Obviously you never know if you are behind or not, but the grace of the game is in being able to estimate it not ?. By the size of the bets, by the tells, or whatever. Never fold AJ? I think that is very debatable.
The other day I saw a video of a great tournament. A player opens with 77, another raises him with AK and a third pays with JJ. The flop comes A-7-J. The player with the sevens checks, the player with AK makes a continuation bet and the player with JJ pays. Here the matter is already suspicious. The turn is another Ace. The player of the sevens checks again, the player with AK decides to check and the player with the JJ makes a half pot bet. The player with the 77 goes all-in. What does the player do with AK? Folds ... But he has 3 aces! But the other two are singing that they have full-house (or at least one of them).
I agree that you need to take risks to win a tournament. But one thing is a risk and another to give away your chips. And I think it's better, if you don't know anything about another player, assume he has a hand instead of bluffing. But it's just my opinion.
P.S: I said there was no need to discuss the examples because I was obviously doing an exaggeration. What I wanted to underline was the point of view. For specific hand analysis there are sections in the forum.
P.P.S: A good player of this forum once told me: "Having a couple of aces means that you have the best chances before the flop, not that you will always win. Knowing how to recognize when you didn't do it will save you a lot of money."
You see, a question was asked several months ago: You're in the main event of the
wsop, the very first hand, you have ACES, and there is all-in in front of you, would you call? I've answered - NO. Why? Because it's a 5 day event and I have 80% chance to win the first hand and 20% chance to end the tournament. Since this 5-7 day event is a important game for me, then I would play carefully without taking risky decisions.
If you're playing the most important
poker game of your life - you can play these mind games of yours, and see what will happen. Only the luck will help you. Reads,
tells, whatever it's just a BS if you're playing against poker player who isn't a robosapiense.
"I know, that you know that I know what you did last time, so I know what to do when the right time comes" - Do you really believe that it works and it will ever make you a special player?
In majority of online tournaments, up to 70% of hands are played pre-flop. It's range vs range,
bankroll battle. Can you afford to lose or hit min cash 30 times in a row in that $530 MTT? If you can then 31st time you'll hit that 1st place and will win +60 buy-ins, so you can shoot for it again.
Why did I tell you to watch the HR games? You can clearly see there, that before the final table top 4-5, in 90% of hands you will see all-in before the river card. Folding a set of Aces, because you had a feeling or you've noticed some tells in
online poker at top level? YOu will see only what your opponent wants you to see.
Objective thinking vs Subjective thinking. Each player, each person has his own, personal opinion about items or processes, this opinion is subjective, it's based on subjective thinking. Opposite is objective thinking, this is the truth as it is, just the naked facts, without any personal bullsht.
You can win a million starting with 10K bankroll by thinking objectively during your poker sessions. You have to understand that it will take time, a lot of steps, and the more objective(closer to the mathematical truth) your game will be - the better will be your results in the long run, so during a year or several you will make your first million.
What will happen to you and to your 10K bankroll if you'll be playing subjectively? Ok, let's say you've folded several times correctly, you've been lucky, or not - you will never know, cause there was no showdown. When you'll do that first wrong decision - the snowball will start rolling from the top of the mountain of your mind, and TILT will start moving your bankroll down to the ground. Tilt is psychological factor and it starts with a psychological problem. When top players wait during a hand, they calculate things, they're playing only mathematical game and this is the main reason why tilt isn't visiting them, these mathematical games are the reason why in the long run they're having profit... It's a fail to think about reads and tells in online poker, even if your reads will work - you're going to be on tilt because of that, tilt is not coming only when you're losing, tilt also comes when you're winning by some accident.
What I'[ve typed above isn't related to live poker and also isn't related to micro-low-small limits... it's about mid-high limits and also useful for the small stakes... What you're saying about 77 vs AK vs JJ hand, and 3 players seen the flop, and they've ALSO after such flop they've seen the TURN!!! This is something really special, maybe couple of friends playing, or some hollywood drama where alien played against transformer and predator, idk.
Poker evolves you know, you're trying to describe some old style ABC game maybe, and maybe like 10-8 years ago it worked in online games, it's been a nice time when standard opening bet was 4BB, but today, when people prefer to limp Aces or bet straddle with them, today, I believe that what you're saying is a road to disaster. People today don't even like to fold at the river when their opponent let's them see the river for cheap, they see that their OESD or Flush draw haven't closed and what's next? It's like 50/50 if both opponents would like to see the showdown, so in 50% cases one of them will fold. It might be the one who was betting or the one who was calling. So the funny fact is that the one who was betting is taking it as a serious game, he's a tight and smart player, he thinks of his remaining stack like if it's 90BB, and 90BB is a big stack... THEN the one who has nothing, just a draw... he can take the pot with a little help of all-in button. Just because he knows that his opponent is careful, tight smartie. And he will also take it easy, cause he's not thinking about his stack as a 80-90-150BB stack, he thinks of it like if it's $11 or $109 or $530 bet (the buy-in) is it worth to bet these money for the pot in front of the table against THIS opponent who plays mind games? In 70% of cases it's worth to try, cause you will fold.
P.S. Do you understand that during "in the money" stage and before the final table = before the big payjumps, at this stage online professionals play much more loose, than they've played before the money? Reads and tells are absolutely useless at this stage. You will more likely see the final table only in case if you're extremely lucky with high volume of pocket monster hands together with awesome post-flop luck. Reads-tells, damn I've been watching 10K buy-in bounty SCOOP final today, you can watch the replay, during top 5, Austrian player opened with 2BB, Canadian called 2BB with A9s, and Russian also has called with AA. How can you read this? How can you read your opponent if he opens 2.2BB with 73os and same 2.2BB with pocket Kings and his cbets on the flop-turn are the same each time, doesn't matter what cards are there? You can only play the same, adjusting your pre-flop open/call/shove ranges to the situation and calculating postflop maths, forgetting about the "mind games" part