# Practice: Know what your mistakes actually cost

Source: https://poker.academy/blog/post/practice-full-hand-training-guide
Author: Jan Przysucha
Published: 2026-09-10 · Updated: 2026-09-17
Category: Update

![Practice: Know what your mistakes actually cost](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-hero-flop-fit.png)

Every player I know can tell you their worst hand of the year.

Nobody can tell you what it cost them.

Not “I got coolered” – an actual number. How many big blinds that call gave away. That is the thing I wanted for years and never had, and it is why Practice exists in the shape it does.

## You play the whole hand. Not a quiz question.

Most trainers stop exactly where poker gets hard. Preflop spot, pick an action, tick or cross, next.

> That is not poker. That is flashcards.

In Practice you get dealt into a seat with a stack, blinds and antes. Players in front of you act. You make your preflop decision – and if the hand goes on, you see a flop, a turn, a river. The pot, the stacks and both ranges carry forward from what actually happened, and the opponent answers from solver strategy at every node.

![A hand in Practice - nine-handed table, hero in the big blind facing a small blind raise, no solver hints on screen.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-table-after-mode.png)

*Nine-handed, 50 bb, big blind facing a raise. No hints – this is the mode you should be training in.*

Every number on that felt checks out. Ante 1 bb, blinds 0.5 and 1 – that is 2.5 in the middle. Small blind raises to 4, so the pot is 6. You owe 3 more.

Pot odds: 3 / (6 + 3) = **33.3%**. Exactly what the panel says. Do that arithmetic yourself – I want you to.

Postflop, every bet size is named as a percentage of the pot with the big blinds worked out for you, so you always know what a size actually costs before you press it.

![Postflop action row - Check, Bet 15% (1.3 bb), Bet 30% (2.7 bb), Bet 60% (5.4 bb), Bet 120% (10.8 bb).](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-bet-sizings.png)

*Every size as a percentage of the pot, converted to big blinds.*

## Then it tells you the price

This is the part I care about most.

![Feedback card after a decision - Blunder verdict, 0.19 bb of EV loss, and the solver's full strategy at that node.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-verdict-detail.png)

*Blunder – 0.19 bb of expected value given away, and the strategy that says so.*

> You are not told you were wrong. You are told what it cost you: 0.19 bb.

Best, correct, inaccuracy, mistake, blunder – and the grade comes from how much EV you gave up against the pot, not from a list of approved buttons. A call that costs a hundredth of a big blind and one that torches half the pot are not the same error, and any trainer that paints both red is teaching you nothing.

## Your range calls. Your hand folds. Both are true.

If you take one thing from this post, take this one. I have got it wrong myself more times than I want to write down.

![The same hand with the Range Explorer open - the big blind's 169-hand matrix, continue 60.7% across 805 combos.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-hand-in-progress.png)

*The range continues 60.7% of the time. That is the number people mistake for permission.*

Facing that raise, the big blind range continues **60.7%** of the time across 805 combos. Calling looks fine. But the hand was J♥6♣, and for that combo, at that node, the solver folds **100%** of the time.

Both are correct – they answer different questions, and swapping one for the other is how you talk yourself into calls a chart seems to bless. So we put them side by side in plain words: *Solver, with this hand* and *Solver, across the whole range*.

---

## You decide what gets dealt

Random hands are a waste of your evening. So you tell it what to deal before you sit down.

![The session composition dialog - format, stack range, simulation type, ten preflop categories, hero and opponent seat, starting hands and nine board textures.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-session-composer.png)

*One dialog: format, depth, ten preflop categories, both seats, 169 starting hands, nine board textures – and Save as drill.*

Cash, MTT or Spin & Go. Any stack range. Ten preflop categories – opens, facing a raise, three-bets, squeezes, blind versus blind, limped pots. Pin your seat, your opponent’s, or neither. Narrow to board textures, or to specific starting hands if a class of holding keeps butchering you. Mine is offsuit broadways out of position.

The other half of the cockpit is how it behaves.

| How it plays | Your options |
| --- | --- |
| Hands | 5 · 10 · 20 · 50 · no limit |
| Feedback | Study · After · Errors only · Cheat |
| Clock | Off · 8s · 12s · 25s |
| Opponent | Samples solver frequencies · always most frequent |
| Villain cards | At start · at end · showdown only |
| Tables at once | 1 · 2 · 4 |

That last row is the one people miss. Practice can deal **four tables at once**, each running its own hand.

