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Breakeven Player Won 100 Buy-ins in a Month After Fixing This

Jakub · Five Card Guy

Recently, one of my students won 100 buy-ins, or $5K, in one month. I didn't think that was really possible. And just a few months ago, he was playing microstakes.

So I'm bringing you three structural mistakes. Without fixing them, he would never have succeeded like this.

Mistake 1: Changing your strategy based on your results

One week you feel great. You bluff a lot and you win left and right, you can't seem to lose. So suddenly you start bluffing every single spot, because it works so well.

Next week though, nobody folds. They always have it, and none of your bluffs come through. So you abandon bluffing altogether. People are never folding.

If you can't separate variance from actual feedback, and you can't stick to a strategy, you end up changing your strategy based on short-term variance. That's like changing your entire personality because someone gave you a compliment or scolded you.

Mistake 2: Reinventing the wheel

He was part of a coaching program where he got a winning strategy step by step. But he was still not fully on board with it. Deep down, he still believed his own strategy was fine. If he's not winning, it must be something else.

At this level, you make progress by copying winning people, often without understanding why.

Think about it. If you cook a dinner without a recipe when you're starting out, you end up overwhelmed, frustrated and hungry. But if you simply follow a recipe, you can do a pretty good job. You don't need to understand why you have to add oil, salt and pepper.

Same in poker. Trying to understand complex strategies at this level is counterproductive.

Mistake 3: Not believing you can beat poker

Every time you lose a hand, there is this voice in your head. It's rigged. The site can't be beat. The rake is too high. I'm just not good enough.

This happens even at higher stakes, and in other parts of life too.

The fix is being around people who are already successful. When you see someone crushing 10/20, you have no excuses.

My life has been shaped by these periods where I joined groups of high-level people. They don't need to have direct contact with you. Just being in that environment raises your ceiling. This is extremely underrated.

Jakub