My trouble hands in no limit Texas hold’em

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The Dean United Kingdom. Jul 28 2013 08:20. Posts 2

There are many hands in no limit Texas hold’em that can be defined as trouble hands for all sorts of reasons. In his great book “SuperSystem” the great Doyle Brunson once remarked on how hands like K-J and A-10 were “trouble” hands. Well it really all depends on how you play them I suppose but it is certainly true that they have to be played carefully. For example if a middle position player makes it 3.5bb to go and you have the Ac-10c on the button then you have a clear call even though your hand may be dominated.

If you flop an ace then it overtakes all hands like KK-JJ and you can easily get away from dominated situations if you are careful enough. It is often said that dominated Broadway hands are trouble hands but any hand can be a trouble hand if you play it badly enough. For example imagine a hand like A-A played at NL100 ring on Full Tilt Poker in the hands of a novice with a 200bb stack. They make it 3.5bb and get two callers both of which have position on them. There are now 12bb in the pot and the flop comes K-10-4 rainbow our hero makes a c-bet of 9bb and the first caller makes it 27bb with the next player folding.

Our hero calls because he has aces and now the pot is 66bb. The turn card comes and is the 5d and our hero checks. His opponent bets 35bb and now for the first time our hero is feeling a little less comfortable. However he still cannot let go of the aces just yet and so makes a call thus pumping the pot to 136bb. Any experienced player would already be feeling that their aces were beaten. You need to remember that a solid player will already know that you must have a decent hand to raise from position.

So this means that they can read your hand a lot easier than you can read theirs. This is the underlying problem with playing hands out of position. You can never know with certainty or enough certainty that your hand is losing. At least when you have position then you are in a better spot to know this because you will already have seen your opponent check or bet or even check-raise. There is a line that I often use to good effect that highlights even more when your opponent has a good hand.

This is called the delayed c-bet and is simply what the name implies, a c-bet that is made on the turn instead of the flop. This works well when your opponent has nothing and will be suspicious of your check. It also works well when you have almost no equity on the flop. For example if you raise a limper with the 10c-9c and the flop comes Kh-4s-3d then you have very poor equity. So you may decide to check and if the turn card comes and is the 8c and your opponent checks again then your fold equity has increased alarmingly.

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Love poker.....it rocks when you let it.

TheTrees United States. Jul 28 2013 09:34. Posts 1592

5*...great commentary

Baalim Mexico. Jul 29 2013 01:04. Posts 34261

lol

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