I’ve played very casual poker with friends for a few years; we do nickel ante, with max $.25 raises.
Basically, it’s always paid (or at least it feels that way) to play a very large portion of the hands dealt until I see the flop. Enough people tend to stay in that the cost to see the flop is negligible compared to the times a poor hand pre-flop turns around.
Anyway, the point is, I’ve never had to play particularly smart early in a hand. Typically I pay to see the flop and then start playing tough based on the five cards available. I’d really like to become better at making choices in the first round of betting.
My biggest question is how good really are two off-suit high cards? How much stock should I put into a KQ or KJ off-suit?
I know that this is all opinion, and that how my opponents are playing makes a big difference, but I don’t quite grok where those hands fit in the scheme of the game.
In the type of game that you describe, where everybody see’s the flop… it’s a little harder.
The idea behind playing better cards is that when you hit, you have a better hand then when you have a lower hand. Should you have KQ and your opponant has, say k4 and the flop comes KJ7, you have a significant advantage with the better kicker. Plus, your cards have the chance at becoming something better with a straight that your opponants cards never did.
Say your opponant had a j3, you are still stronger with top pair. Say your opponant has 72… even though he hit his top card, his hand is still extraordinarily weak.
The problem in games like you describe is that the blinds and raises are so low… that should you get a premium hand, say AA and raise to chase out the stragglers, you don’t really chase anybody out. So the guy that calls with 79 won’t go away when the flop of 628 comes out. You feel safe, but are done when the 10 hits. Reality is that even though he won… he got very lucky and should have folded before the flop ever hit.
For that reason, when I’m playing with a bunch of calling stations, I don’t like to raise a whole lot and try to only play cards that have a lot of potential. Suited connecters, two high cards, pairs.
Yeah, I’ve found (in my very limited experience) that sometimes it pays to intimidate the other players in the initial betting round so there’s less chance of some person with a shitty hand getting lucky later on. On the other hand . . . there have been instances where I found it pays to lay low. Once I had a full house on the flop yet didn’t raise anyone until the final betting round - by that time the pot has grown and people are usually too invested to fold. Plus they figure you have a so-so-so hand at best since you haven’t been betting very aggressively. Doesn’t help to have a good hand if everyone folds before the pot gets to any significant amount.
When my cousins play we usually double the blinds after a set amount of time to keep everyone on their toes.
In Holdem, KJ and KQ and hands like that are tricky to play. They generally go down in value in very loose games, because the hands they tend to make (one pair) get run down easily when lots of people are in the hand. If the game is short handed (you play with 4-6 players, not 8-10), they become more valuable.
The problem with these hands is that when you lose with them, you lose a lot. Because you have a made hand, you generally go all the way to the river to find out you are beat. On the other hand, if you have the best hand, you often don’t get paid off very well. So they win a little and lose a lot. Expertly played, they can be profitable in the right circumstances. Poorly played, they are expensive.
In comparison, a hand like TJs in a loose game is great. it’s easy to play - if you flop a flush draw or a straight draw, you have a chance to win a big pot against people with pairs, trips, etc. If you don’t, you can just throw the hand away on the flop and it costs you very little (one mistake a lot of players make is to continue on with a hand like TJ when the flop is something like T65 and there’s lots of action. You should typically just fold that particular top pair hand).
One thing to be aware of if you want to play hands like KJo is position. The worst possible scenario for this hand is that you go up against someone with KQ, AK, QQ, KK, AA. You’re dominated and way behind, and if you flop top pair it will cost you plenty. These hands win seldom enough that you generally don’t want to play them against a raise, either. So, follow these simple rules:
Only play them in late position (last spot or two before the blinds).
Don’t play them if there’s a raise in front of you.
Don’t play them if you have aggressive players behind you who always raise.
If you call, and there’s a raise and a re-raise (and the players know what they’re doing) abandon the hand. Just because you called one bet doesn’t mean you have to call two more. A double raise like that probably means you’re dominated. Get off the hand cheap.
