One thing a lot of online poker players don’t consider as much as they should, I think, is that in hold em, a hand is defined mostly by the flop. If you’re going all in every time you get 99 or AK, and you’re wondering why you get beat even by hands you are a favorite against, it is often because you are not giving yourself a chance at the casino online to lay down when the wrong flop or cards thereafter arrive.

Pocket 10’s is a beautiful starting hand, but when you face a board of A J 7 after the flop and your opponent is betting, you are very likely behind playing online poker. I’ve gone broke many times by playing big pairs all in before the flop only to find myself sucked out, when I could have won by just calling the preflop bet, seeing the flop of all undercards, and then betting hard to kill the AK so that it doesn’t make it on the turn or river. The same is true for the reverse. The flop is the major definition of any poker hand. If you’re looking to play poker to make money, you should be more careful about what you are investing in. There is never a bad time to go all in with AA preflop, but in all other situations, you are committing your money to something blindly. I would argue that it might often be a more profitable situation to see flops cheaply even with big pair and wait to make a really big hand. This is particularly true against a very loose table, where you can never really know what you’re playing against.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Funy Center, Hall Of Games, Universe Of Gambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.