You hear the lament of the beaten just as soon as the river card hits the felt; “How do they ALWAYS flop a set every time I have aces? I don’t get it!” Time and time again, players get dealt a premium hand, make a big pot with it, and find themselves in second place once the hand is over. Is it simply destiny that these players are getting beat like this? Absolutely not! In deep-stacked tournament poker, preflop monsters are simply monsters preflop; the key to staying alive and thriving in these types of tournaments is recognizing when to throw them away post-flop and that you can be only learned by getting really game experience that judi qq can provide you with.
Let’s take a look at a common example that some players still struggle with. Let’s say you’re playing at one of the popular European poker sites in an MTT with $5,000 starting stacks and $25/$50 blinds, you open in the middle position to $150 with KK. A tight, straightforward elderly gentleman calls you from the small blind, and you both take a flop, which looks as safe as safe can be; 974, rainbow. The small blind checks and you fire out $300 into the $350 pot. After a brief tank, the gentleman raises you to $1,500. This is where most of the players who struggle with deep stacked decisions quickly shove with their “monster” hand and get slapped in the face when the elderly man calls with his set or aces and crushes you. This is especially true at soft poker sites where people will play almost any two cards. The problem that you have to look at is how dry the board is, and how tight and straightforward the player is, the key terms in evaluating his hand range. He didn’t re-raise you preflop, which he likely would have done with JJ+, though sometimes tight players may elect to slowplay AA there.
That means that his most likely reraising hands are the sets, 97s, and AA, none of which you beat! Is there a small chance he may be overvaluing JJ or QQ? Yes, about as much chance as this is a completely bluff; combined, maybe 10%. 90% of the time, you’re drawing to either 2 outs or 8 outs by the turn (if he has the two pair combination) and you’ve only invested about 10% of your stack in the hand at this point. Why would you elect to ship the other 90% in the pot in a situation where you’re more than likely crushed? Again, the beaten player’s sigh comes into effect; “I thought there was a chance I could be beaten, sure, but, I had kings, and I just had to go with it.”
Once you reach the flop in any particular hand, evaluate your hand not from its relative strength preflop, but from the texture of the board, the player(s) you’re in the pot with, and their actions towards the pot once you make your play. If you sense danger approaching, especially in a deep-stacked format, just let the hand go; you’ll have plenty of chips and plenty of time to re-accumulate your stack at a later time, and risking the entire stack early with a potential serious blunder can be disastrous for you long term.
