All Aboard for the Best About Cruising!

What do you do with a big hand preflop when you have a big stack, like K-K? And how does everyone else react? Regardless of if you simply play free poker for pennies or are at the final table in WSOP this is a core situation that you must know how to explot to the full.

For our example we will look at an example from the World Series of Poker:

BLINDS 40,000/80,000

A has As-10c moves all-in (Pot 1.296m)
B has K-K reraises to 5m (Pot 6.296m)

B has two options here. He can call and wait for an opponent to go all-in, though that would make him think…

Could it be A-A? Or Q-Q? If it was Q-Q there is a slight chance he might fold K-K, and regret it. But a big reraise can drive Q-Q or lower out, like what happened to another player:

C has Jd-Jc

(C’s comments on B’s hand were: “Why did you make it so much? … You like your hand that much?”) If C calls, it’s for all of his chips.

C may think that B has A-K, but there are two all-ins in front of him, and one of them might be A-X (and with A-X he is still not safe) or a pair, but a suspiciously heavy raise to about 60 times the big blind is almost always a signal for A-A or K-K. So C could wait for a better opportunity than now.

C folds (Pot 2.39m)

C’s fold was brilliant, after the reraise, but it will still be brilliant even if B did not reraise. B might bet again on the Flop and C may not continue and just let go of the chips.

B’s reraise will work if he has A-A or K-K, but I doubt it if he will do the same with A-K or Q-Q, but it may have the same effect of making C fold. As for A, let us wish for his good health. B won the hand later.

Summing up Big Hand Preflop
I know this may seem like a lot to take in all at once, the fact is though that while poker is an easy game to learn it is hard to be very good at, hence the crazy stupid “chip flinging” you will come across on many poker sites.

Yes it is mad that so many players play with so little skill, but it is also very good news for you as a player who is learning to play correctly. That’s because once you learn to play poker at an above average level and combat the “all-in-all the time” maniacs then you can take them apart in coldly calculated genocide anytime you like in low stakes money games and when you free online poker that pays real cash such as that found at www.NoPayPOKER.com.

As ever practice makes perfect so read, understand and learn to play poker for free on the free online poker tables to get it nailed.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 6:13 am and is filed under JetSki. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.