![Four tables at once in Practice - four independent hands, each with its own Fold / Call / Raise / All-In row.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-four-tables.png)

*Four hands at once, four independent action rows. Every decision still graded.*

Not a gimmick – the closest thing to the pressure of a real session. Multi-tabling costs you the same EV here as it does online, except here somebody counts it.

## Four ways to be told you are wrong

- 

Only *After* and *Errors only* count towards your ranked stats. A decision made while staring at the answer measures nothing, and I am not going to let the app flatter you.

## Turn your leak into a machine

Anything you can configure, you can save as a **drill** and start with one click. Blind versus blind at 20 bb. Facing a three-bet in position, 100 bb deep, paired boards.

Every drill keeps its own record – runs, dates, accuracy – so the list stops being a menu and becomes a scoreboard. Mine says blind-versus-blind went 33% → 44% → 62%, and that the cold four-bet drill I built a month ago is still on 0% because I have been avoiding it. Uncomfortable in a useful way.

There is a catalogue of ready-made drills next to your own, so you do not have to build them all yourself. **Plans** go further: multi-week structures, six sessions a week, each day with its own setup waiting. If you have ever opened the app thinking “no idea what to work on today” – that is what this is for.

## Mark the hands that bug you

One key during a session flags a hand for later. They pile up in **Marked** – every hand you pressed M on, across every session you have played.

![The Marked screen - flagged hands grouped by day, with filters, a pattern panel and a grade breakdown.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-marked-hands.png)

*Your cards, the action that led there, your decision beside the solver’s, and what the difference cost.*

Two things there are smarter than I expected when we built them.

It looks for a **pattern in what you flag**. If five of your marks are big blind facing an open, it says so – and offers to deal those five back to back. Your instinct about which hands were interesting turns into a drill without you noticing the theme yourself.

And it splits them by grade. Plenty of marked hands are not errors: nine of my twenty-eight were correct plays I still wanted to see again. The screen says it plainly – *marks are yours, grades are the solver’s*. It also counts how many you actually went back to. Mine says 15 of 28.

Opening one gives you the replayer: the hand street by street, your decision at every node, the verdict, and the solver strategy beside it – for your exact combo and for the whole range.

![The hand review screen - replayer on the left, the chosen decision with the solver matrix in the middle, and the full 15-hand history on the right.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-review-hands.png)

*The replayer, the decision you made, and every hand of the session – sortable by what it cost.*

> Playing 400 hands teaches you almost nothing by itself.

Playing 400 hands, flagging the 11 that confused you, and then actually sitting with those 11 – that is a study session. The first is just clicking.

---

## And then the part that hurts

Every graded decision goes into your record. Seven days, thirty, ninety.

![The Performance screen - accuracy and EV loss headline figures, weakest measured track with a drill button, and trends over thirty days.](https://poker.academy/wp-media/2026/09/practice-performance.png)

*Accuracy, EV loss per decision, and the track you are worst at – with a button that drills it.*

Two headline numbers: accuracy, and average EV loss per decision. Then the breakdowns that actually find the leak – by position and by street. That is how you learn your flop play is fine and your preflop is quietly bleeding.

It also names your **weakest measured track**, tells you how far below your own average it sits, and puts a button right there that drills exactly that. When it stops being your weakest, the app tells you that too.

## One promise about the numbers

Every frequency, every EV figure, every verdict comes from [solved solutions](https://poker.academy/gto-postflop-solver), read at the node you are standing on. No lookup table of “typical” frequencies. No heuristic wearing a solver costume. And when there is no solved data for a spot, the app says so instead of inventing a number.

> A trainer that always has an answer is a trainer that is sometimes making it up – and you would never know which times.

---

## Start here

Open Practice. Leave the defaults. Set feedback to *After*. Play 20 hands. Ten minutes.

You will finish with a verdict on every decision and a number for what the session cost you. Then read the review, mark what surprised you, and turn the recurring one into a drill.

Play, review, narrow, repeat. That loop is the entire product.

Go find out what your calls actually cost. Cheers! 🙂