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When it comes to playing poker at a professional level, the ability to avoid making mistakes is what separates the consistent winners and the rest.

Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. It's a very human trait and making them from time to time is normally nothing to be ashamed of. But when a sizeable sum of money is riding on your ability to get things right, the luxury of being able to make a mistake can evaporate completely. This is most evident during a serious game of poker where even the most fundamental mistakes are punishable most severely. When you are playing at the highest level, a simple mistake can ultimately cost you a match, a tournament or your entire bankroll and reputation.

So what are the most common mistakes and how can you avoid making them? We take four of them and explain what they are, how they happen and how you can avoid making them.

Getting the Playing Environment Wrong

It's all too easy to blow your entire bankroll very fast by playing in an environment that is wrong for your level of skill and experience, or ill suited for playing to your best. Poker is a game of skill that requires a high level of concentration and to do that you need to be in an environment where you are free of interruption and distraction. Playing at a level which is out of your depth will severely test your confidence, while playing online in a noisy place where you are likely to be interrupted can cost you games if you miss vital pieces of the intricate jigsaw that makes up this game. Avoid this mistake by playing online in a quiet place where you are not likely to be interrupted and find a table with players as close to your own level as you can.

Strategy Confusion

Often, newer players will make the mistake of confusing an opponent's playing strategy to their cost. It's worth knowing that players have differing styles which can be categorised as tight, loose and no playing strategies. A tight player is one that will only bet on a hand that they believe stands a very good chance of winning. Tight players rarely see flops and tend to only back a premium starting hand. Loose players take far more risks, see more flops and play weaker hands. Those with no strategy tend to swing from one extreme to the other and either do it without knowing they're doing it, or they do it as part of a carefully orchestrated plan to wrong foot their opponents. Spending time getting to know your opponents' playing strategies will help you to beat them. Failing to do this will almost inevitably cost you many games.

Seeing Every Flop

Smart players don't see every flop and that includes loose players who know what they're doing. The simple reason for this is that whatever level you're playing, you'd very soon cripple your stack. At the same time you'd be announcing to your opponents that you are a calling station, making it easy for them to beat you. Avoid making this mistake by exercising a little restraint and you'll find your chips go a lot further.

Playing the Wrong Stakes

While there is a reasonable element of skill involved, poker is ultimately a game of odds. If you're playing the wrong level of stakes for the size of your bankroll and your level of skill, then the odds will ensure you'll soon get into trouble, even more especially if you are intent on seeing every flop. The cards can come in runs of good hands as well as bad ones and you need a big enough bankroll to be able to ride out any storm. That storm can be all the more ferocious at higher stakes than you're prepared for.

Get acquainted with the real costs involved in playing long cash game sessions. Never assume that five or ten cent stakes will mean you can play around fifty hands for $5. It's easy to be led astray by this assumption. It may only cost ten cents to see the flop, as long as no one raises but you can reckon on playing a hundred or more games per hour at a pretty fast table. An average pot usually comes in at around twenty times the big blind and if you are making a maximum buy in to play with confidence, which can be around a hundred times the big blind, you're $5 is not going to last long at all.

Steer clear of this mistake by playing for stakes that your bankroll can stand. A general rule of thumb for daily players is to start the month with a bankroll of at least thirty times the max buy in of the stakes level that you intend playing at.

While you can never completely avoid making mistakes, you can certainly minimise the common ones by using common sense and being alert and on the ball at every game.