In the world of poker, a leak is a term used to describe a mistake that a player makes and continues to make time and time again. Much like a leaking water, a big leak is instantly noticeable but a small leak is much harder to find, yet can be much more damaging.
Imagine you are playing online texas holdem and each time you have a Royal Flush you for some reason fold, a monumental mistake as you have folded a hand that cannot be beaten. However, even though this mistake is huge, even if it cost you $100 each time you made it, it would probably cost you less than $100 a year as the odds on hitting a Royal Flush is a staggering 649,740 to 1.
Now imagine that you make a small mistake, such as calling on the river instead of folding when you have second pair with a weak kicker and this mistake costs you $2 each time you make it and you make it at least once in your daily poker session and you play every day. Over the course of a year this relatively small mistake actually costs you $730, which is $630 more than the massive mistake in the previous example.
Whilst the two examples were complete extremes they serve their purpose of showing you how making frequent small mistakes are much more costly and devastating to your bankroll than making one or two large mistakes and as a reuslt you need to really work on plugging these seemingly small leaks as soon as you possibly can.
One way to do this is to review the hand histories of the sessions you have played. Go through each and every hand and see if you could have acted any differently, paying particular attention to hands where you were calling instead of being aggressive or were playing out of position as these are the two areas that most leaks are found.
Every poker player makes mistakes, whether it be in Omaha Poker or any other kind, but only the best of them spend time trying to learn from them and prevent them from happening in the future.
