Think Before You Bet
Veteran professional player, coach, and author Alex Fitzgerald has published a new strategy piece outlining a structured, four-question mental checklist players can run through before committing chips to a bet.
Why a Checklist Matters
One of the most common leaks in poker is reactive betting — firing at pots out of habit, frustration, or momentum rather than deliberate reasoning. Fitzgerald's framework is designed to interrupt that autopilot mode and force a moment of structured analysis before the chips go in.
While the full breakdown lives on Poker.org, the core idea is straightforward: before any bet, players should be able to answer a defined set of questions about their hand, their opponent, the board texture, and the story their action tells. If the answers don't align, the bet probably shouldn't happen.
Why This Approach Is Valuable
Fitzgerald is well-regarded in the coaching community for translating high-level theory into practical, table-ready concepts. A repeatable pre-bet checklist like this one has a few key advantages:
- Consistency — it gives players the same decision scaffold regardless of session variance or emotional state.
- Self-awareness — the process of asking why you're betting surfaces assumptions that often go unexamined.
- Adaptability — a question-based model works across formats, whether you're playing cash games or tournaments.
The Bigger Picture
Strategy content from working coaches tends to reflect where the broader player pool is struggling. The focus on intentional betting decisions suggests that bet-frequency and bet-sizing leaks remain among the most prevalent issues at non-elite levels — a useful reminder that fundamentals rarely go out of style.
If you're looking to tighten up your betting logic, Fitzgerald's four questions are worth internalizing as a starting routine.