[elonkra]

My leak: Overagression/Not Knowing When to Slow Back Down

It's obviously a fundamental and easily-fixed leak, so this won't do any good for the old hands on the board, but I think it has helped my game tremendously as of late (even if it was just variance, it's a problem I'm glad I've recognized and attended to), and I know there are players who read these boards who are as green as me, so I thought I'd add it:

I've been bubbling out and not capitalizing on my profit WAY TOO MUCH lately, and it's really been pissing me off because I've had no clue what I'm doing wrong. I tightened up preflop, made sure I wasn't being overly skeptical of my opponents, learned about continuation bets (read HOH, and thus stopped losing so much money w/AK type hands), tried to sharpen up on when to draw and when not to, and felt like I was pretty good at recognizing the inflection point and becoming loose-aggressive when appropriate. In spite of the fact that I consistently played tight and disciplined enough to last to pre-bubble play, and in spite of the fact that I was consistently making moves at the right times, so as to often put myself back in contention (or even among the chipleaders), it seemed that this "push or fold" technique just wasn't working out for me in the end. Somebody would always catch me. The problem is basically that I was pushing every pushable hand other than any two (Ax, K8 suited, e.g.), without regard to any factors other than the quality of my cards. I wasn't thoroughly considerng my fold equity and realizing that I needed to look not just to the quality of the cards (Ax, K8suited, e.g.)--which may very well be great to push with at the appropriate time--but also to what my opponents are thinking of me, how much I've been pushing, and how likely they are to call (given their position and chipstack). In addition to the fact that I wasn't ever laying down pushable hands when I was short and needing to steal, I was also failing to come out of push or fold mode after doubling up and reaching a relative comfort zone. Not recognizing when it was finally my turn to sit back, exercise some restraint, and watch the other guys make all the desperate moves was really costing me some money. Don't really know that this will even help those of you who, like me, are working on the fundamentals, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Good luck.