Street By Street With Dara O’Kearney, TJ Reid, Chris Moneymaker, Ben Rolle, and Christina Gollins

Preflop: Dara O’Kearney

One of the biggest leaks preflop used to be not defending wide enough, but that is not an issue these days. There is, however, a big leak in the general population of defending too wide in multi-way pots. You indeed get much better pot odds when one player opens, two others call, and it only costs you one big blind to see the flop. The problem is with every extra player in the pot; you need a much stronger hand to continue. 

Defending with suited hands like 10-6 suited, which is fine heads-up, can get you in a lot of trouble multiway. You are rarely good when you hit a pair and can even be dominated if you make a flush. Defending ranges should get tighter with every additional player in the pot, not wider. 

Another typical leak is not opening enough suited A-x and K-x hands. Players used to worry about domination with hands like A-5 suited and preferred hands like 6-5 suited for their bluffs. The solvers have shown us that the small, suited connectors are troublesome hands, but hands like A-5 suited and K-8 suited are surprisingly robust. Making top pair is usually good, and if you make a flush, you can be confident you are ahead. And they are an excellent way to achieve board coverage with the low cards as the kicker. 

Finally, a big preflop leak is three-betting linear ranges rather than polar ranges. A three-betting range should have your best value and bluffs, what we call a polarized range. One of the many benefits of a strategy like this is that you know where you are with your hand; you want calls or folds.

I see a lot of players three-betting with medium-strength hands where it’s unclear whether they want action or not. These are the sort of hands that play well as bluff catchers but usually only get called by hands that beat them. 

These issues could be fixed by looking at the many preflop range charts you can see and then asking yourself why they are shaped the way they are.

The Flop: Terrance ‘TJ’ Reid

Most leaks in flop play involve passive play. It’s even worse when players are both too loose and too passive. Many players play too many hands, and they play them too fit or fold. Waiting to make very strong hands is a sure way to lose all our chips in tournament poker slowly. Other players fighting for pots and escalating blinds will be a passive player’s downfall.

The biggest leaks are often found in the spots that come up the most frequently, like playing from the blinds. Even if a player defends his big blind with an appropriate range, I often see people overfolding when they don’t flop a pair. It’s hard to make a pair in this game!

For example, if the hijack raises to 2.2x, we defend 9-7 offsuit and see a board of 8-5-4; that is a great flop for us. The key to winning these pots is recognizing when that board is better for our range. Fighting for those pots requires aggression. Check-calling in that situation will not win the pot often enough to justify putting chips in the middle in the first place. Knowing when to lead and when to check-raise is critical, and we have to be willing to do so without a made hand. 

An example of being too loose is getting too attached to a marginal holding in multi-way pots. Let’s say UTG opens, five players call, and we look down at 7 3. We can fold! In heads-up situations, we can comfortably play a wide range of hands from the big blind, including literally all of our suited hands.

The more multi-way the pot is, the less we want to get involved with these marginal holdings. When players do, they flop top pair and lose multiple streets of value to the better hands that will likely be out there. Or, catastrophically, they run into a better flush and feel like they ‘couldn’t have done anything to get away.’ Mistakes are compounding in this game, and being too loose in multi-way pots frequently leads to disaster.

The Flop: Chris Moneymaker

I think one of the biggest leaks that I see, especially from recreational players, is that they fall into this thing where they bet when they have a good hand and check when they don’t. For recreational players, the most important thing is to avoid falling into this trap.

After playing awhile, the recs might get tricky every once in a blue moon, but for the most part, say they raised with A-Q, and the flop comes king high. They’ll check back. Not for pot control, but simply because they missed the flop, and they don’t want to build a pot. They need to learn to bet their entire range, not just their exact holding.

The other big leak that I see is not accounting for your opponent. Different opponents do different things. There are many opponents that when you check to them, or you check on the flop if you’re in position, they’ll bet 100% of the time on the turn. They attack weakness. So, when you’re playing those opponents, you generally want to check back on the flop a lot more often. Let them take the lead. It’s a scarier way to play the hand, but much more profitable.

The Turn: Benjamin Rolle

The biggest leak is not finding enough aggression in your game. This is especially true on a board that does not favor your opponent’s range. So, for example, if the flop is 8-5-2, and the turn is a 2, typically, a lot of players wouldn’t second barrel hands like Q-J or J-10, because they feel like their opponent is not going to fold anyway.

