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I always get eliminated after I go all-in with a favorite hand. For example, the other night, i had 7-6 in the big blind. The flop comes 5-8-9 giving me the straight. I have one opponent at that time and he's a newbie, playing for the first time. My thoughts at that point was to try to get as many chips into the pot as possible. I manage to get quite a few. The turn brings a K. So far, so good, i still have the nut straight. I trash talk a little trying to make him feel good about his hand and manage to get him all-in.

The river brings a Q and completes his J-To to a better straight than mine.

Another hand occured a few weeks ago. I had A-10. Flop brings Q-10-3. An opponent bets a large amount and I put him on a bluff. I raise all-in thinking he's gonna fold but no. He calls with K-7o. I was right about him bluffing but then he caught a K on the turn and I lost all my chips.

He didn't have that much more than me. If my 10s had held up, he would have been a huge underdog to winning the tourney.

So now i'm thinking i might play too agressively. Instead of going all-in on these hands, maybe I should bet a little less in case i get bad beated. But then again, i'm thinking i should maximize my winnings...

My friends are now laughing at me because i'm the only one reading books on poker. And they are somewhat entitled to laugh lol

So how would you play hands like these?

Thanks again for a wonderful site!!

Jeff

Answer:

First of all, what went wrong here? You have a two hands where you are a huge favorite, yet you lost. Does that mean that you should, when next time in a similar situation, back off and play it more safely? No! I just wrote an answer to a question that relates to this and one of my points was that you need to be able to look at your hands independently from whether or not you got bad beated. If you made the right play, yet someone else got lucky to beat you, the hand was played correctly. You can't judge the validity of a play based on short term results. For example, in the above two scenarios, whom do you think would have the chips if we ran these hands 100 times? You would obviously. That means that you played correctly, period. If you let yourself get rattled by the bad beats, you bring into question your own strategy and then everything goes down the tubes. Have confidence in what you did if after applying the above method, you came the conclusion that the play was profitable.

Next, an important rule to learn in no limit holdem with regards to aggressiveness is: A raise is incorrect if a player can only call you with a hand that has you beat. Let's take the AT hand and apply this concept to it. If you went all-in on the flop with a lot of chips against another player with a lot of chips, would that move be correct? No it wouldn't. What would happen is one of two unfavorable outcomes: one, you would lose the hand to a better hand or two, you would just get a worse hand to fold. A better move would be one that both protected your hand and made it incorrect by the odds for the other player to call with just a King overcard. An all-in is generally too much. So again, if you can the job done without having to risk all your chips, do it.

Last, in hands where you have a really strong holding, especially in tournaments, the goal is to milk them for all they are worth, not protect them. You made the right plays for doing that when you flopped the nut straight in the initial hand. Again, the outcome has no baring whatsoever on your moves. You had the best hand and he had a draw. You got all his money in, in a situation where you are about a 4:1 favorite and he got there. So be it. Does that mean you'll slow down next time and play more carefully? Nope, it means you'll do the same thing but most likely you'll be the winner.

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