what serarates good poker players from bad ones?

[IMetTrentGreen]

i am in a weekly no-limit game (cheap, 10/20 buck buy-ins, usually), and i am tired of breaking even. i want to beat those nerds down

what should i know how to do? whats important to learn? how can i tell when i'm doing something wrong?

and so on

[Radii]

Do you have a read on the other players in the game? With it being a weekly game, does that mean that you play with the same group of guys every week?

There was a weekly game I played in for awhile, the first two weeks I broke even, after that, I came up big winner well over half the time we played. What I found playing with the same group of guys is that everyone became very predictable, very fast. There were two calling stations, if I had big hands against them I would check/call, or make small bets to string them along and try to sucker them into big bets late in the hand. If I didn't have a hand against the calling stations I might try a decent sized bluff, if they called I knew I was beat, badly.

There was one guy who was just ultra loose, after the flop he played well, and he would occasionally just bluff hard with absolutely nothing. I would just play pretty straight against him, and took his bets at face value. If he bluffed me out a few times, so be it.

One guy sucked, he busted out real early every time we played. The cool thing about this was, once he busted out, there was another guy who was always ready to go to a strip club with him, in the game. Once this guy decided he was ready to go to the strip club, he went all in post-flop on any draw, or any pair. I busted him multiple times with top pair-good kicker calling $20 or $30 all-in bets that I would normally not call a huge all in bet with.

My point, of course, is that if you're playing with non-skilled players, most of them are probably painfully predictable.

The only other suggestion I would make, is, assuming a reasonable blind structure... if the table is passive and you can get into a lot of pots for just the big blind bet, do it, play looser pre-flop, you'll make a killing when you hit a big hand. Play more suited connectors, things like that. Don't be afraid to get rid of them if you don't hit them hard though. If there are lots of pre-flop raises and its an agressive table, tighten up.

Hope that helps!