40/80 K10s hand

[CardSharpCook]

good words from a good man.

[SoManyMonkeys]

Yes, you have a good 2 way hand on the flop, but do you have the best made hand, the best draw, or both? I bet not both, and you will not be able to push him off. Check raise flop, bet out turn and river. Wring your hands. My guess is KJo or KQo that will hold up if no flush comes....

[rory]

take a step back from the poker table and think about what you are trying to accomplish for a minute. you are trying to win money, yeah? how do you win money? by recognizing and exploiting the mistakes of your opponents, right?

okay so you have a lineup where people are too loose and too passive so you can read their hands fairly accurately. they are not as adept at reading hands as you are (or else they would not play so passively), so they have some sort of baseline level of confusion about what your hand is to begin with. since they play so passively, you do not have that confusion.

so, you decide to play in a tricky way to... what? make their hand more readable? make them not able to read your hand? they already can't read your hand. all you are accomplishing is confusing yourself. if extra action goes in at some point because you were tricky, you are going to be behind.

when you are playing against passive players pretend you are explaining something to a child. you raise preflop and then you bet the flop and the turn that has an ace on it. you are explaining to the child that you have a pair of aces. the child can understand that because it is very simple. then you know if the child raises you they can beat a pair of aces. that is how you abuse the fact they are not thinking very deeply about your hand.

that's why your flop check was so bad, in a vaccum. it makes the hand harder to play because you started talking in a confusing language to your opponent and now you are not sure what he will make of that. also it may make future hands harder to play if your opponent decides that he is going to be tricky against you since you are a tricky player.

[Bill King]

well put rory.. i hope we can discuss some of this stuff if i see you down at the woods some day.. josh was telling me you've been playing down there with him.