Card Player Pro

Nobody likes throwing away something pretty. Heck, my garden shed is full of old junk that I can’t bear to part with. Fortunately, though, I’ve learned to keep my nostalgic side away from the poker table — because when you just can’t let go, it’s your cash that will be swept out from under you.

Fortunately for us, our opponents just love the look of those big hands they play preflop. They don’t want to let them go, even though they’ll be beat more often than not. So, it’s our job to take advantage of their love affair with those missed overcards and charge them a premium to show them down.

Take the example of a hand I played in Part III of my CardPlayer Pro series Falling Upwards. I’m five-handed at a PokerStars $50 no-limit hold’em table, in the cutoff with the J J, and I flat-call a raise from the under-the-gun player. Everyone else folds, and I go heads up to the flop, which is 10 6 5. My opponent seems to be pretty tight-aggressive, so although he can certainly have suited connectors in his hand, given that he raised from under the gun, it’s not all that likely, so I’m not too concerned about a diamond draw. He leads out for $3. Raising here doesn’t achieve much, as I just get my money in behind all of his overpairs and fold out the hands that I’m beating, so I elect to flat-call.

The turn brings the marvelous J, and I now have the nuts, but my opponent decides to check. This is where the hand gets interesting. Many people will put the villain on overcards and will check behind to induce action if a king, queen, or ace hits the river. It’s not a bad plan, but why would you want to play a small pot with the nuts when you might have the chance to play a big one? After my opponent checks, I think there’s a very good chance that he might just love those overcards so much that he’ll be burning to try to catch that ace on the river.

I elect to bet $6.50 into the $10 pot. My hand looks a little suspicious now. He probably would expect me to raise a set on the flop, and most other hands, he would expect me to check behind on the turn for pot control. So when I bet, he probably wants to convince himself that I have nothing, so that he can call and see the river.

Sure enough, he does call, and the river brings the K. Excellent! If he has overcards, he’s unlikely to fold a hand like K-Q or A-K, which is just what I want. It’s true that the flush draw hit on the river, but remember that I discounted this possibility in my earlier analysis, and I can’t make him call if I don’t value-bet. He checks again, and I make a healthy value-bet of $14 into the $22 pot — just the right size to induce a call from those one-pair hands that can never be good — and he surprisingly calls with the Q Q!

My opponent thought those queens were so pretty that the thought of mucking them was unbearable, even though there was nothing he could beat on the river — and it cost him dearly. If you want to avoid a similar penalty, keep your secrets in the garden shed and punish those who bring their junk to the river.

To watch Andrew Arnott comment on and play this hand, point your browser to Card Player Pro, the complete online poker training site, at www.CardPlayer.com/link/ama-2.