Head Games: Avoid These Common Cash Game Mistakes

The Pros: Uri Peleg, Guy Taylor, and Gary Blackwood

Craig Tapscott: When it comes to preflop strategies, what are the biggest mistakes cash game players make consistently?

Uri Peleg: The first mistake I see many players making is playing static ranges. You must learn how to adjust to table conditions. Is your table loose, or really tight? Are stacks deep, or shallow? I talk much more in depth about this in my new Upswing course about exploitation. But for a simple example, in very loose/passive live games, a large open size will perform significantly better than a small open size. There are just so many variables that should have a large effect on your ranges and bet sizings. If you’re not actively adjusting, you’re simply leaving money on the table.

Another mistake I see people make preflop is “fighting fire with fire.” An example of this would be matching aggression with aggression. If somebody is constantly three-betting or four-betting you, it’s tempting to “take a stand” and play hard back at them. But a more effective way to fight back would be to tighten up your ranges, and let your cards do the talking for you. Adjustments like this are often the better, if less obvious, play. I call this “fighting fire with water.”

A third mistake is being too loose in multi-way pots. There is this illusion that, when lots of people are putting money in the pot, your pot odds are good. And while this is strictly true, the point of pot odds is always to compare the potential reward to your chances of winning the hand. Unfortunately, as more people enter the pot, your chances of winning a hand go down just as dramatically as your pot odds go up. The effect is counteracted; the proper response to seeing more players in a pot is to tighten up. And this is something that most players seem to get wrong. 

Guy Taylor: As I play both online and live, I’ll try and answer with one mistake for online players, one for live players, and one that I see both making commonly. 

For online players, since we’re so obsessed with GTO (game theory optimal) ranges, I often see a lack of appreciation for table dynamics, particularly when it comes to three-betting. For example, say you’re dealt K-10 suited on the button, it holds similar equity if we flat call or reraise, so GTO ranges tell us to three-bet sometimes to be more difficult to read. However, instead of using an RNG (random number generator) to randomize our play, why not look at who’s in the blinds behind you and randomize that way? It makes sense to flat more buttons with recs (recreational players) in the blinds. Going three-way to a flop in position with a less skilled player in the pot is often going to pay off more long-term than three-betting the button with a marginal hand against a solid player and going heads-up.

For live players, the most common mistake we make is not engaging socially with players at the table. It’s not always intuitive for those players moving from online to live poker, but the quicker you learn to do this the sooner you’ll see your win-rate improve. Not only will it help you understand your opponent’s tendencies, but it will help the game itself run for longer.

A fundamental mistake I see both live and online, from both pros and recreationals alike, is peeling smaller pocket pairs to three-bets out of position. It’s almost habitual for us to say to ourselves, ‘we’re deep stacked, we can set mine here’ and flick in the call – but it’s not that simple.

When you’re out of position, it’s a lot tougher to gain value when you do hit your set, and even tougher still to get to showdown with your hand and occasionally win that way, particularly if you’re up against a good pro or an aggressive recreational player. While GTO ranges will often suggest you peel these small pairs some percentage of the time, there’s a default towards doing so almost 100 percent of the time from some players, particularly if they’re tilted or stuck. In reality, GTO only wants us to peel them sometimes for board coverage, and it doesn’t generate us equity in the long-term if we’re up against a skilled opponent. 

Gary Blackwood: 1) Many players defend too wide from the big blind in raked games like $1-$2 and $2-$5. The rake plays a significant part in our big blind defense strategy, particularly multiway. And versus early position opens, hands like K-10 offsuit and J-7 suited might look appealing, but they are actually folds, and we tighten up even more when there’s been an open and a call.

2) Players are not three-betting enough in position. We all know how difficult it is to play three-bet pots out of position. Let’s widen our three-betting range to include hands like A-8 suited, pocket sevens, K-Q offsuit. Hands that might look like appealable flats often play better as a three-bet. Live players won’t four-bet bluff enough either, so we’ll get to play three-bet pots in position more often, and that’s a profitable spot for us.

