Posts Tagged ‘poker hands’
Relative Poker Game Hand Strategy
Poker is a game of relative strengths. A lowly pair of sevens may take a pot in one hand, and a mighty full house may fall prey to a higher full house or even a four-of-a-kind in another. It is unlike video poker machines, where the schedule on the outside of the machines gives you an absolute payout for the poker hands you draw. In live table poker, what is one hand's rose, may be another's barren crop; it is all relative.
The beauty of poker is that while you never really know what opponents hold in the hole, you can make educated guesses based on the way they are betting from the particular position in which they sit. As we discussed earlier, position plays an important role in what hands a player can and cannot call, bet, or raise with. If you evaluate the cards you see, the betting patterns of the table, the positions and actions of the players, and the dynamics of the hand, you can make some reasonable deductions.
Players who bet strong in early positions, for example, are advertising strength. They'll need to weather possible raises after their position. In contrast, players who bet strong in late position against little opposition aren't necessarily playing the strength of their hands. They may just be playing the position.
Of course, while opponents come in a variety of strengths and dispositions, you can narrow them down to "types" and play them accordingly. You'll soon learn which opponents play aggressively and which won't budge with a bet unless they've got a strong hand, which ones stay too long in pots and which players bluff too often or not at all. All this goes into the cauldron of your knowledge to be used in every situation to understand just how strong or weak your hand is at that particular moment.
Bets, calls, and raises are made for particular reasons, and over time, you'll get a better sense of what those reasons are. For example, if two opponents are betting into your four-straight in seven-card stud, and you believe they think you have a straight, you need to factor that into your decision-making. To be successful at poker, you need to know when you're standing strong, when you're weak, when you're a virtual lock with the strength of your hand, and when your hand has possibilities but is trailing in strength to what you perceive your opponents are holding. Again, it's all a game of mutual perception.
Let's now take a look at the types of relative hands you might hold and the general strategy to pursue when you're playing these hands.
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Tags: poker, poker hands, video poker machines