You’ve Been Raised
If the pot has been raised before it is your turn
to act, you must tighten up significantly on the hands
you play. Savvy players might raise with almost anything
in late position if no one except the blinds are in
the pot, but if a player raises from early position,
give him credit for a good hand, and throw away all
but the very strongest of hands.
Remember that you need a stronger hand to call a
raise than to initiate one. After all, if you raise,
your opponents might fold, allowing you to win the
blinds by default. If you call a raise, you have to
give your opponent credit for a strong hand, and you
should call only if you believe your hand to be even
stronger.
When someone’s raised after you’ve
called
When an opponent raises after you’ve called,
you are essentially committed to calling his raise,
seeing the flop, and then deciding on the best course
of action.
But when you call only to find yourself raised and
raised again by a third opponent you should throw
your hand away unless it is extremely strong.
Suppose you called with a hand like 10h-9h. Just
because this hand may be playable in a tame game doesn’t
mean you must play it. The ideal way to play speculative
hands like this is from late position, with a large
number of opponents, in a pot that has not been raised
— when a hand like this is worth a shot. After
all, you can always throw it away whenever the flop
is unfavorable.
When Should You Raise?
Hold’em is a game that requires aggressive play
as well as selectivity. You can’t win in the
long run by passively calling. You’ve got to
initiate your share of raises too. And here are some
raising hands.
You can always raise with a pair of aces, kings,
queens, jacks and tens. In fact, if someone has raised
before it’s your turn to act and you have a
pair of aces, kings, and queens in your hand, go ahead
and reraise. You’ve probably got the best hand
anyway. Reraising protects your hand by thinning the
field, thus minimizing the chances of anyone getting
lucky on the flop.
You can also raise if you’re holding a suited
ace with a king, queen, or jack, or a suited king
with a queen. If your cards are unsuited, you can
raise if you’re holding an ace with a king or
queen, or a king with a queen.
If you are in late position, and no one has called
the blinds, you can safely raise with any pair, an
ace with any kicker, and a king with a queen, jack,
ten, or nine. When you raise in this situation, you’re
really hoping that the blinds ? which are, after all,
random hands ? will fold. But even if they play, your
ace or king is likely to be the best hand if no one
improves.
Playing the Flop
Defining moments are crystallized instants in time,
forever frozen in memory, imprinted into consciousness,
never to be forgotten. Like Armstrong walking on the
moon, and the first home run you hit in little league,
these magical moments shape the way you perceive and
value the world around you.
Hold’em also has its defining moment, and it’s
the flop. Unlike seven-card stud, where cards that
follow your initial holding are parceled out one by
one with rounds of betting interspersed, when you
see the flop in hold’em, you’re looking
at five-sevenths of your hand. That’s 71 percent
of your hand, and the cost is only a single round
of betting.
The implications of this should be abundantly clear:
If the flop does not fit your hand, be done with it.
Playing long-shot holdings after the flop is a sure
way to lose money. After the flop, the relationship
between the betting and cards-to-come is reversed.
Now you’re looking at spending 83 percent of
the potential cost of a hand for the remaining 29
percent of the cards!
Fit or fold
Fit or fold. That’s the concept. Fit can take
one of three forms: The flop fits because it improves
your hand; it offers a draw that figures to pay off
handsomely if you hit it; or you hold a big pair before
the flop.
If you don’t improve to a big hand or a draw
with a nice potential payoff, get out — and
do it now.
Flops you’re going to love
While you’re not going to like the flop most
of the time, there are those rare instances when it
fits like a custom-made suit. When you’re lucky
enough to flop a straight flush, four-of-a-kind, a
full house, or the nut flush, your major worry is
not whether you’ll win, but how much money you
can extract from your opponents.
Your first order of business is examining the texture
of the flop. Based on the betting pattern prior to
the flop, try determining whether one or more of your
opponents has made a hand or has a draw to a hand
that would be second best to yours.
Lovable Flops
