also out of position (you act first on the flop, turn and river).
A lot of amateur poker players also like to call with mediocre hands that they
aren’t quite comfortable with raising, but don’t want to fold either.
You know, hands like: T♥️9♥️, A♦️4♦️, 3♠️3♣️
These are exactly the kind of hands that will get you in most trouble, because
you’ll often find yourself in a bunch of marginal situations where you aren’t
quite sure what to do.
You aren’t sure if your hand is good enough to continue
with, but you don’t want to fold it, either. So you call a flop c–bet, only to find yourself in an awkward situation on the
turn.
Then it’s the same predicament all over again, only now the decision
gets more expensive. When you get to the river, you feel like you’ve already
committed so many chips to the pot that you can’t give up now.
This is a classical example of a sunk cost fallacy (i.e. throwing good money
after bad), as well as the compounding mistakes mentioned earlier.
In order to avoid this, it pays to look ahead and plan your hand beforehand.
If you suspect your hand could get you in a lot of awkward spots postflop,
save your money and ditch it altogether.
Learn Exactly What Hands to Play and When to Raise or Fold
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2. Slowplaying Monster Hands = Leaving Money on the Table
Another costly mistake a lot of amateur poker players make is calling with
hands they should be raising with instead, i.e. slowplaying strong hands.
Slowplaying in poker means playing your hand passively (i.e. checking and
calling) instead of aggressively (betting and raising) in order to conceal
your hand strength.
For example:
You have K♥️K♦️, somebody else has already raised before the flop.
You should be re-raising (3-betting) here basically every single time. Slowplaying (just calling here) is a mistake 99% of the time in small stakes games.
First of all, if you have limited experience with poker, you're probably
playing at the lower stakes, which means you’re playing against other
amateurs. And other amateurs have the tendency to play passively
themselves.
This means you can’t rely on them to build up the pot for you, which is what
you’re essentially hoping for when slowplaying.
In fact, doing the exact opposite, fast-playing my big hands, has been one of the biggest keys to my success as a 10+ year professional poker player.
Secondly, slowplaying is all about deception. You’re trying to conceal your
hand strength and make your opponent think you’re weak when you are
strong.
Here’s the problem, though.
This deception can only work if your opponent is
actually thinking about your hand strength. And again, if you’re playing
against recreational players, they aren't actually thinking about your hand strength.
They’re overly focused on their two hole cards and not much else. So chances
are your attempts at deception will go right over their heads.
Contrary to popular belief, winning poker is not all about deception. It’s not
about outwitting your opponents. It’s about making mathematically and
logically sound decisions based on the available information.
Sometimes, this
entails going for deceptive lines like bluffing or slowplaying, but that's much more of an exception rather than a rule.
Quick Example Hand to Help Illustrate This Better
Let me walk you through a quick step by step example hand here. This is a recent hand I played versus a weak recreational player in a $1/$2 live game.
I raise preflop with A♥️J♠️, weak recreational player calls.
Flop: J♦️6♠️3♣️ I bet, they call
Turn: 4♥️ I bet again, they call
River: K♥️ I bet again, they call with A♣️6♣️
I ended up winning a pretty big pot here (it was about $150) by playing my hand in the most obvious and straight forward manner on earth.
Please understand that I have made an entire career out of doing the most mind numbingly obvious thing at the poker table like this, again and again, and letting them overthink the situation.
They love to put me on some wild crazy bluff! That is why this player chose to call me down the entire way with a hand as weak as A♣️6♣️
Most people massively overcomplicate a very simple card game these days. And that is why ironically, when you learn to just play your hand in the most straightforward manner possible, you will win much more.
"But I Don't Want to Scare Them Off"
However, another objection a lot of players have with playing your hand too straightforwardly (i.e. playing aggressively when they think their hand is
ahead), is not wanting to “scare their opponents off.”
This is something I hear from my students in fact all the time.
But here's the simple answer I always give to quickly squash this faulty line of thinking. You must understand that if they don't have anything at all, they aren't calling anyways.
You can't will somebody to have a pair or a draw in poker. In fact, 2 out of every 3 times you see the flop in poker you won't have anything at all!
Example:
If they have 6♥️5♥️ and the board comes A♦️K♣️T♠️...
It doesn't matter how much you slowplay your A♠️K♠️, you aren't getting paid!
