Don’t over complicate the game

Poker at the end of the day is a simple game, the problem though is that as human beings then we tend to overcomplicate it and when that happens then many of us go through tough periods where it is difficult to see the wood for the trees so to speak. Poker is a simple process of matching hand strength vs hand strength to win whatever money is in the pot. Obviously it gets far more complex than this but essentially this is what it is…….your hand strength against that of your opponents for whatever is in the middle. Now that hand strength is one of two possible things……..actual hand strength or perceived hand strength.

By that I mean that you actually have some kind of a hand or you don’t. If you have a hand then your job is to do one of several things and one of them is to get as much money into the pot as you possibly can with hands that are worse than yours. If you don’t have a hand then you job is to do one of three things and these are to either fold, draw to a hand with proper odds and implied odds or look for a possible route to get your opponent from the better hand if at all possible. Your goal in poker is to win the pot wherever possible but winning the pot does not always involve immediately betting and raising. It also involves checking and calling as well to try and extract value from a weaker range of hands. But let us say that you have Q-J and the pot is 10-10-6.

Now we know that your hand is weak but your hand is only half of the equation. An entire poker hand when played heads up is between two poker hands and not just one. There are two kinds of scenarios that win a poker pot and these are a superior hand or superior betting strength. You need one or the other to win the pot. So in this example then your Q-J is not a strong hand but it could actually be the superior hand. It also has one very powerful weapon at its disposal and this is superior betting strength. In fact superior betting strength can be very powerful because it can lead to better hands folding like K-6 in this instance. Superior betting strength is really only in trouble against hands that will not fold. So it then becomes your primary job as a poker player to try and ascertain just how much strength is out there against you. To be able to get away with winning hands based on a lack of strength then you need to have the right image.

Better players will be watching you and aggressive play to win pots will work for a while but it will not work for too long before your opponents begin to adjust. So do not make the mistake of thinking that you need to make a big hand all the time to win the pot because you will be on the wrong side of big hand versus big hand situations as often as you are on the right side. If you knew that your opponent had K-6 on a 10-10-6 board while you yourself had Q-J and you had also seen them fold a marginal hand in the past then you have a legitimate attempt to win this pot whether you have a hand or not. You must not wait for what you perceive to be strong hands before you commit chips. Having a better hand is only part of the equation because it will often be the case where better opponents make you fold the better hand anyway.