Leaks are areas of poker strategy that are conducted sub-optimally and ultimately cost you money. Fixing leaks is the only path to climbing up the stakes ladder. It is how you will slowly but surely eradicate errors and become a better poker player.
Finding Leaks with Tracking Software
The path to poker mastery begins with a review of your playing history. This can be single hands from a live session, or your entire database stored on tracking software.
The trick is knowing exactly where to look. Ideally, you will have picked up enough knowledge from the endless amount of free online poker strategy to beat 10NL cash games or equivalent MTT buy-ins.
At this stage it is advisable to invest in some coaching sessions to highlight where you are leaking chips.
Once your major leaks have been found, work can then begin on implementing the correct poker strategy for that area. Your coach should be able to point out the most important adjustments as well as how to filter your database.
Players who play exclusively live poker obviously have a much more difficult task with discovering their worst leaks. In this case the advice is to breakdown poker strategy into manageable chunks.
An example might be,
- Pre flop opening ranges
- 3 betting – aggressor
- 3 betting – defender
- 4 betting – aggressor
- 4 betting – defender
- Continuation bets
- Defending against continuation bets
These areas can all be divided further when more sophisticated strategies are required to move up in stakes.
Live players now have no choice but to discuss the relevant strategies with their coach and fellow players to pick up what can only be described as feel. On the other hand, now it is clear that online poker offers much better opportunity for speedy improvement.
Studying and Hand Reviews
Once you know what your problems are, your task is to look back over as many of those spots as possible. You must identify where you are too tight or too loose.
It is highly advisable when focussing on improvement over volume to play less tables. This will allow you to cement the correct thought process on the situation in question. You should also avoid trying to fix too many leaks at one time.
As taught by the adult learning model, you should analyse if studying new material is more important than correcting your weaknesses. Trying to do both at the same time will lead to poor results.
The time for learning new skills is when your game has clear stability. If your coach has pointed out many different areas that need addressing then study should always be directed there before moving on.
Stat Analysis
Players unable to afford coaching and are struggling to break out of the microstakes trap can learn how to analyse a database themselves. There are key areas to look at such as results by position.
Advice can be sought on one of the many poker forums on what the ideal numbers are. For example, in a cash game many players will do poorly from the blinds.
Here your target win rates should be something similar to -30bb/100 in the big blind, and -15 bb/100 in the small blind. If your results are a long way from this then you must address this leak immediately.
Win rates for the other seats should peak on the button, with under the gun only slightly profitable.
The Future – Solvers and Next Generation Tracking Software
The obsession with game theory optimal strategy has pervaded the entire community. In recent years the use of solvers has continued to push this agenda.
Now, with the next generation of tracking software, such as Hand2Note, it is possible to analyse large databases to check what the population as a whole is doing in particular spots.
This ability to construct strategies against the current metagame is the future of poker strategy. Exploitative play is still far more profitable than a perceived unexploitable game plan.
For players below high-stakes, it is not recommended to use solvers as there are far more pressing matters with mastering fundamentals and learning how to exploit your opponent’s errors.
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