Seeing cheap flops with less than premium hands

sunirico

sunirico

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There has been several threads on the topic as to the value of seeing cheap flops with less than premium holdings. The warnings sound of how secure are you defending top pair with a bad kicker and other horrors.

True K4 does have a poor kicker if you try and hold onto a pair of Kings but on the flip side it has a very good kicker when value betting a set of fours. equity of Q8 vs KA and KJ for example is 30%, you actually stand a better chance of winning than KJ does with only 20% EV [1].

It is true that you can't be certain that your K4 kicker is holding up on a KQ2 board while villain is value betting an Ace high but call him down and you win. What about the same K4 hitting a K43 board defending against KA which now only has a 20% chance [2] to improve but will likely go to showdown relying on his top kicker. Would you put your money against those odds.

In reality how often does these premium holdings hold up to weaker hands? Then we complain about getting sucked out or bad beaten but how many winning hands did you fold in your nitty pursuit of your monster hands? The fact remains that to win a tournament you cannot simply rely on monster hands and only those brave enough to dare will inevitably succeed.

So do you only play premium hands?



[1] http://www.propokertools.com/simulations/show?g=he&h1=Q8&h2=KA&h3=KJ
[2] http://www.propokertools.com/simulations/show?b=K43&g=he&h1=K4&h2=KA
 
fubarcdn

fubarcdn

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I like to play less than premium hands for a cheap price and see what happens,
It does require a lot of judgement when you hit top pair with no kicker but that is part of the fun.
 
A

Akwind

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That's the basics. You should build a good poker base, playing preflop - taking into account your position, opps stack , your stack, opps stats etc...
check preflop charts - they are easy to find in internet.
also i recommend to learn PUSH/FOLD charts
good luck
 
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