Misplaying Strong Starting Hands
There is something that gets under my skin more than just about anything else at a poker table and that is when a player groans and complains about how they always lose when they have strong starting hands like AK, KK and even AA. These are the same players that are known to utter the phrase “I always lose when I have AA”. There’s a reason so many players lose with big starting hands, and that is simply because they don’t know how to play those hands correctly.
The first myth to dispel is that these hands are invincible. They certainly are not, but statistically they represent the best possible starting hands you can get, so overall they should provide you with outstanding opportunities to seize chips from your opponent. But where does it go wrong? Simple, it all comes down to miscalculating the revised strength of these card combinations as the hand plays out.
I’ll give you an example. Say you have KK and there are three opponents still in the hand and the flop comes A-9-7 with two spades. A lot of players will continue to play their pocket kings like they’re unbeatable and end up losing the majority of the time. They fail to realize all the warning signs that the flop brings into play. With four players in a hand (you and three opponents) it is very likely that at least one of the players is holding an ace, which automatically cancels out any foothold of strength your kings had pre-flop. Next, there are both flush and straight draws on the board as well. A straight draw in this situation isn’t nearly as likely as a flush draw, but it is something to consider. And of course the biggest problem is that you allowed three opponents to see the flop in the first place. Ideally when you have big pocket pairs you want to raise enough so that you’ll get just one to two callers at the absolute most.
So now what do you do in this scenario? If you check, then someone will probably bet and you’ll have no idea where you sit in the hand. If you bet and are called you’ll still have little to no idea if you’re beat, and if you bet and are raised, you’ll almost have to fold since you could be drawing thin to a paired ace. In early position many players would check here just to try and get as much information as possible as to where they are strength-wise in the hand, and that’s what I would recommend. Even though you may have been dominant pre-flop, the flop has now completely changed the dynamic of the hand and you likewise must change how you were going to approach playing your cards.
Just keep in mind that strong pocket pairs and hands like AK and AQ are only as strong as the flop allows them to be. Don’t overplay these big hands, instead you must capitalize on the early strength they provide if possible, yet at the same time be able to abandon them if the situation isn’t favorable.
By: Chris Iaquinta
