Plugging Leaks Before They Sink Your WSOP Run
With the World Series of Poker in full swing, poker coach and author Alex Fitzgerald has published a timely strategy piece cataloguing the five most common ways tournament players needlessly surrender their stacks — and, crucially, what to do instead.
Why This Matters
The WSOP is the most competitive live tournament series on the calendar. Fields regularly stretch into the thousands, meaning even technically sound players face an uphill battle. Compounding that with avoidable strategic errors — what the poker community calls punting — dramatically shortens the runway before elimination.
Fitzgerald, known for his work breaking down recreational-player tendencies, frames these leaks not as exotic advanced concepts but as recurring, fixable patterns that show up at every level of the WSOP, from opening-day flights to deep runs.
What to Expect in the Full Piece
While the excerpt keeps the five specific punt categories behind the article link, Fitzgerald's coaching methodology typically centres on:
- Emotional decision-making after a bad beat or cooler
- Stack-depth mismanagement during pivotal blind levels
- Over-adjusting to aggressive or passive table dynamics
- Misreading ICM pressure near pay jumps or the money bubble
- Pre-tournament preparation gaps that compound in-the-moment errors
His core argument — that most eliminations are self-inflicted rather than a product of bad luck — is a useful reframe for players doing a post-series review of their results.
FeltIQ Take
Strategy content that targets identifiable, repeatable mistakes tends to have longer shelf life than hand-history deep-dives. If you're heading to Las Vegas this summer or grinding satellites from home, Fitzgerald's checklist is worth bookmarking as a pre-session mental reset.