Three Mistakes Stopping Cash Poker Players From Crushing Low Stakes

Why Mistakes Are Friends, Not Enemies, of Poker Players

People rarely like making mistakes — especially poker players — because every mistake costs them real money. But the problem here isn’t exclusively monetary: poker players also tend to have a big and sensitive ego that often leads them to be unable to accept even the possibility of an error on their part.

However, if you have enough courage to face the truth of human imperfection, you’ll find that acknowledging your mistakes is a powerful ability for self-improvement.

They don’t belittle us or make us look like fools but literally highlight weak spots in our logic, knowledge, decision-making process, and mentality.

But noticing mistakes isn’t enough to make them helpful — you also need to know how to work with them correctly to gain maximum value. That’s why Jonathan Little doesn’t just point out common mistakes but also adds advice on how to fix them as examples of the right way to turn your mistakes into growth.

First Mistake: Using 3-Bet Only with Nuts

When you have JJ+, AK, and other strong hands and always play them with a 3-bet, you become predictable to even slightly observant opponents and allow them to exploit you quite easily.

A reason why you might repeat this decision is because, on a deep subconscious level, you underestimate your edge — and by doing this, you actually force yourself to leave a lot of money on the table.

How to Fix This Mistake?

If you look at GTO charts for different 100 bb deep spots, you will see that a 3-bet — red color on the picture below — is often a preferred action not only for premium hands but for some marginal ones too.

Moreover, some premiums should be called — green color on the picture — and sometimes even more often than re-raised because of balance.

You should, in some way, “neutralize” the obviousness of having the top of your 3-bet line by mixing in not-so-fancy hands. This gives you a chance to squeeze an opponent with better hands out by giving them doubts about the strength of their own hand. You can listen to Jonathan’s explanation in the first video on X.

Second Mistake: Not Using Enough Check/Raises

While the continuation bet is a good move in a lot of scenarios, overusing it makes you vulnerable to exploitation because your c-bet range has too many bluffs and junk hands. A lack of check/raising also inevitably leads to more difficult decisions and more harmful mistakes on later betting rounds.

• When Check/Raise Is Ideal: Advice by Jonathan Little

How to Fix This Mistake?

You should become more aggressive in your play — meaning less c-betting and more check/raising — to put pressure on your opponents.

Jonathan explains this tactic in a few examples, but we only included one of them for this part of the article. You can check the others in the second video on X.

You are on the BB with 9 8 , stacks are 100 bb deep. The Low Jack raises to 6 bb, all other players fold, and you call. The pot is 13 bb.

Flop: Q 7 5 . We check, LJ makes a c-bet of 4 bb.

A c-bet in this scenario isn’t a bad decision, but LJ’s range here isn’t well connected to the flop, which makes them vulnerable to attacks with the proper level of aggression. For you on the BB, a 15 bb raise here will be enough to shake their confidence and pressure them to fold weak pairs, a lot of draws, hands like KJo, etc.

Third Mistake: Loving to Hero Call on the River

A lot of players, especially impressionable and egocentric ones, consider hero calling on the river as some sort of self-deprecating — and even the only “right” — move. There are a few reasons for this attitude: an itchy feeling to prove you were right or outdrawn, the desire to make a “wow!” call, or — in rare cases — even a tendency to self-sabotage their own success.

But no matter your reasoning for frequently hero calling, it brings you more pain than pleasure and costs a lot of money in the long run.

How to Fix This Mistake?

First of all, you should observe your opponents and note who among them rarely bluffs. Then, you should avoid hero calling against these individuals.

Secondly, you should deal with your curiosity, ego, or any other foundation of your motivation to hero call again and again. This mistake is more psychological than the other two because it isn’t about your usual strategy or lack of range orientation — it’s about your self-perception and ability to control impulses.

Finally, you should fill yourself with knowledge to be able to reason with yourself during specific scenarios and stop your brain from choosing the easiest — but not necessarily most EV+ — action just because of familiarity.

If you want to know more about how to reason in potential hero call situations, watch the third video on X.

Interested in more content from Jonathan Little? Check this BRM advice for beginners or three important things for tournament players.