Alex Fitzgerald Shares 5 Ways to Know If You are Running Bad or Playing Badly
December
10, 2024 Alex Fitzgerald
I constantly ♨️ work with clients who tell me they are running
bad when they are actually playing poorly.
How do I know they ♨️ are playing poorly? I
review their hands. They give me hand histories from their online play. I make them
write ♨️ down every hand they play live. What we analyze isn't pretty.
If you want to make
a grown man cry show ♨️ him all the ways he lost money in a particular session. With
database management tools, you can show the person ♨️ their expected losses based on their
plays.
Do you think you have been running badly lately?
It's possible that you are
running ♨️ badly, but what is far more likely is that you are playing badly somewhere.
The
following five leaks are the most ♨️ common ways people destroy their results. If you are
committing any of these errors, then you are likely playing badly ♨️ as opposed to running
bad.
Cold Calling Too Much
Do not cold call someone's open raise from the small blind,
hijack, lojack, ♨️ or early position without astounding pot odds and an incredible suited
high-card hand.
If you can do that you will avoid ♨️ a huge trap most players fall
into.
Go look at your cold calls on your hand history analysis tool. Oftentimes, you
♨️ will see losses racking up.
The most common places people lose money with cold calls
are in the small blind and ♨️ any position earlier than the cutoff.
The reason for this is
that by cold calling preflop you immediately tell your opponents ♨️ that you do not have
the best hands in your range. You would have three-bet your premiums. This gives them ♨️ a
license to fire into you.
Additionally, if someone is three-betting behind you and you
are not calling them then you ♨️ are giving up a ton of chips every time that happens. For
instance, you call four 2.5x raises and then ♨️ fold to squeezes that are 10 big blinds.
That might be your win rate for 100 hands. I don't know ♨️ how many hands you're going to
play in a day, but that is a serious bite taken out of your ♨️ earnings.
Continuation
Betting Too Much
Almost all players who complain that they are running badly are also
continuation betting too much.
There are ♨️ times when you cannot continuation-bet. If you
do so in these situations, you are just pissing away three or four ♨️ big blinds. If you
do three bad continuation-bets in a session that's another 10 or so big blinds you've
given ♨️ to your competition. Again, that might be your entire win rate for 100 hands. How
many hands are you playing ♨️ today?
When the big blind calls you that is a good time to
continuation-bet. They are calling you with half the ♨️ hands in the deck. They are going
to be missing the flop a large percentage of the time. You can ♨️ take a shot at that
player when you’re in position.
However, if you raise from early position and a solid
player ♨️ cold calls you from the hijack you need to be careful. That solid player is not
cold-calling with a wide ♨️ range. That's likely strong suited connectors, suited
Broadways, and medium pocket pairs. They are going to be hitting most flops. ♨️ Your best
course of action is to check and then fold.
Most players do not find the opportunities
to fold. If ♨️ you are folding in situations where your competition is losing chips, then
you will beat them as the years go ♨️ by.
When you go to the grocery store the clerk
doesn't know where your money came from. They will still hand ♨️ you your bread and
bananas if the money came from not pissing away continuation bets and cold calls. The
money ♨️ all spends the same.
Alex Fitzgerald
Firing The Turn Recklessly
Most of my
clients are like most of you. They play lower to ♨️ middle stakes games where nobody wants
to fold and where nobody respects your raises.
In lower-limit games or less-skilled
games, most ♨️ people want to see the flop. That is how they relieve stress. That is how
they forget about their day ♨️ at work. They call raises and see flops. When those cards
are being spread across the table, they feel nothing. ♨️ They're not thinking about
anything that is bothering them.
For this reason, most lower-level competition sees too
many flops. When they ♨️ miss the flop, their curiosity is satiated. They will call with
their best high cards but generally they fold if ♨️ they miss. Especially in multi-way
pots.
What this means is that if you fire a continuation-bet into the flop and get
♨️ called your opponent likely has at least a pair. If the turn card is not a card that
would fold ♨️ out a pair, you should pump the brakes.
It's not sexy. It's not going to get
you on any highlight reels. ♨️ It doesn't feel great. But such is life when you are
playing against weaker competition. You have to meet reality ♨️ on reality's terms and
accept that your opponents do not want to fold once they've made up their mind with ♨️ a
decent pair.
Not Threebetting Enough
When you sit down at a table you should be
watching everybody play. A showdown is ♨️ a mountain of information.
Let's say you saw a
player open the K♠8♠ from early position.
For the rest of the session, ♨️ you better be
three-betting your KxQx and KxJx versus his opens for value.
You might do this in
earlier positions than ♨️ you would like, but this player opened up this play. If he calls
out of position and makes a weak ♨️ pair, you will be dominating him. You need to go for
serious value at this point.
One of the most important ♨️ skills you can develop in
no-limit hold'em is a good three-betting game. You don't want your opponents to keep
stealing ♨️ your late-position raises. You don't want your opponents to keep forcing you
to fold good hands or play them passively. ♨️ You want to three-bet them and dominate.
I
don't have enough space in this article to discuss all the different ways ♨️ you can
three-bet your opponents and become table captain. So, if you want to learn how to
dominate any table, ♨️ I'm going to give you this master class of mine for free. Learn how
to three-bet everybody here.
Kyle Julius vs ♨️ Alex Fitzgerald
Not Value Betting Enough
"I
can't beat these donkeys. They never fold," my client says to start the lesson.
45
minutes ♨️ later a hand comes up. My client has top pair with a great kicker. A flush draw
on the board ♨️ misses. My client bets half pot.
"Why did you bet half pot there?" I
ask.
"I think I have the best hand," ♨️ they say, "I want him to call."
"Why don't you
overbet?" I ask. "Why not bet 110% of the pot and ♨️ represent the missed flush draw?"
"I
don't want them to fold," my client says.
"So you overbet here when you miss the ♨️ board
right? As a bluff? Because they fold?"
"No, they never fold," my client says.
I let the
answer hang in the ♨️ air for a minute.
"You can't have it both ways," I tell them. "This
is either an occasion where we can ♨️ bet huge for value or it’s a spot to bluff. Why not
at least bet 80% of the pot?”
The biggest ♨️ mistake players make is they try to play
perfectly all the time. They are terrified about value betting thinly and ♨️ then getting
raised. They don't care that they don't get raised more than 90% of the time. The 10%
of ♨️ the time they have to fold a good hand makes them feel terrible about
themselves.
This is not a neat game. ♨️ This is not a perfect game. This is a messy game.
There's a reason people like to play poker in ♨️ backrooms while drinking whiskey. It's
supposed to be a mess.
You can either try to be perfect all the time or ♨️ you can get
primal. You can start looking to land overbet bombs or you can be stuck in your shell
♨️ forever.
The people in your games never fold right?
When was the last time you triple
barreled a second pair with top ♨️ kicker?
When was the last time you triple barreled a
weak top pair?
When was the last time you three-bet a mediocre ♨️ hand to get serious
value out of it?
If your opponents never fold you should be able to do all of ♨️ these
things.
Go look at your hand histories. Filter for triple barrels. Filter for
three-bets. See what you find.
About Alex Fitzgerald
Alex ♨️ Fitzgerald is a professional
poker player and best-selling author who currently lives in Denver, Colorado. He is a
WPT and ♨️ EPT final tablist. He has WCOOP and SCOOP wins online. His most recent win was
forR$250,000 online. He currently enjoys ♨️ blasting bums away in online tournaments while
he listens to death metal.
Alex can be reached for private coaching at [email
♨️ protected].
Learn how to three bet everybody here!
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five leaks that are the most common ways people destroy ♨️ their results.
