How to Find Leaks in My Poker Game: A Practical Guide to Fixing Strategy Gaps

In poker, a “leak” is any recurring mistake or suboptimal decision that chips away at your win rate. Leaks aren’t always dramatic; they’re often small, systematic missteps that add up over the course of a session, a day, or a tournament. The goal of this guide is not to promise overnight glory but to provide a structured, repeatable process for identifying, understanding, and fixing leaks in your poker game. By approaching your game like a scientist—collecting data, testing hypotheses, and measuring results—you can raise your skill ceiling and your results over time.

What does it mean to find leaks in your poker game?

Finding leaks means uncovering patterns where your decisions deviate from optimal strategy given the situation. Leaks can arise from many sources: preflop decision-making, postflop play, bet sizing, bluff frequency, hand reading, tilt management, and even the way you think about risk and reward. A leak might be as subtle as folding the turn too often in a certain blind, or as concrete as calling down with second pair on a threatening board when you should fold more often. The objective is not to chase a perfect game but to systematically close the largest and most persistent gaps in your play.

Starting with a personal leak audit: gathering the right data

The diagnostic process begins with data. Without data, you’re guessing. Today’s poker tools—and even simple hand-history backlogs—make it feasible to run a structured audit. Here’s a practical way to start:

• Collect a representative sample. Gather at least several hundred hands from one or more regular sessions. If you play different formats (cash games, tournaments) keep the datasets separate to avoid mixing leak signals.
• Record core metrics. Track VPIP (voluntary put money in pot), PFR (preflop raise), 3-bet / 4-bet frequency, aggression factor (AF), continuation bets (C-bet) frequency, fold to c-bet, and showdown percentage. If you’re using software, export these metrics and summarize them by position and table type.
• Note big hands and their context. Save a subset of hands that felt especially good or bad, including pot size, positions, stacks, and table dynamics. These become case studies for deeper review.
• Track outcomes by line type. Separate wins and losses by betting line (value bets, bluffs, thin value, protection bets) to see where your profit or loss originates.
• Establish a baseline win rate. If you’re playing cash games, you may track big blinds per 100 hands (BB/100). For tournaments, consider chip EV and ROI over your sample. This baseline helps you judge progress after changes.

A practical framework to identify leaks: five pillars of analysis

Think of leaks as manifestations across five pillars. A comprehensive audit examines all five to avoid chasing symptoms while missing root causes.

1) Preflop discipline and ranges

Many leaks begin before the flop. Ask yourself:

• Are you wide or narrow in early positions, and does your range tighten properly on the button or in later positions?
• Do you defend blinds too often or too little against steals?
• Are your 3-bet and 4-bet frequencies aligned with your postflop plan, or are you over- or under-committing with marginal hands?

Fix: create a simple starting hand matrix for each position, and practice sticking to it in live practice sessions. Use spot-checks after sessions to ensure you didn’t deviate too much.

2) Postflop decision quality

Your postflop choices are where many leaks appear: how often you continuation bet, when you check, fold, call, or raise on various textures, and how you respond to aggression from opponents.

• Do you c-bet too often on dry boards where you have little fold equity?
• Are you too quick to fold marginally strong hands (top pair with kicker, backdoors) on scary turns?
• Do you double-barrel or triple-barrel skeptics with too little hand value backing your bluffs?

Fix: build a postflop decision tree template for common boards and test it against your actual play. For example, on a monotone flop with two overcards, what is your recommended action for various turn sizes with strong, medium, and weak ranges?

3) Bet sizing and balance

Size strategy matters whether you’re playing for value or for protection. If you always bet 1/2 pot in a given spot, you may be predictable; if you always check when you should bet, you’re missing value and control opportunities.

• Examine whether your bet sizes scale appropriately with pot size, position, and the board texture.
• Assess your bluff-to-value ratio. If you bluff too often, opponents will call you down; if you bluff too rarely, you’ll miss folds you should win.

Fix: adopt a simple sizing framework: select a value-bet size for strong holdings, a bluff size designed to protect against draws, and a medium control size for marginal hands. Revisit this after a fixed number of hands to see if opponents are adjusting against you.

4) Mental game and tilt control

Leads from the mental side—tilt, fatigue, and game selection—cause leaks that aren’t purely technical. If you tilt easily, you’ll play scared or reckless on important pots, leading to avoidable losses.

• Track emotional state indicators: how often do you deviate from your plan after a big pot or a bad beat?
• Monitor table selection quality and session length. Are you chasing losses by staying in too long after a down-swing?

Fix: incorporate a mental game routine. Practice short, breathing-based resets between hands, set a maximum burn rate per hour, and use a pre-session checklist to ensure you’re playing with focus and intention.

5) Opponent exploitation and table dynamics

Leaking is also about how well you adapt to your opponents. If you misread ranges or fail to adjust to players who exploit you, you’ll bleed equity unnecessarily.

• Are you collecting reliable reads (tendencies, timing tells, bet-sizing patterns) or making inferences from a few hands?
• Do you vary your strategy enough to prevent opponents from exploiting your weaknesses?

Fix: create a simple opponent profile for the primary players at your table and write down one or two adjustments for each profile (e.g., tighten bluffs vs a loose passive, value-target vs a tight aggro).