This is just the reality of poker. Most of the time nobody has anything. So if you raise or bet big when they have nothing and they fold, it's not like slowplaying would somehow improve chances to win a big pot.
This is because if they have nothing, the chances of them hitting something on the Turn or River are very low anyways.
So you are much better off by simply making the big raise or bet so that you charge them the absolute maximum when they do happen to have something (1 out of 3 times).
I literally wrote an entire book about this by the way.
Crushing the Microstakes is a detailed account of how I used this specific strategy to create some of the highest winnings of all time in small and mid stakes games.
My winrates have been so consistently higher than most other people over the years precisely because I do not slowplay.
I just do the most obvious thing over and over again, and let them overthink the situation. Let me give you another example.
Example Hand Bad Call
Here’s another example hand to help illustrate the point.
Effective stack size: 100 BB
You are dealt 4♠️4♦️ in the CO. You raise to 3x the blind.
A loose and passive player calls from the SB.
Pot: 7 BB
Flop: Q♥️T♣️4♥️
Villain bets 7 BB.
You: ???
You should raise BIG ✅
This is a spot where some players might want to slowplay because they don’t
want to blow their opponent out of the pot.
But it’s better to take the risk
of doing so than to slowplay and only take down a meagre pot instead of
totally stacking your opponent.
Slowplaying here doesn’t guarantee the villain will put more money into the
pot on later streets and do the pot building for you. Let’s break it down to
see why.
Preflop you have a standard open-raise and get called by a recreational
player. Not much to be said here, except the fact that you can expect the
villain to call you with quite a wide range, based on their player type.
You flop a set (three of a kind), which is obviously great news.
Villain donk bets (bets without
being the preflop aggressor). They could be doing this with all kinds of
nonsense hands, but it’s probably some sort of a marginal hand they don’t know
what to do with.
You could just flat call, but that’s hardly the most +EV (expected value) play.
Suppose the
villain has some sort of a drawing hand, like a straight or a flush draw, a
Queen with a mediocre kicker, or a Tx hand.
A lot of these hands will give you action if you decide to raise here. Why not
put more money into the pot when your hand is clearly ahead?
Example:
If they have Q♠️J♦️, A♦️T♠️ or 9♥️7♥️ they are calling your raise every single time here!
Also, if you just check, you’re essentially giving your opponent a cheap way to draw
out on you. The number of cards that can complete some sort of draw, or
improve their Qx or Tx hands to trips basically make half of the deck.
Also, if you slowplay, it doesn’t mean the villain will continue barreling on
consecutive streets. A lot of cards can completely kill the action.
For
instance, if an Ace or a King rolls on the turn, they won’t be inclined to
keep barreling with their Qx or Tx hands.
I hope you are beginning to see the incredible power of simply building the pot fast in small and mid stakes games and getting paid off.
Getting tricky and slowplaying is one of the biggest mistakes amateurs still make these days.
3. Calling a River All-in Without Something to Show For it
The river is the biggest money street in no-limit
hold’em, so the mistakes you make here will be the most costly. And unfortunately most amateurs make a lot of mistakes on this street too.
You might like the idea of making a huge hero call on the river, but the fact
is, most players don’t bluff nearly as often as you might think (unless
they’re an out of control maniac, but that kind of player is hardly the
norm).
Yup that's right, your 8♥️7♥️ for middle pair on the river of K♠️Q♦️8♦️4♣️2♥️ vs that tight regular is no good.
Believe me, he isn't bluffing. He just has K♦️J♣️ and he is betting for value!
And players at the lower stakes in particular don’t usually go for big bluffing lines on the river, and they certainly aren’t inclined to go all in
with a bluff.
This is to be expected, of course. You probably wouldn’t be comfortable with
putting your whole stack on the line while holding absolute air, either.
So when you see someone shoving all in on the river, it’s fair to assume
they’re going to have something strong a large majority of the
time.
But what if you have a very strong hand yourself? Should you call then?
Well, it obviously depends on a lot of factors, but you should still exercise
caution unless you have the stone cold nuts. (The nuts being the strongest
hand combination possible on a certain board).
Calling a river all in is different from calling an all in on previous streets
(i.e. the flop and turn) because there are no more cards to draw.
So when
someone shoves all in on the river, it means they are quite confident they
have the best hand.
And often enough, it will be the stone cold nuts, or close to it. So when
deciding to call a river all in, you have to take into account your relative
hand strength, as opposed to only your absolute hand strength.
