$20: Going bust.

Now, all of this is super basic to any experienced tournament player, but at the absolute lowest stakes, most players don’t have a clue and commit ultra simple mistakes that give up a huge chunk of value each hand. This is not the same “mistake” as misreading someone’s hand on a big decision in a huge pot like whoops, he did have the flush, guess I lose. It takes talent, skill, and experience to develop hand-reading ability–and even the best will get it wrong (or make the correct decision and still be “wrong”) because it’s inevitable when acting upon imperfect information. Navigating these decisions is what separates decent from good, and good from great. But there are decisions in poker, especially online poker where there’s no element of reading physical tells, that are just axiomatic and require zero talent to make. An absurd example would be folding pocket aces pre-flop in a cash game–that is clearly always the wrong decision and it’s self-evident if your objective is to make money. A more practical example would be a late-stage tournament raise/fold situation, where calling is never correct. For example, take a heads up tournament situation where both stacks are shallow (low multiple of big blinds, pot-commitment is 1-2 bets away), the button raises, and the big blind holds a low pocket pair. It’s never correct to call instead of re-raising (even folding would make more sense than calling) because there are just about zero advantages to seeing a flop, whereas a re-raise has 2 primary advantages — 1) committing when you’re more certain you have the edge (as opposed to having to make a tougher decision to bet out of position when 3 high overcards flop) and 2) your opponent might fold and give up his equity in a coinflip situation ( assuming he likely has 2 overcards). There’s a clear cut right and wrong decision, situational context doesn’t matter, and there’s no real debate.