3) Most players are not four-bet bluffing enough versus solid regs (regular players). Again, if we were to look at a solid preflop chart, we’ll see hands like A-Q offsuit, K-J suited, A-5 suited type hands regularly four-bet versus three-bets. These hands look appealing to flat versus a three-bet, but they often play better as a four-bet versus our more competent opponents, as they deny equity versus a solid three-bet range, and they play well post-flop when flatted.

Craig Tapscott: When it comes to bluffing, what was the most egregious mistake you used to make and how did you correct it?

Uri Peleg: It’s tough to make a mistake bluffing. Aggression is a good thing in poker. Against competent players, there are some nuances that should probably temper an otherwise overaggressive strategy.  

The biggest mistake I personally used to make is misunderstanding my blockers. Blockers are an extremely important part of picking your bluffs – especially in three-bet and four-bet pots. Ranges are simply so narrow in these situations, especially by the turn and river, that blocking even a few combos can have a huge impact on a range, as far as making up a larger percentage of it. Before I was aware of this, I would often bluff with hands that seemed feasible on the surface, but which were actually blocking my opponents’ folding ranges instead of their calling ranges. Obviously, that isn’t good.  
As far as the bluffing mistakes that people make in cash games, blocker mistakes are still very common, as are sizing mistakes. When you’re bluffing, it’s important that you tell a consistent story – so you need to be focused on what you’re “representing,” and you want this story to be coherent throughout the hand, from start to finish. 

Guy Taylor: I think my biggest error in bluffing, particularly in live cash games, was bet sizing. When playing online against regulars, we often bluff by telling a believable story, and use similar sizes with our bluffs and value combos. However, in live poker, people call rivers too often.

It’s important to realize there’s a hidden fear embedded in our egos that can’t deal with the potential for our opponent to bluff us and show it to the table. This embarrassment is amplified at a live poker table. So, for our bluffs to work in live poker, our sizing should be larger to get our opponents off their hand.

That’s why some of the top live players use overbets so often, even up to quadruple pot sizing. Mathematically, these bluffs have to work more often to be profitable, but you can use them in scenarios where your opponent will have almost no hands to call with. If you’re paying close enough attention to their tendencies, you’ll be able to identify these spots in time.

Gary Blackwood: One big mistake I used to make was not having enough overbets in my range. Our opponent’s range will change based on the size that we choose, and I would always go for a generic 70%-ish size that didn’t generate enough fold equity. There are specific spots that come up that require us to use a greater than 100% pot sized bet (I generally use 133%). This spot is when we are extremely polarized, where, given the line we have taken, we are only betting top two pair or better for example. In that spot, when our value range is very strong, our sizing scheme generally tends to favor overbetting, and I wouldn’t have any 133% bets in my range.

When we are bluffing, it’s important that we unblock the hands we are trying to make fold. Say for example we three-bet A K small blind vs cutoff, and the board runs out 10 5 2 4 9, our hand is going to be a give-up on the river a lot of the time, because we block hands like nut flush draws, K J, all the flush combos that make up our opponent’s river folding range. Instead, we would favor a combo like Q J, which blocks good top pairs, Q-Q and J-J. We tend to think about our blockers from the point of view of blocking our opponent’s bluffs, but the next level up from that is thinking about how our blockers affect our opponent’s folding range.

Uri Peleg became the Magic: The Gathering World Champion in 2007. In the years since he has established himself as one of the most sought after high-stakes poker coaches in the game. If you’d like to learn from Uri directly, he just released a new course on Upswing Poker called Elite Cash Game Exploits. Follow Uri on Twitter
@UriPelegPoker.

Guy Taylor was a former elite junior athlete with a fundamental understanding of how to reach the top. He’s steadily risen the cash game ladder, now playing the highest stakes live games. He also achieved an unprecedented quadruple crown on the UK tournament circuit in the space of 18 months. You can follow Guy’s online journey on his Twitch channel taylormadepoker.

Gary Blackwood has been a professional poker player for eight years, splitting time between online cash games and live games up to $10/$20/$40. He is also a coach at Upswing Poker. Find Gary at his YouTube channel gazzyb123 and his instagram @gazzyb123 for more info.