Strategy

How to Avoid & Exploit Common Live Poker Mistakes

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February 5, 2025 · 4 minutes

exploit live poker mistakes

Today’s article will be somewhat different from the usual stuff as I’ll focus on live play and some easy but very effective adjustments you can make to significantly improve your EV in lower stakes live cash games and tournaments.

Having put in some volume in these games and analyzing the information, the bulk of mistakes stem from preflop errors. So, I’ll focus particularly on preflop ranges, how they differ from the GTO strategy, and how you can adjust to take advantage of them.

Broadly speaking, this lesson covers three main aspects:

  • Common mistakes in live cash games and tournaments
  • Most common adjustments in live poker – focusing on what’s really important
  • What you should pay attention to at the table

So, with that introduction out of the way, let’s dig right into it!

Showdown Observations – Recognizing Preflop Mistakes

When it comes to making observations at the table, the ones you make about opponents’ preflop ranges will usually be the most consistent and reliable.

This is true for both live and online poker, but it’s much easier to pick up on it playing live, as you only have one table to focus on.

So, try to pay attention to what hands players are reaching showdowns with to gauge how their preflop ranges differ from the GTO strategy.

From my experience, there are two main aspects that you can profit from:

  • Most players open too wide from early positions & too tight from late positions
  • They are flat calling too wide in early & too tight in late positions

To put it short, most players in live games aren’t very position-aware, which opens doors for some rather simple yet effective adjustments.

Taking Advantage of Opening Errors

In live poker, players tend to have a rather similar opening range from UTG all the way down to hijack. They are opening with around 25% of the range (give or take), slightly increasing that percentage to around 30% in the cutoff and 35% to 40% on the button.

This means they’re opening too wide from early positions and not opening enough from late positions, especially the button, where they should be raising 50% – 55%.

For example, you see a player with 60 big blinds opening a hand from a lojack. The big blind calls, and eventually, they reach a showdown where the LJ shows A5o.

Perfect your RFI ranges with free preflop poker charts

This indicates that they’re probably opening other hands, like A6o and A7o, which means that I can treat their LJ raise as a CO open (i.e., wider than it should be). Conversely, this allows us to call more as we have more equity against their actual range than we would have against a GTO range.

The simplest way to go about this is to move things one position earlier and adjust your ranges accordingly.

Profiting from Too Much Flat Calling

Another common preflop mistake in live poker is calling raises too wide in early positions and not calling enough in late positions.

Players tend to play static calling ranges almost regardless of their position, and these usually include hands like small suited aces, small pairs, and even some offsuite hands like T9o.

The reason they can get away with it is because there isn’t enough squeezing happening. This opens doors for you to squeeze more with a linear range of hands that can make strong top pairs and also call more with speculative hands that can make the nuts (small suited aces in particular, but also hands like TJo and QJo that can make nut straights).

common live poker mistakes

Adding these plays to your strategy will significantly increase your EV in live poker, allowing you to pick up a lot of dead money and win big pots when you overcall and make the nuts against multiple opponents.

It is also worth noting that you shouldn’t worry too much about players calling your squeezes after they overcall the initial raise. Since they’re doing it with a range that’s too wide, they simply won’t be able to successfully navigate enough flops to give you problems.

Postflop Adjustments – Over-Realizing Your Equity

While a majority of mistakes in live poker stem from preflop, there are also significant postflop errors that are quite present and will allow you to over-realize your equity across the board.

  • Most players don’t continuation bet enough – this allows you to see the turn way more often than you should
  • Missed turn barrels – players don’t double-barrel nearly often enough, allowing you to reach rivers and improve your marginal hands
  • Small bet sizes – a majority of live players at lower stakes bets too small, especially on turns and rivers, giving you better direct pot odds and allowing you to correctly continue with a wider percentage of your range

In short, we reach showdowns with way more hands than we should in the GTO world, as computers utilize a strategy that forces us to fold many of our marginal hands on flops, turns, and rivers. With that in mind, there are a few simple adjustments you can make:

  • Marginal preflop plays become positive EV as we realize more equity overall
  • Pure folds on GTO charts are now playable
  • Marginal flop calls become profitable

Naturally, not all live games are the same, so pay attention to what’s happening and which of these mistakes seems more pronounced in your specific setting. Generally speaking, though, you’re almost guaranteed to find a lot of these tendencies in low stakes tournaments and ring games across the board.

Article by
Matthew Affleck is a professional poker player with over $3.5 million in tournament winnings. On top of being one of the top tournament players, he is also a lead coach at pokercoaching.com, where he constantly shares strategy videos and creates useful content for the players. You can connect and follow Matt on Twitter.

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