Poker Strategies: Getting Paid Off

Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a great time and has a safe holiday.

In researching new material for this blog (hey, I can't write all the articles myself), I stumbled on a great resource. They have graciously allowed me to use some of their content for this blog. Please see the link at the end of this article to check them out for yourself.

Getting Paid Off

In the Olympics, second place wins a silver medal. In no-limit hold'em,
second place loses large sums of money.

Many players who cross over from limit hold'em to no-limit hold'em have
a hard time understanding this important concept. If you hold AK and
flop top pair in limit hold'em, rarely will you be folding your hand.
After all, your hand will win most of the time, and you do not lose too
much if your hand ends up placing second. However, if you are not
careful at no-limit hold'em, these types of hands will quickly cost you
your entire stack.

There are six types of hands in no-limit hold'em:

1. Hands that have no value. They cannot even beat a bluff.

2. Hands that can beat a bluff. For example, middle pair.

3. Top pair.

4. Overpair.

5. Strong hands (that are not quite the nuts).

6. Nuts or near-nuts.

Understanding these hand types means understanding how large a pot each
hand type can win. Hands of lesser value are generally only able to win
smaller pots, because the hands they can beat will not call large bets.

For example, suppose you hold AK and the board is AJ4. Someone with KJ
is simply not going to pay you off that much in this situation.
However, if you hold AK and the board is A9652, you will likely pay off
someone who holds 87. Again, the stronger the hand, the more likely
someone is to pay off.

Obviously, any hand is capable of being a nut hand: 72os is the nuts
with a 77753 board. Nevertheless, certain starting hands lend
themselves more to certain categories.

High Pocket Pairs (AA, KK, etc.): These hands are typically overpairs.
If you are fortunate to hit a set with them, then it is unlikely that
you will be paid off. Why? Suppose you hold AA with a board of A87. It
is unlikely that someone else will have top pair, because there is only
one other ace in the deck. So you are left with relatively few strong
hands that you can beat except draws to a hand that beats you.

Big Unpaired Cards (AK, AQ, etc.): These hands are likely to become top
pair. It is possible to hit straights with these hands, too. However,
most of the time you form a hand, it will be top pair.

Small Pocket Pairs (33, 77, etc): They will generally form either
category 2, 5, or 6 hands. For example, if you hold pocket sixes,
chances are good that the flop will bring you a bunch of overcards or
it will make you a set. Thus, your hand will either be weak or
extremely strong.

Suited Connectors (T9s, 64s): These hands tend to be category 1, 2, 5,
or 6. What is nice about these hands is that you generally know your
place in the pot, because these hands are either very strong or very
weak.

As the rank of a hand increases, the potential risks and rewards of
that hand increases as well. Obviously, a trash hand will not win a pot
(except with a bluff), but it will not pay off as well.

It gets tricky as you get into top pairs and overpairs. These
hands really cannot beat very many hands. Someone with middle pair will
not call you down for big bets unless they think you are bluffing.
However, players holding top pair often pay off to people who have
stronger hands.

This is why top pair and overpair tend to be less reliable in no-limit than
they are in fixed-limit. In fixed-limit, the bets are very small in
relation to the pot. Because they are so small, people with category 2
hands will pay off, because it is worth risking a small amount of money
if there is a decent chance one's opponent is bluffing. So there are a
lot of hands that will pay off to top pair.

In no-limit, the bets tend to be large in relation to the pot.
Thus, there are much fewer hands that will pay off to top pair, because
people would be risking a lot more money to call down with hands that
really can only beat bluffs. The hands that pay off top pair are not
worth pot-sized bets. However, for many people, top pair and overpair
are worth paying off other people with pot-sized bets.

This is not to say that top pair is a trash hand in no-limit. It
certainly can win a fair share of pots. However, it generally is not
able to win huge pots in relation to the blinds. This is why top pair
tends to be better if a person has a short stack, rather than a large
stack.

I hope you found this article as informative as I did. My thanks to PokerTips.org for allowing me to use this article.