At a recent $1,500-buy-in tournament, I watched a novice play a hand that illustrated a few key mistakes players should strive to avoid.

With blinds at 250-500 plus an ante of 50, the novice, sitting on a stack of 30,000 and holding A 10, raised to 1,050 from the cutoff seat. The small blind and big blind both called.

At that point, the novice couldn’t do much to narrow the ranges of the blinds, which included all sorts of pairs, aces, big cards, and middle and low suited and unsuited connecters. The novice’s A-10 suited was probably in good shape, although far from a lock.

The flop came Q 9 3. Both blinds checked to the novice, who bet 2,000 into a pot of 3,600.

While making a blind continuation bet into two opponents may have been considered a fine strategy in the past, smart players have learned not to fold every hand worse than top pair, so betting with marginal made hands and junk has become a suboptimal play. It is certainly not fun to check behind with a hand that was likely best before the flop. However, when you completely miss a flop and it appears to be a decent one for the callers’ ranges, you should be happy to check behind and hope to improve on the turn.

Only the small blind called the 2,000 bet. The turn was the A, pairing the novice. The small blind checked, and the novice checked behind.

At this point, it was clear that the novice almost certainly had the best hand, unless he was up against 9-9, 3-3, A-9 or A-3. But those hands only represented a tiny portion of the small blind’s range. If the novice were to bet about 3,000, he would be extracting value from worse made hands and charging the small blind a significant price to chase any draws. The novice later told me that he checked behind because he didn’t want to get check-raised, but most of the time his opponent would either fold to or call a bet, especially since the ace on the turn would usually be much better for the preflop raiser than the preflop caller.

The river was the 5. Both players again checked.

As on the turn, the novice should have bet. When the small blind checked again, it was incredibly unlikely that he could beat top pair plus a decent kicker. The small blind’s most likely holdings were a pair of queens, a pair of nines or busted draws.

While a large river bet might have made sense against a professional opponent, in this situation versus an unknown player, it probably would have been smart to choose a bet size that could realistically be called by a marginal middle pair. I think a bet of about 3,500 into the pot of 7,600 would have been ideal.

After both players checked, the small blind showed Q-J for middle pair, and the novice sheepishly turned up his cautiously played top pair, scooping a small pot (and missing at least some value).