What bad poker habit took you the longest to break?

frnandoh · Wednesday at 1:33 PM

I'm constantly evolving so I yet have a lot of habits to break (all that general people have too), but playing with weak hands out of position was my habit I took longest to break. It is not intuitive that for commom people that playing less you win more. In poker, we need someone to tell us about some important answers.

Toruk Makto · Wednesday at 9:46 PM

Certainly to play out of position, I still play in some cases, not least because of playing so much, I learned to play out of it. More less often!

Balou1982 · Thursday at 5:27 AM

In my opinion the worst habbit as poker player is when you dont quit playing if you get tilt, so i have learned to quit really fast when im playing
@CASH table and recognizing that im having a downswing in my game or other players having their day and hitting the board the whole time.
So it is up to you if you wanna risk more from your bankroll then you want, it is necessary always to stay calm and ask yourself is this a table where i can
make money while spending my time or it is just fun and you dont care, but last is a rare phenomenon because nobody has fun if loosing money.

If i have the feeling, something is going a bit strange while playing, i quit and try it in another session or a different game with lower buy in or a freeroll just to relax and enjoy just the game. It is never a fault to take a break even if you had a good run, because you will never know what happens next ...

moraeskvmi · Thursday at 7:37 AM

pay to split.

leomarinho · Thursday at 8:54 PM

nabmom said:
We all know that there is a learning curve to playing poker. We also know that sometimes, once we pick up a bad habit, it is hard to shake it. Combining these two things, I'm wondering what bad poker habits you had in the past that were the hardest to stop. Or maybe you still have a bad habit that you know isn't helping you, but you just can't help yourself.

For me, learning how to stop chasing losses during a slump in cash games took a long time to really conquer. It was often so tempting to "just play a bit longer" and try and win back what I had lost. Studying my hand history really helped me understand what I was doing and how it wasn't helping to be tilted and try and win back my buy-ins. Taking a break was a much better strategy that was easier to manage once I created a clear "stop/loss" amount. Once I hit that, I walked away from the table.

So, what bad poker habit did you conquer after some effort, or maybe you are still battling?

When I first started playing poker, I had the bad habit of playing the same hands the same way regardless of my position at the table. I didn’t realize that a hand could be profitable in a late position but problematic in an early position. Over time, I learned that position is one of the most important factors in poker, and adjusting my hand ranges accordingly can make a huge difference in my results.

Even today, I still catch myself occasionally ignoring position. It’s a difficult habit to completely overcome, but it happens sometimes

tihomir_kula · Friday at 12:29 AM

To reenter tournament 3-4 times, although more than hour has passed from the beginning.

Nameless14 · Friday at 12:39 AM

Playing too many hands out of boredom. Folding felt boring, but my bankroll thanked me once I learned patience

Omar.Imrane · Saturday at 12:00 PM

My biggest weakness is patience in long tournaments. After about two hours, I start feeling bored and restless, which sometimes pushes me to play hands I would normally fold. I know it's not the best approach, but staying focused for many hours is still something I'm working on. Short breaks help, but I think improving my patience is one of the biggest challenges in my poker game.

ironduke11 · Saturday at 12:22 PM

the expectation that playing one style will yield results everytime

armoko · Sunday at 5:33 AM

One bad habit I had was going on tilt after one player stacked me. I would get obsessed with winning my chips back from that specific player and no one else. It took me a long time to realize that poker is about making good decisions, not getting revenge on the guy who busted you. Sometimes I still have this bad habit

Sebbour · 2026-06-22T13:17:59-0400

I have them so many that I cannot remember them all at once. Today I'm going to write about patience (or impatience). When I play MTTs in most cases I play how I want for about 90 minutes and then I lose patience and start calling with hands that (by my rules) are for folding. For now I haven't managed to get rid of it.

christovam · 2026-06-22T15:06:43-0400

nabmom said:
We all know that there is a learning curve to playing poker. We also know that sometimes, once we pick up a bad habit, it is hard to shake it. Combining these two things, I'm wondering what bad poker habits you had in the past that were the hardest to stop. Or maybe you still have a bad habit that you know isn't helping you, but you just can't help yourself.

For me, learning how to stop chasing losses during a slump in cash games took a long time to really conquer. It was often so tempting to "just play a bit longer" and try and win back what I had lost. Studying my hand history really helped me understand what I was doing and how it wasn't helping to be tilted and try and win back my buy-ins. Taking a break was a much better strategy that was easier to manage once I created a clear "stop/loss" amount. Once I hit that, I walked away from the table.

So, what bad poker habit did you conquer after some effort, or maybe you are still battling?

I think my biggest bad habit is calling big bets with AJ or AQ. Because when that happens—usually after a three-bet—I end up facing a big pair or AK.

BillyR23 · 2026-06-22T20:02:59-0400

What bad poker habit took you the longest to break?

In my case was Tilt, so many types of it

- the main resource that helped me with it is Tendler's books * The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2... in his books, Jared identified 7 primary types of tilt and quite a few variations and/or secondary types... I won't get too much into it as it will be too much to write about this subject, what I want to say that helped me the most is the different examples on how to recognize your triggers and early signs, some of the best 'fixes' (the one I like the most and often recommend on our community is taking (short) breaks from gambling in general and don't wait to 'burn out' and/or for the bad sessions to come * I often take breaks after winning runs/sessions) and to focus on process over results... I would say that my poker mental game is pretty good ATM, but I'm till battling some things and like with other aspects of the game - there's always room for improvement and that's why so many of us love poker

margmilo44 · 2026-06-23T01:53:44-0400

The bad habit that took me the longest to break was playing too many marginal hands just because I was bored or card dead. I'd sit there folding for what felt like forever and eventually convince myself that a weak hand was good enough to play. Of course, that usually just led to tougher decisions and lost chips.

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What bad poker habit took you the longest to break?

frnandoh

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Toruk Makto

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moraeskvmi

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