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As our beloved games continues to explode across the gaming landscape of in the world, we are finding more and more holdem players who have read some books, studied the game, and taken a disciplined approach to becoming better players. Yet, many of these players are still only playing break-even poker, or perhaps still losing. Why is this? In this article we’ll look at some of the more common mistakes intermediate players make, and try to come to an understanding as to why ‘otherwise good players play bad.’
You should almost never cold-call a raise before the flop. The exception to this occurs when the pot is going to be contested by multiple players (at least six or perhaps as few as five if you are holding a big enough hand) and you have a hand that plays well multi-way. If you have read any hold ‘em books at all, you’ve probably already learned that cold calling pre-flop raises with hands like A T offsuit, or J T offsuit, is tantamount to poker suicide. Yet many players who understand this will gleefully cold-call raises with hands like Q J suited, or K T suited, when they can only anticipate three or four way action going into the flop.
While having the hand be suited is a definite advantage, the fact is that this is not enough to overcome the handicaps that these types of hands face against a typical pre-flop raising hand when the pot is being contested short handed Many of the players were fairly solid, yet they insisted on cold-calling before the flop with hands that they should have known would play very poorly against one of the ‘typical’ raising hands. The rule is this: Anytime you are ‘not sure’ whether to fold before the flop or call, you should probably fold. When you decide to take a flyer with a marginal holding, at least make sure you are going to see the flop with at least five other players. If this strategy is ever wrong, you will save yourself a lot of headaches by simply bowing out unless the conditions clearly indicate you should proceed.
If you like a lot of intermediate players, you probably said fold. But take another look. The pot currently has 17 small bets in it, and it is going to cost you two bets to call. That gives you immediate odds of 8:5:1. True, that is not quite enough to warrant a call, but your implied odds in this spot are huge, as it would appear as though you will have a chance to trap at least two opponents for two bets on the turn if you hit, and probably get paid off in two spots on the river. Also, you might get someone with a three-of-a-kind involved in a raising war on the turn if you do hit. Folding in this spot does not cost you a ton of EV, but when you make these kinds of sloppy mistakes over and over it starts to really add up. In a loose game you are not going to make much money by bullying top pair through a large field, which means you have got find other ways to make your salt. Taking long shot draws into big fields is one of those ways. Of course, you have got to make sure that the money is there, since you need to get to drag a big pot when you do hit in order to make up for all those times that you miss. But dismissing a hand like this by saying that ‘you do not pay two bets with a gutshot draw’ is just lazy. Every draw has its price. When you are getting that price, you are not doing your job if you turn it down.
You see this on message boards all the time. A new player reads a couple books, logs on to an online poker room, and starts whacking the game for 3 big bets an hour for the next month. After a while our hero catches the short end of the variance curve, and starts hemorrhaging money. One session he loses 10 big bets. Then 20. Then 10 again. He wins 15 on his next play, and finally figures he is righted the ship, only to be met with a 45 big bet swing on his next session. On the cusp of utter panic, our hero starts posting on every message board he can find on the Net, imploring veteran players who advise him as to where he is gone wrong.
This is great, except for one thing: He probably has not gone wrong. His early results were unusually good, and now he is simply coming back to earth. By sticking with his game plan, and trying to slowly incorporate new strategies and tactics into his arsenal, he would probably become a long-term winner. Instead, he freaks out over the losses, decides that he cannot beat a loose game and either blows the rest of his bankroll playing badly or gives it up all together.
Every poker veteran has at least one horror story about a prolonged losing streak. If you are going to play poker you just have to get used to the idea that there is a lot of short term luck in the game. Once you are able to take that to heart, my friends, you will have gone a long way towards getting through the weeds.
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