Playing Big Starting Hands

When you are dealt premium pocket cards in Texas Hold´em, you are faced with a dilemma. You want to maximise the value of your hand, but not bet so much that you frighten everybody off and just pick up the blinds. Much of the answer to this will depend on the tightness of the table and your position, but one key mistake you must not make is to try to “slow-play” your way to a bigger pot.

Slow-playing is where you limp into pots (and allow others to do the same) with a major hand, hoping to catch the nuts on the flop and maximise the pot by re-raising any bets that come your way. Although this strategy may work if you have gone into the pot with second or third best hand, you are more likely to see your premium starting hand cracked with the more players there are in the pot.

Instead, you best course of action is to raise by three or four times the blinds. This will be enough to take out the SB and BB and one or two other players who have identified you as a tight player and do not want to commit to a pot against you. There should still be one or two players for who the pot odds now represent value who will be willing to call you and pay to see the flop.

Once the flop is drawn, your choices are going to depend a lot on your position. If you have entered the game in early position you have the options of a continuation bet or checking through to see what other action there is on the table. Whereas checking through is the less risky option, if none of the other players has connected with the flop, you are giving them a free card with the turn.

In later positions, you can see what has happened in front of you and act accordingly – although beware anybody you may suspect is a slow-player who has connected with the board, or one who may have come into the game with a better hand than you. With no bets coming into you, your best option is to make a modest raise again and see if you can isolate just one of the players or collect the pot now.

Although this is not as ideal as finding yourself holding the nuts in a nine-way all-in scenario, over a period of time the “softly-softly” approach will prove more profitable for you and lessen the likelihood of being hit by an expensive bad beat. The best way to play big starting hands is to make people pay to get their cards, but not so much that the price does not represent value to them.