Online Poker Guide - Texas Holdem Strategies
Texas Holdem Strategies: Playing Difficult Hands in Poker Part III
While difficult hands and positions are going to occur occasionally, towards the end of tournaments, for all tournament players, there will, nearly always, be difficult situations to deal with early on in the events.
Many poker players will tell you that the key to success in poker tournaments is using selective aggression and that if your hand is good enough to call with then it should be good enough to raise with! That theory does hold some weight as playing TAG (Tight-Aggressive) poker is considered the optimum strategy both in online poker and in the live card room environment. However, there are times when easing off the accelerator can pay dividends. The important thing is to realise when simply calling is the correct thing to do especially pre-flop.
Here is an example of a hand that occurred on 32Red Poker a few weeks ago:
Player A had registered for a $30+$3 freezeout tournament. With a field of over 400 players to beat he wasn’t in any rush to play any average or questionable hands. After 30 minutes he had built up his stack to 4500 chips. With the blinds standing at 25/50 our man was quite comfortable at that early stage in the proceedings.
Our player picked up an interesting hand on the button; Ten-Jack suited (spades). That hand may appear to be pretty average and, indeed, at that stage it was only Jack high. However, that hand has many “drawing” potentials for straights, flushes and even the very unlikely royal flush.
A player in an early position raised the blinds to 200. Immediately our man is nervous about playing his Jack high as a raise in early position usually signifies a strong hand. The raise is called twice before our man can act resulting in a total pot of 675 chips at that stage (200 + 200 + 200 + 50(big blind) + 25(small blind). What should our man do here?
The very simple answer is; call. With almost 700 chips in the pot our man is getting pot odds of almost 3.5/1 for his money. There is a chance that the players the blinds will also call which could improve his pot odds to a tasty looking 5/1.
Both of the players in the blinds called following the call from our man. A flop of 8-9-Q (different suits) was dealt. To the original aggressors that would seem like a very harmless flop and, indeed, on this occasion the early position raiser was keen to follow up his pre-flop aggression by betting 1500 chips into the 1000 chip pot. The action was folded to our man and, with 4300 chips left and with the nuts at that stage, he moved all-in. The early position raiser held pocket Aces and went bust. Our man moved towards the chip lead and went on to finish in third place in the tournament for a very healthy pay day.
By paying attention to what was in the pot and what “value for money” he was getting, our man was able to make the pre-flop call with ease. The call wasn’t going to put his chip stack under any real pressure and, most importantly, he was in the button position which meant he could act last following the betting on the flop and take control of the action.
Pay attention to your position, your chip stack and what pot odds you may be getting before making a call before the flop. Many of the hands you wouldn’t normally raise with can provide excellent value in the right situations.
Go back to Playing Difficult hards Part I, Part II or back to the texas holdem strategy menu.
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Online Poker Guide: Playing Difficult Hands
We recommend generally folding difficult and playing the easy ones the best you can. However, there comes a time when you have cards that could close out the game and in these circumstances you should always consider the pot odds, i.e. your investment against the chances of your cards beating the other possible winning hands. This needs some thought and you really need to practice and get into the poker way of thinking. Get all the practice you need at our recommended online poker room at 32Red Poker.