On the flop, you’re looking for a board like this: J 7 3. You want top pair with your better card as the kicker, and no straight or flush draws. If you get a flop like KsQs8d, the pot is small (no raise before the flop) and there’s lots of action in front of you, you should consider folding your top pair. If you’re not already beat, there are a million ways to be beaten. This is one of those hands where even if you flop the best hand, you can actually have less value than a guy on a big draw.
Note that the only way you can follow rule #5 is if you are in late position.
Here’s how people lose big money with these hands: They call with KJo in early position. It goes call, call, call, raise. You call the raise. Now there’s a re-raise behind you, and a cap. You call again. Now the pot is huge. The flop comes up KT9. You’ve got top pair and a gutshot for a straight, and you’re feeling pretty good. You bet, and get raised. There are two cold callers. You call the raise. On the turn there’s a blank. You check, the raiser bets. Two calls, and you call. The river is a queen. You hit your miracle straight. You check, hoping to trap someone. The raiser checks. The cold caller bets. You raise. The raiser calls. The cold caller re-raises you. Uh oh. You call - and get shown AK. The other guy who was raising had JQ. It turns out you were drawing completely dead the whole time. And it cost you a fortune.
These are the kinds of situations you absolutely must stay out of if you’re going to play that kind of hand.
Good info, but may I suggest that people specify if their advice is limit or no-limit? Or not even Holdem? Huge differences in the games.
One piece of advice that I have always admired in no-limit games: Your chips are referred to as bullets. They don’t do any good sitting in the ammo case. Fire 'em away.
I see there are already some solid tips for a live game. But if you’re playing online, where you can easily jump around different tables, then a lot of the above advice (playing KJ or KQ tight, etc.) just doesn’t apply. You want to build the pot up with early betting so when it hits, you make out like a bandit. This tactic will work miracles if you are playing in a super loose live game where nobody cares about losing a nickel. If you make a pre-flop bet about 4 to 8 times the big blind, and most people routinely call with anything, you should bet out anytime you start with a K or A. (but be ready to muck it if it doesn’t work out)
Nope, two of us have king hight straight but one has an ace-high straight in that scenario.
Thanks everyone so far, particularly Sam Stone. I think your example illustrated exactly why I have trouble with those hands. They’re good for a nice pair if I hit one, but then a pair is just a pair, and it’s really easy to follow that pair to an early grave when I’ve got a lower kicker, or there are four other people gunning for a straight.
K-J, K-Q, K-10, Q-J, Q-10 are marginal hands. You can limp with them, but I wouldn’t go around raising with them; any good flop to your hand is almost certainly going to hit someone else’s hand too, and if they’re any good they probably have you outkicked. This is not quite as true for a super-loose game, because you’ll make a lot of profit off people taking flops with J-8 and such.
Against a loose player, checking and calling is usually your best bet if you hit, unless there’s a scary draw on the board.
The above applies pretty much equally regardless of whether or not they’re suited. Prior to the flop, the difference in your odds of winning with two suited cards vs. the same cards but offsuit is infinitesimal. Pay attention to “suitedness” after the flop, not before.
Can I play in your game? This is bad advice. No-limit strategy is complex, but anyone who gets in one of the games I play in and ‘fires their chips’ is going to get slaughtered.
You’re going to have to explain this further. How does the ability to jump from table to table change the advice?
And no, you do not want to build a pot early with these kinds of hands. In fact, you want the pot to stay small, and you want to win it as quickly as possible. When you go up against drawing hands with a single pair, you are only going to make money if they are not getting the odds they need to draw to their hands. Conversely, if you flop a marginal pair, you want the pot (and your investment) to be small so you can get off the hand.
In general, you want to build big pots when you have starting hands that can turn into monsters. You want cheap flops and small pots when you have hands that turn into the best on the flop and can win right away, or that you can use to steal blinds or steal small pots with a bet even when you miss. Building big pots not only pot-sticks people and encourages callers (who can run you down), but it gives even marginal hands like gutshot straights the odds to call (which means you lose money when they call in the long run).
