Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Thinking you have the best hand
Thinking you have the best hand does not justify value-betting. Sometimes an opponent will only call your bet when you are beat. In the above example, your opponent can call with any 10 and pairs 9-9 to 6-6, as your hand is fairly underrepresented. Suppose you raise Q-J from middle position and the big blind calls. The flop comes J-10-3. Your opponent check-calls your flop bet. You bet a turn 2 and he calls. If the river is the 9 and your opponent checks, you should check behind every time, as he can call with very few hands. You lose to any flush, almost any jack, as he probably wouldn’t have called your raise with J-7 or worse, and most hands that had a pair on the flop because most of those have two pair. So, what hands can your opponent call with that you can beat on the river?
There aren’t many, because every draw got there.
There aren’t many, because every draw got there. So, in this situation, if your opponent is ahead, he will call or raise, and if he is behind, he will fold. Check behind whenever this is the case. Check behind even if the river is a blank, because again, your opponent can call with very few hands. He would check-fold a missed draw. He might call with a few hands that you beat, such as J-9, J-8 and maybe A-10 and K-10, and that is stretching it. Always evaluate your opponent’s range and determine whether you beat a fairly large percentage of those hands before you bet.