Absolute hand strength tells you how strong your hand is on a scale from a
high card to the royal flush. On that scale, a single pair is fairly weak,
while a full house is fairly strong.
Relative hand strength takes into account how strong your hand is compared to
the board runout.
A lot of beginner poker players get overly focused on their absolute hand
strength, while failing to take their relative hand strength into account.
This leads them to make costly calling mistakes, because they just can’t seem
to get away from what they perceive to be a strong hand.
Example: Absolute Versus Relative Strength on the River
Here’s an example of how radically different a relative hand strength can be.
Let’s say you are dealt A♥️2♥️
Board runout #1 K♥️9♣️8♥️5♦️3♥️
Board runout #2 T♥️9♠️5♥️8♥️5♣️
On the first board runout, you have the stone cold nuts. You have the
strongest possible flush, and the board isn’t paired, so your opponent can’t
have a full house.
Whatever happens, you’re winning the pot (unless you
somehow manage to misread your hand and fold).
On the second runout, you also have the strongest flush, but you’re nowhere
near as close to the nuts. The number of hands that have you beat is through
the roof:
Hands that have you beat:
Pocket Tens, Nines, Eights and Fives, as well as Q♥️J♥️, J♥️7♥️ and
7♥️6♥️
None of these hand combinations are far fetched, as you can expect players to
have these kinds of hands in their range. On this board runout, the stone cold
nuts is actually Q♥️J♥️, as it makes the strongest possible straight
flush.
Now, you might argue that straight flushes come around so rarely that it’s
almost statistically irrelevant, and fair enough.
But there’s still a number
of full houses that have you beat. When players get to the river with such
scary board runouts, they are doing it with something.
And when they shove all in on you, it means the board doesn’t scare them. They
see the same board as you do, and they still decide to shove.
Now, does this mean you should fold your flush? Not necessarily.
Again, it
will depend on a lot of factors, namely the type of opponent you’re up
against, the previous action, how much of the stack you’ve already committed
to the pot, the pot odds you’re getting and so on.
If you’ve already committed, say, 80% of your stack to the pot, then it
obviously makes little sense to fold to a river bet, because you’ve already
committed a majority of your stack beforehand, and you’re getting good pot
odds on a call.
I won’t be getting too deep into the pot odds here. I’ve written an article
before that goes much deeper into the pot odds and the poker math all beginners should know.
Suffice it to say, the better the pot odds you’re getting, the less hand
equity you need for your call to be profitable.
Conversely, the worse pot odds you’re getting, the stronger your hand needs to
be to call profitably. This point is especially important when you face an
overbet shove on the river.
An overbet is a bet bigger than the current pot size. If someone shoves $6
into a five dollar pot, they are overbetting.
When you encounter an overbet on the river, you can be close to certain your
opponent has the stone cold nuts, or close to it.
This is true even for
recreational players. Even a fish is vaguely familiar with the risk-to-reward
concept, and knows it doesn’t make sense to risk a lot to gain a little.
Unless they’re on an insane monkey tilt, but that’s an entirely different
story.
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You can still get:
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Sale ends in 18 hours.
Summary - 3 Bad Calls Most Poker Amateurs Still Make
To sum up, here are the 3 bad poker calls that are (probably) costing you
money.
1. Calling a 3-bet out of position.
The best money-making situation in no-limit Texas hold’em is being the preflop
aggressor in position, ideally against only one or two opponents.
Calling a 3-bet out of position (and with an easily dominated hand to boot) is
the exact opposite, and can land you in a lot of awkward spots postflop. Save
yourself the trouble and avoid this spot altogether.
2. Slowplaying big hands.
Slowplaying only makes sense if you’re sure your opponent will build the pot
for you. If not, you’re better off building it up yourself.
Being deceptive only works if you can extract more value that way, and that’s
usually not the case when playing against recreational players. Your deception
will probably go right over their head, anyway.
3. Calling a river all-in.
The river is the biggest money street in no-limit hold’em, so when players put
their money in here, they’re not messing around.
They have something to show for it. Unless you have a very strong hand
yourself, think twice about calling. Instead of hero calling, try hero
folding. The latter is usually less expensive.
Lastly, if you want to know the complete poker strategy I use as a 10+ year pro, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
All the best at the poker tables.
- Nathan