But that’s not true. Our opponent still has a bunch of A-9, and A-10 type of hands, some K-Q, A-5, A-3, A-4, 3-3, 6-6, and 7-7 type of hands, that most of the time will fold against a big second barrel. Also, your Q-J or J-10 still has some overcards.

So, if you are facing a second barrel, you can make some crazy good overfolds because most opponents don’t find enough bluffs. If you would run this in a solver with more realistic ranges, it would tell you to even start folding some weak 8-X hands. Those spots have saved me a bunch of money.

What I would recommend to fix your particular leaks is to have someone helping you, a coach or course. It will help you figure out the why and when we would second barrel aggressively in many situations. It is more about understanding the reasons than just copy/pasting a solver strategy. Of course, a solver can help, but more importantly, you need to understand the why.

The second tip correlates with my first tip, which is not being able to make good folds versus second barrels and falling in love with their hand, especially in three-bet pots. Facing a second barrel in a three-bet pot is one of the most under-bluffed of turn situations.

If you look into some GTO strategies, you will notice the aggressive strategy our opponent has to play to justify calling again with 9-9 or 10-10 on an eight-high board. If you remove some very unnatural second barrels (like A-Q or A-K), your weak overpairs become relatively easy folds. Of course, against aggressive opponents, we can call. But against the majority, we have a crystal clear fold, especially in huge fields like the WSOP.

This can also be fixed if you study these spots and learn more realistic strategies. Crushing in poker is not about adopting a solver-approved strategy. It is about understanding the theory behind the decisions but then adopting a reality-approved strategy.

The River: Christina Gollins

A very common occurrence/mistake I see people make is checking back rivers when a scare card or draw comes in. People tend to lose a ton of value when they choose to “play it safe.” Even if the scare card is a back-door flush or three-liner to a straight, I see people checking back top set or over pairs, even when they’ve already figured out their opponent most likely has a pair and should never really have a connected or suited hand. 

Another common reason for the check back is because they don’t want to be “put to the test.” Many will say, “Well, what if they shove or raise if I bet, then I have to fold.” This wouldn’t be an issue if you have thought through hands that beat you, the blockers you are holding, what range they have based on position, and preflop action.

Decide if they do shove or raise; would it make sense with what they are representing? [There used to be the notion that], “If you can’t call a shove, you shouldn’t be betting on the river.” I disagree. You would have to deny yourself the maximum value because you’re scared of a shove. Especially if your opponent plays passively, check-calls at a higher frequency, or doesn’t have enough fold equity for you to be scared away. My best recommendation is to take your time. Think through your opponents’ range of hands before denying yourself some extra chips. 

To piggyback, the second biggest leak I see is players not value betting their hands to the correct sizes on the river. Players don’t often ask themselves enough what their hand is worth and what amount their opponent’s range can pay. They typically only ask one of these questions, if any, which leads to missed opportunities. Players can maximize their winnings and improve their overall game strategy by consistently evaluating both factors. ♠

Dara O’Kearney is a poker pro, coach, and commentator. He is an ambassador for Unibet Poker, and also shares the mic with David Lappin on the popular podcast, The Chip Race. O’Kearney is also an author of numerous poker strategy books. Follow him on Twitter/X @daraokearney and sign up for his mailing list for a free poker study e-book.

Terrance Reid is a professional tournament and cash game player as well as the live events manager for the Poker.org traveling site reporting team covering the World Series of Poker Circuit. He has a win at the Venetian DeepStack series, a third at the RunGood Graton Casino main event, and a deep run in the 2024 WSOP main event. Find him on @tjreidpoker.

Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 WSOP Main Event and is credited for starting a resurgence in the game of poker across the globe. In the last year he made three Triton Poker high roller final tables to cash for more than $3.2 million. He is also the co-founder of the Moneymaker Poker Tour, and most recently opened a poker club in Louisville, Kentucky. Check him out @CMONEYMAKER.

Benjamin Rolle has cashed for over $30 million during his poker career. The online crusher is the founder of Raise Your Edge poker training and has shared his strategies with thousands of players worldwide. Save big with the promo code CARDPLAYERAPP and visit RaiseYourEdge.com for a free poker course for tournament players. Follow @bencb789.

Christina “BabyShark” Gollins is a Las Vegas resident and a regular grinder on the poker tournament circuit. In May she took down the opening event at the WSOP Circuit Commerce Casino event, and also finished third in the 2022 WSOP Ladies Championship event. She has nearly $1 million in career cashes. You can find her on Twitter/X @bbshark888.