In addition, when you have multiple callers on multiple draws, even if each one of them is not getting the odds to call, the combination of callers can cause you to lose money - especially if there is someone in the hand with a big draw. They pick up most of the equity from weak callers and suck it away from the guy with the best, but easily beaten hand. I could do the math to show you how this happens if you want.
I don’t want to say you’re categorically wrong, because in some contexts this is good advice, but in general, checking and calling is a bad way to play poker. Especially when you have top pair and not much else. Now you’re committing yourself to the river, and by showing weakness you’re opening yourself up to a huge bluff bet - which you can’t call unless you know the other player extremely well.
It’s not nearly that simple, and this is very bad advice. While it’s true that ‘suitedness’ only adds a few percentage points to the number of times the hand actually wins, the difference in how they are played (and how they are paid off) is dramatic. The simple percentages only really apply to very short-handed (2-4 player) games, where you’re not really playing to make straights and flushes. In full ring games, and especially in loose games, suitedness and connectedness is very important.
The bottom line is that hands that typically flop overcards or one pair cost a lot when you lose, and win very little when you win. If you’ve got KJ and the flop is K98, who are you going to get action from? If you’re lucky, someone who’s playing KTs. Other than that, anyone who’s got a king probably has a better kicker than you do. You’ll also get action from straight draws and flush draws, but since they are getting odds for their calls, you’re not making money from them in the long run. So if you truly have the best hand, you’re going to win a small pot. If you’ve got the second-best hand, you get to go all the way to the river to find that out. And probably get raised in the process.
With big suited connectors, you will often flop multii-way hands, like top pair with a straight draw or flush draw. Or top pair with a 3-flush and a 3-straight. The added equity from these draws makes the hand much more profitable. With a hand like 89s, the value comes completely from the fact that you either miss the flop (don’t flop a flush or straight draw), or you flop a big hand (a four-flush, open-ended straight, or something like 88K). If you hit, you play. If you miss or flop one pair, you can fold and it only costs you one bet.
As a general point, I see too many players these days learning their poker from watching televised poker matches. This is a terrible way to play poker. For one thing, tournament strategy is very different from normal ring game strategy. For another, these games are usually short handed, and the strategy changes. And finally, these players tend to be either extremely good readers (who have been playing each other for years and adapt their strategy accordingly), or rubes who got lucky and are in way over their heads and don’t really know what they’re doing.
If you want to learn poker, I recommend the books by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. They’re a good place to start, and they won’t give you any horrible advice.
We tend to treat our chips like our preciousssssssssss…
I guess that only works if eveyone does that though. We rarely play high stakes but people still tend to play as carefully as if each bet were $5 instead of $0.05.
Heh. And when I read it, I conflated the two other hands. My bad as well.
In other words, with five people staying in, one of them is bound to hit on something unlikely. If you have one person going for a straight he’s got certain odds. If more people are going for different straights, the odds of one of them getting it are better. And, the odds of one of them stumbling onto something else increase as well.
If the majority of people are paying to see the flop, as the OP describes, you’re not valuing your chips. You can’t learn how to play early game poker playing small stakes. Simply isn’t possible to know when it’s wise to stay in a hand versus when it isn’t.
Well yes, I know that. I am not the OP, however - I was speaking about my own experience, which is that even when we play with blinds of 5 and 10 cents it’s rarely a family pot on the pre-flop. I guess it’s because we’re poor recently-out-of-grad-school poker players. Or maybe most of us have developed the mindset of seeing our chips as valuable per se, rather than seeing them as valuable relative to the amount of money they represent.
And you are welcome to join us on Thursday nights.
Or maybe most of us have developed the mindset of seeing our chips as valuable per se, rather than seeing them as valuable relative to the amount of money they represent.