One of the Poker Tips One of the most important decisions in a player’s career is making decisions in big pots. If you watch your opponents carefully as they play, you’ll see that most of the time when they have a really good hand, they’ll bet or raise. This happens regardless of what their opponents are likely to have or how the hand played out. If you do this too, you’ll lose out in the long run. So how can you avoid a big hand in a big pot?
Example vs tight player
The way you play your hand and the readings you have of your opponent are decisive here. Let's take an example: your opponent, who you know is tight, starts with a raise and you are sure he has a high pair.
You end up calling and the flop gives you two pair. At this point you see an opportunity to cash in and bust your opponent. At some point on the flop or turn, after you raise, he bets big against you. You know from the play that he should be wary of all the aggression you're showing. However, he continues to build the pot. This is the point where you have to come clean and admit that, despite your initial read, this player no longer has just a top pair. The pot is big and now it looks like he has a set. Most players bust in situations like this, but good players can fold even with so much money in the pot and even with a good hand.
I have often been in heads-up pots with a high flush or a second nut flush against players who I know would not put that many chips in the pot unless they had the best hand. Few players will fold a second nut flush on a no-pair board. Most of the time, this is by far the best hand. However, sometimes it is not. In these situations, it takes a lot of courage to fold at the right time. I was once in a hand against a woman whose partner had put him in for a moment, and she had a big stack. So I made a flush with king high and she, who had been playing timidly up until this point, moved all in after my raise. I knew she had not played very well up until this point, but her all-in raise was worthy of respect. After thinking about it for a moment, I came to the conclusion that the man told her to go all in after a big bet whenever she had the nuts. I folded the hand and to this day I am convinced that I made the right decision.
I can only remember folding sets on the flop with a dry board five times in my life. I was wrong three of the five times. If I had been a better player at the time, it might have been different. Players rarely fold sets on the flop unless they have a very reliable tell that shows they are behind. There were a few more times when I was sure my set was losing but I took it for whatever reason, and ended up paying the price for bigger sets. You have to improve your game and be willing to fold hands like that, as hard as it may be.
One of the most valuable Poker Tips: the KK vs AA pre-flop situation
One hand I hear about often is when someone has pocket Kings and loses to pocket Aces before the flop.
The comments usually go something like “that was a cooler and you were right to go all in on pocket Kings” or “how do you fold pocket Kings before the flop?” The answer is that it is possible to fold easily sometimes, but it becomes difficult because you have been waiting all night for that pair. The math part may surprise some beginners, but when you are dealt pocket Kings, something like 1 in 20 or 25 of those times you will find pocket Aces in front of you. At first it seems like you should always be willing to go all in with your pocket Kings before the flop. Wrong! You need to use the information you have at your disposal to make this decision. For example, against a very tight player who rarely makes big re-raises and has now gone all in against you, it may be best to fold your Kings. The previous math goes out the window after this play by your opponent, which now becomes the factor to take into account in your decision making.
Since you get dealt Kings about once a day, situations like this happen about once a month. Hopefully, most players will let some kind of hint slip when they have Aces after a raise or two. Few live players commit much of their stack to anything smaller than pocket Queens. So when they do move a large amount of their stack into the pot, the odds of pocket Aces are very high.
As a player improves his game and becomes more controlled, he learns to make tough folds as new information shows him that his hand is bad. High flushes, straights, and even full houses lose many hands. Knowing when you will lose money if you call can be tremendously beneficial to your game. The opposite of a tough fold is a tough call when it looks like you are losing. You think the same way and look for information that leads you to believe that you have a chance of winning the pot, but that you probably won't. So why call when you think you are going to lose the hand?
Pot Odds May Be the Answer
Pot odds make you call sometimes when you don't like your hand. What you should do is ask yourself, do you have more odds to call than you think your chances of winning are? For example, in Limit games, if you are bet against at the end and you have 8 to 1 odds to call, you should call if you think you will win the hand more than 1 out of 9 times that situation occurs. In No-Limit, often someone will bet the size of the pot at the end of the hand, giving you 2 to 1 odds to call. If you think you will win the hand a third or more of the time, then it is correct to call. If you follow these poker tips, you will be able to use math to your advantage when making tough decisions.
Thinking about how these big hands can lose will improve your overall game, and it will also save you some money. Since you win a high percentage of the time with really good hands, it reinforces the idea that pushing all your good hands to the limit will have a positive effect. Being able to identify the situations where you will lose will definitely help your game take off.
Conclusion
Mastering these difficult decision-making skills will make you a better player and a winner in the game. And hopefully, it will also make you an expert at making the tough decisions in life that improve the chances of good things happening for the better.
Author: Ray Zee
Translated and adapted from: Making Tough Folds and Tough Calls
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