Making the Big Laydown
There are many difficult aspects in poker, but having to throw a good hand away is one of the hardest. While other areas of your poker game may easily improve with time, such as hand selection and the ability to read other players, being able to lay down made hands is something that almost never gets easier for poker fanatics to do, even at the professional level. While there are many factors that can play into the decision on whether or not to toss the hand into the muck, it’s your emotional state of mind that contributes the biggest part.
Ideally, you should be making laydown decisions based mostly on the facts at hand with maybe a pinch of instinct. Is it very likely your hand is still good and that your opponent bluffs a lot? Could they have been trapping you this whole time and you’re now drawing dead? Do you have enough chips to survive in the cash/game tournament if you call and are wrong? These are the right questions to be asking, unfortunately most of us focus on the negative aspects of the situation, such as not wanting to get pushed around by another player, hence we make an emotional decision instead of an intelligent one.
You need to discipline yourself to try and not get too heavily emotionally involved in any hand. Don’t get married to your pocket aces just because this is the first time you’ve had them all week, if the correct move is to fold, then fold. The same goes for a player that’s been bullying you all night. Don’t make a huge call just because you want to finally get even with them, that is an emotional decision.
I like to base most of my big decisions on a profit/loss outlook. Is the amount of chips I can win, combined with the facts of the situation, make calling the majority of the time a smart move? Or am I putting way too many chips at risk when I could easily be dominated by a wide range of hands? My goal is to always extract the maximum amount of chips when I’m confident I’m a huge favorite in a hand, and minimize my chip losses when I’m unsure of my overall hand strength against an opponent. Using that simple rule of thumb should make it a lot easier the next time you need to toss a juicy hand away.
By: Chris Iaquinta
