Looking for Monsters under the bed.

I did not do a 2000 post thread, instead i wrote something i have been thinking about for a long time. You all know i do not do much with analysis or strategy, but i feel this might help some of us.

So here goes.

While playing cards do you look for hands that have you beat. Are you constantly assuming your opponent always has the only two hole cards that beat your two cards? Do you constantly miss a bet on the river, by checking it down? I call this behavior, looking for monsters under the bed.

We as card players tend to look for the hands that have us beat, instead of extracting chips from the players we have beat. We should be trying to extract more chips when our hands are probably good, even when our hands might not be the nuts?

How often do we fold to a flop, turn or river bet when we miss our hands, and allow our opponent to bluff at the pot with a hand that he or she also missed on? The skill of knowing when to cut bait and run, compared to extracting all the chips you can from an opponent is one of the biggest differences between a skilled player and an ordinary player. A bet we don’t get here, and a bet we don’t get there will really hurt our win rate.

The hardest time to control the fear of looking for monsters is when we are running badly. You tend to play a lot more reserved than normal. How often do we call out the very card that beats us on the river? This behavior is another version of looking for monsters under the bed. When we are in this mode, we tend to be surprised when the very card we call “one of the 3 outer that beat us for example” misses and we win the hand. With the best hand I might add. We get so caught up in looking for monsters that we are surprised that we won with the best hand, with the best odds.

Let us keep this in mind next time we call out the card that beats us and remember to always remove the monsters before we start playing and we all can have a better win rate. Oh and also check the closets it might be hiding in there also.

Excellent post.


Just to add, another example is bluffing and bluff catching.

Even seemingly good players often don't bet because it has to look like a bluff, and wont call a bluff in the exact same spot (but in the other guy's seat). I'm basing that on opinion, assumption, and there was a thread somewhere on the old 2+2 forums ("uNL players are weak tight" or something to that effect) where someone did some trick polls to get the data, that sample was small and it's a few years out of date, but imo, it still fits.

All I'm saying is next time you think you're in a spot where your bluff is obvious, re-think it.

Totally agree! But the amounr of bad players that call us with anything and actually hit more often than not makes us start to pray when we have aces and the other bass turd has 2-7o

Nice post Albert this is something I can see in my own game, I think maybe thats inexperience in reading certain boards aswell. There is another aspect of this that I lose value on aswell which is if I am last to act and have been betting out with a decent hand but a scary board I will just check the last card which is losing me a lot of value, would you put this in the same catagory?

Very nice post Pifan, and I must say in tourney play that is one of my biggest leaks.
When someone tosses out chips I assume I am beat, I will never probably call the flop that I miss, but the other day on the bodog 1k guarantee I flopped a set, but there was a possible flush draw on the board. I raised pot they called the flop and my raise on the turn, and sure enough the river was the 3rd card of the suit if someone was chasing the draw. The shoved, I almost folded, thought real hard, and decided screw it I will call.
I doubled up, they called me a fish, whatever, lol,
And when I ever saw what they were calling my raises with I almost died, they were not even chasing a flush, it was like 97o, I don't even think they had a pair, I was in just so much shock I didn't make a bad call I didn't pay that much attn.