Concrete steps to locate leaks: a 6-step audit process

1. Set a scope. Determine which formats you’ll audit (cash games, tournaments) and how many hands you’ll review in the first pass (e.g., 200-300 hands per format).
2. Extract baseline metrics. Pull key statistics (VPIP, PFR, AF, 3-bet, fold to C-bet, WSD, etc.) by position and table type.
3. Index your hands. Tag hands that illustrate critical decisions: big pots, near pots, big bluffs, and prominent calls.
4. Review for patterns, not one-offs. Look for recurring errors across multiple sessions rather than isolated mistakes.
5. Test a hypothesis with a small change. Pick one fix (e.g., reduce 3-bet frequency in early positions) and implement it over a standard sample size to observe signal vs noise.
6. Track progress and iterate. Re-measure metrics after implementing changes. If your BB/100 improves and you see fewer obvious leaks, you’re moving in the right direction.

Tools, templates, and how to structure your leak-fixing plan

Having a plan makes the difference between a clever idea and real improvement. Use these practical tools to convert insights into action:

• Leak-fix worksheet. Create a one-page document per leak: description, evidence, proposed fix, testing plan, and date range for reassessment.
• Hand history review checklist. For each hand, answer: what was my line, what did I know about the opponent, what is the pot size, what was the expected value of each action, and what would I do next time?
• Weekly practice sprint. Dedicate two or three sessions per week to focused drills (preflop ranges, postflop decision trees, or sizing practice) rather than broad, unfocused play.
• Progress journal. Maintain a short log of wins, losses, and the specific leaks you improved. Use a simple table to chart your metrics week over week.

Common leaks across formats: cash games vs tournaments

Leaking is not confined to one type of game. However, the nature of the leaks often shifts with structure and incentives.

Cash games

• Over-defending blinds against steals, leading to inflated pots with weak ranges.
• Neglecting position when deciding to bluff or fold, especially on multiway pots.
• Failure to adjust sizing as stacks deepen or as table dynamics change.

Tournaments

• Over-shoving or under-shoving in critical spots near the bubble, driven by fear or pressure rather than equity-based strategy.
• Short-stacking decisions that risk too many chips on marginal outcomes.
• Inadequate ICM-aware decision-making, causing poor late-stage payjump choices.

Fixes in tournaments often require adapting risk tolerance and balancing aggression with ICM awareness, while cash-game leaks tend to center on gaps in range construction, postflop balance, and table-read exploitation.

Case studies: how leaks show up and how fixes look in practice

Example 1: A mid-stakes cash game player notices that on certain texture-heavy boards, they fold too often to aggression, reducing call-down opportunities. Investigation shows a tendency to over-fold on turns regardless of pot size. Fix: develop a check-call frequency guideline for three-bet pots and practice drawing to reasonable, controlled bluffs on specific turn textures.

Example 2: A tournament player discovers that their c-bet frequency on dry boards is too high against players who float. They find themselves bluffing into calling ranges and getting check-raised on later streets. Fix: revise c-bet range to a smaller, more selective set of hands and incorporate a few semi-bluff lines with blockers that dissuade calls from top pair holdings.

Example 3: A player who plays online multi-table tournaments realizes that their early-game aggression is too passive, allowing too many hands to slip away from them. After profiling opponents, they implement a more dynamic early-game strategy, maintaining pressure on weak-tight players and varying their hand ranges by position and stack size. Result: more chip accumulation in the early stages without sacrificing postflop decision quality.

Five quick wins you can implement this week

1. Set a strict preflop range by position and practice sticking to it in 100 hands per session.
2. Install a simple bet-sizing framework and test it against 1, 1.5, and 2.5x bets in common spots.
3. Review three big pots per session and answer: did I maximize EV for each street?
4. Limit mental game leaks with a 60-second reset between hands after a major pot or loss.
5. Document one leak at the end of each day and plan a concrete fix for the next session.

As you implement these steps, you’ll start to see two important results: more consistent decision-making and a clearer understanding of where your wins come from. The goal isn’t to eliminate risk entirely—poker would be uninteresting if that were possible—but to align your decisions more closely with expected value and to minimize avoidable mistakes.

Putting it all together: your personalized action plan

To close the loop between diagnosis and improvement, create a simple action plan that you can follow for the next 4–6 weeks. A practical template might look like this:

• Week 1–2: Data collection and baseline metrics. Identify your top two leaks based on frequency and EV impact.
• Week 3–4: Implement one major fix and one minor tweak. Reassess using a fresh sample of hands and adjust as needed.
• Week 5–6: Add a second major fix and refine your mental game routine. Start a leak-fix notebook to record observations and outcomes.

Remember: the best way to find leaks is to combine disciplined data collection with focused, repeatable drills. If you treat each session as another data point in a larger experiment, you’ll gradually narrow your leaks and increase your win rate. The process is ongoing; you’ll always be looking for the next improvement and the next insight.

Take action now. Gather your last 500–1000 hands, export the key metrics, and begin the first pass of your leak audit. Create your leak-fix worksheet, choose one preflop policy tweak and one postflop decision rule to test, and schedule a weekly review. Over time, your poker game will become less about guessing and more about intentional, EV-driven decisions that compound into real results. Start today, and let your data lead the way.