Piemaster Article - Plugging the Right Leaks

[chillin411]

http://www.internettexasholdem.com/poker-columnists/ian-taylor-aka-piemaster/plugging-the-right-leaks/

"If you a serious about being a successful poker player, you must be continually looking to improve your game. Unfortunately many players neglect to hone their skills once they reach a certain level. Some are satisfied once they can make money at the limit they play, losing the incentive to learn and improve. Some even think they are at a point where they are experts on the game and there is nothing left to learn."

If you have any questions for the author or comments about the article, feel free to post and discuss them below.

[Richie(UK)]

What a great article. It certainly helps to put things in perspective, at least for a beginner like me. Now I can concentrate on fixing the big leaks first and save the smaller ones for later!

Thanks Piemaster.

[cybrarian]

Just flicked through - all good stuff. I think more could have been made of the effect of leaks on a long-term win-rate by making some mention of the expected win-rate for excellent / good / marginal winning players.

If you look at your stats and find you are running at 0.6BB/100 hands, and you are, let's say, making the mistake that Pie cites early on, which is costing you 0.3BB each time, and you are making that mistake twice every 100 hands, then you are effectively halving your win-rate with that one leak.

[Piemaster]

You're probably right Cyb. It's not something I actually thought about, but it would have been a useful point to make.

[SRH]

Very nice Pie. I especially liked your 4 distinctions of leaks which is a quantifiable start as to what to look for when the win rate starts to slip.

[AlamedaMike]

A full year later and your article is still a good one. Thanks

[Piemaster]

[AlamedaMike]

Thanks - I have been lax about reading the articles and that is why I have been coming across them later than most.

As I said they are good and I look forward to your new book.

Oddly enough, I would come up with a thought and post it - then someone would say - yeah, Piemaster wrote about that before and point me to the article.

It is like going to a web site to report a problem and tech support points you to a FAQ!

[Piemaster]

Well, I figure that if you write enough articles, someone will find some of them useful eventually through law of averages

[AlamedaMike]

For sure - I will work my way though the list of the ones that I missed.

BTW - July 2005 - what makes a bad poker player-