Leading Usually Does Not Make Sense
I recently witnessed a hand in a $1,000 buy-in poker tournament that illustrates a few mistakes that many amateurs make on a regular basis. With blinds at 300/600, the amateur called (limped) with a 33,000 stack from first position at a nine-handed table with Ad-Th. While A-T may seem like a decent hand because it contains two big cards, you are certainly better off folding it from early position because if you either limp or raise and face any amount of aggression, you could easily be dominated. If you decide to play it, you should usually raise in order to have some chance to steal the blinds before the flop and to also have the ability to drive the action after the flop. …
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Recently I have been reviewing hands from small stakes poker tournaments for some of my private students and it seems like their opponents (amateur small stakes players) check-raise in exactly the wrong spots. In general, you want to check-raise the flop when you can extract value from many inferior made hands, when you can make many superior hands fold, or when your marginal value hand plays poorly on future betting rounds, usually because your opponent is overly aggressive and the board will significantly change. …
In this blog post, I am going to share with you five mistakes most amateur players make on a regular basis. If you stop making these mistakes, you will immediately see an increase to your win rate.
One of my students recently told me about a hand from a $5/$10 no-limit hold’em cash game that demonstrates exactly how you should play a marginal under pair. Although he ended up losing the pot, he played it great.