As a poker player we tend to think our game has no holes, it has to be the fish that doesn't know he shouldn't raise with air preflop or call my preflop raise OOP.

Its always someone else.


Exercise:
Accountability as a poker player has to be #1. Examine your game. Download a hand history and delete your user name.

Try to pick apart your own plays.
Do you raise too often?
Do you have too high of VPIP?
(Chips Voluntarily Put into Pot)

Are you aggressive at the wrong time?

Do you tell a cohesive story?

Building the pot too big late in a tourney and barfing chips up? Literally my exact leak online FWIW.


Not 3 betting enough.
3 betting too much?
Reraising Nits too much and losing out on a ton of EV?

You have leaks. Unless you are honest with your examination and look at your hand history without Rose colored glasses , you will not be critical of your own play.


For every play , you should know a why , and why not that was correct or not in said situation.

Want to be profitable? Get real with yourself. Time to hurt your feelings a little.

Try to learn to improve your game individually, checking your hand history, without someone to offer you help or to show you the way, it is not the most EV way to learn.

A player of NL2, NL5 or NL10, or a tournament player of small buy-in, trying to analyze the game history or trying to find the leaks, will only waste time ¿Why? Simply because don't have enough knowledge to achieve it, and most likely you don't improve your game.

While I agree this isn't for the players just starting out, if you cannot be your own biggest critic of your game you cannot progress in this game to a level you want to be.

95 percent of people who play poker are losing players. I am generally in the 5 % who is not.

I get hand histories and study them. This past week I took a hard look at why for the past 3 months why I haven't took a top 9 spot live .

So I downloaded my hand history as the problem seemed to overflow to my online play.
What I found was shocking to me. I had got into the habit of overbuilding pots on semi bluff hands, as well as marginal made hands late in a tourney while big stacked.

This happened 3 nights ago on ACR. Was the chip leader for 3 hours, Got to the final 23 people and I made the mistake of getting too aggressive as the player pool shrunk. I KNOW better than that. Why I created this habit I am still researching the answer to, but I feel it has more to do with loosing up my range at a time I should be tightening up.

I have played this game 16 years. Maybe the above method does not work for you and no, for the beginner it wouldn't. This post was not aimed at the beginner and I should of specified that.


On another note, if you aren't keeping notes on live play, or recording your live sessions then you likely are leaving information as well as money on the table. Generally most places allow go pros for players and I have never had a casino or card house tell me I couldn't take paper and pencil notes.

At this point in my poker career, I am highly focused and dedicated to the game and improving my game. If you aren't , then the game will pass you by.

(This post partly in response to GIRFIED, partly an addition to the previous post. )

Thanks GIRFIED for your insight on my inadmission. I should of specified player skill level.

Also I agree fully with you! Get someone to analyze your hand history ! Someone who is better than you preferably.

If you cannot this forum probably has a lot of people to help you!

Bit of a current noob here when it comes to poker, so forgive me if this question is commonly asked: Is there a feasible way to get hand history if you play live games, or is it limited to online only? I can imagine a scenario with personal body cameras or something, but I would like to know the ethics on this subject and if this is common.