|
|
|
|
 |
|
When It Is Okay To Play Weak Pairs
|
18 January 2007
January 18 - There is a certain poker player that most of us love to face. The donk who flops bottom pair or middle pair and soldiers on to the river, calling at every station. A variation of this ass is the guy who holds a pocket pair like JJ only to see the flop come A-K-x, but who continues to play to the river as well.
These players make good players a lot of money, and if we`re being brutally honest here we`ve all been that player in the past (some of us in the present as well, come on you know who you are) and have learned or try to learn from these errors.
It can be very difficult to get away from a flop when you hit a piece of it, or believe that you could sneakily improve to win the hand. This leads me to look at instances when playing these weak pairs postflop can be forgivable and even admirable.
If you are playing shorthanded at an aggressive table these hands can be a powerful weapon, but your instincts must be impeccable. You begin with the assumption that "most flops miss most hands".
This little saying is more likely to be true if there are fewer hands waiting for the flop. Think about it, if 10 players stay to see a flop at least one of those hands is highly likely to catch some part of that flop. But if you`re heads up then bottom pair is more likely to be in front.
So at the one extreme when you are heads up against a maniacally aggressive opponent and you hold 44 it becomes acceptable to play that hand and to play it strong. If you hold that same hand at a full table and face numerous raises and re-raises it is prudent to fold.
A lot of players don`t get this, the contextual nature of poker. They just want to see a 4 on the flop because it is cool to hit a set that no one thinks you have. But your attitude needs to change drastically, moving away from this mentality to one that can ascertain how profitable a situation is or is likely to become.
I like to play these borderline hands in shorthanded no limit cash games, especially against very aggressive preflop players and/or very passive postflop players. If my opponent holds top pair and allows me to see the turn and the river cheaply I will stick around with my weaker pair, because the implied payoff if I improve outweighs my pot odds by a considerable margin.
Posted by: Marc at 22:10
0 Comments
Related Posts:
> You Should Play Double Shootout Satellites
> Week 2 Of My Winning Poker Regimen
> Week 1 Of My New Online Poker Regimen
> A Chip And A Chair
> The Best Poker Players Of 2006
> EXPERT VIEW - Bad Poker Players, Meet The Worst Poker Player
> PROMO - Free Poker Chip Set
> EXPERT VIEW - Reassessing The Value Of Pocket Pairs
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
