You Lost $400 Last Night -- Now What?

You close your session, stare at the number, and feel the familiar mix of frustration and confusion. You replay the biggest pot in your head. You had top set, the board ran out a straight, and your opponent stacked you. Bad luck, right?

Maybe. But what about the six medium-sized pots you lost with marginal hands in bad positions? What about the two bluffs you fired into calling stations? What about the preflop call you made with J♥9♦7♣3♠ from the blinds that leaked $35 before the flop even came?

Most PLO players review sessions by remembering the biggest pots. That is exactly backwards. The biggest pots are often the most straightforward -- set over set, nut flush vs. second nut flush. The real leaks hide in the smaller, repeated decisions you barely notice.

Rule 1: Tag Hands During Play, Not After

If you try to remember interesting hands after a session, you will only recall the dramatic ones. The critical decision where you check-called the turn with a bare flush draw? Gone. The preflop 3-bet you made with a hand you should have folded? Forgotten.

Tag hands in real time. Most tracking software (Hand2Note, PokerTracker, DriveHUD) lets you assign a hotkey to mark a hand. Every time you feel uncertain about a decision -- even slightly -- hit the key. Do not analyze. Do not second-guess. Just tag it and move on.

You should tag 10-20 hands per session. If you are tagging fewer than that, you are either playing perfectly (you are not) or you are not paying enough attention to your own decisions.

Rule 2: Focus on Decisions, Not Results

This is the hardest discipline in poker study. Your brain wants to evaluate hands by their outcome. You won the pot? Good decision. You lost? Bad decision. That logic will ruin your improvement.

Here is a concrete example. You hold A♠K♠T♥9♦ on a K♥T♦5♠ flop. You bet pot. Your opponent raises. You call. The turn is the 2♠, giving you the nut flush draw to go with your top two pair. You check-raise all in. Your opponent calls with a set of fives and holds.

Did you play this badly? Run the equity.

[Check: top two pair with nut flush draw vs. bottom set on this flop](/tools/equity-calculator?p=AsKsTh9d|5c5h8d7c&b=Kh Td5s2s)

You might find that you were actually ahead when the money went in. The result was bad, but the decision was correct. Without the equity check, you might have "learned" the wrong lesson and started playing top two pair passively on wet boards.

Rule 3: Review 2-3 Hands Deeply, Not 20 Superficially

You have 15 tagged hands from last night. Do not try to review all of them. Pick the 2-3 that represent the most common or most costly decision types and go deep.

For each hand, walk through every street:

Preflop: Was this hand strong enough to play from this position? Check your starting hand standards. Was the table dynamic (loose, tight, aggressive) factored into your decision?

Flop: What was your equity? What was your plan for the turn and river? Did you have a clear reason for betting, checking, or raising, or were you acting on autopilot?

Turn: Did the turn card change the dynamic? Did you reassess, or did you stick to your flop plan regardless of new information?

River: Was your final action -- bet, check, call, fold -- justified by the range of hands your opponent could have?

Rule 4: Look for Patterns, Not Isolated Mistakes

After a week of session reviews, step back and look for recurring themes. Common patterns that PLO players discover:

  • "I keep losing big pots when I c-bet into multiple opponents on connected boards."
  • "I am calling too many 3-bets out of position with hands that do not play well postflop."
  • "I never fold overpairs on wet boards, even when the action screams I am beat."
  • "I bluff rivers into players who never fold."

These patterns are worth ten times more than any individual hand analysis. Once you identify a pattern, you can create a simple rule ("Stop c-betting into three players on 8-7-6 boards") and enforce it in your next session.

When the pattern spans hundreds or thousands of online hands, move from session review into a filtered PLO database review so you can compare similar spots instead of replaying the hands that felt most painful.

Rule 5: Use the Equity Calculator at Every Decision Point

Do not just check equity on the river or when money goes all-in. Check it at every decision point that confused you.

Say you held Q♠J♠9♥8♦ and faced a pot-sized bet on a K♠T♦3♣ flop. You called with your open-ended straight draw and backdoor flush draw. Was that correct? What about when the turn brought the 4♥ and you faced another pot-sized bet?

Check the flop equity: wrap draw vs. likely top pair or overpair range

Then check the turn: how much did the blank change things?

This two-step process -- check the flop decision, then check how the turn changed the math -- teaches you how equity evolves across streets. That understanding is what separates players who "feel" their way through hands from players who actually know what is happening.

A Simple Session Review Template

After each session, spend 20-30 minutes on this:

  1. Pull up your tagged hands
  2. Sort them by pot size (biggest first, but do not skip the small ones)
  3. Pick 2-3 hands that represent different types of decisions
  4. For each hand, write one sentence: "I think my mistake was ___" or "I think this was correct because ___"
  5. Run the equity calculator on the key decision points
  6. Write one takeaway for the session: "Next time, I will ___"

Keep these notes in a running document. After a month, review the document and you will see your most persistent leaks staring back at you.

FAQ

How soon after a session should I review hands? The next day is ideal. Same-night reviews are too emotionally charged -- you are still tilted from losses or overconfident from wins. Give yourself a night to reset, then review with fresh eyes.

Should I review winning sessions too? Absolutely. Winning sessions contain bad decisions that happened to work out. If you only review losses, you reinforce the false belief that winning means you played well. Some of your worst habits are hiding inside your best sessions.

What if I play live and do not have tracking software? Keep a small notebook or use your phone. After any hand that made you think, jot down: your hand, the board, the action, and what confused you. Even rough notes are better than relying on memory.

The Real Payoff

Session review is not exciting. It will never feel as fun as playing. But the players who do it consistently -- who sit down the next morning, pull up their tagged hands, and honestly evaluate their decisions -- are the ones who move up in stakes. Every other form of study is built on this foundation. Get this right first, and everything else in your PLO improvement process gets easier.