Someone gave me a six max no-limit Texas hold’em hand to look at earlier this week and it involved the following, it was folded around to the cut-off who open raised in a $1-$2 game to $7. In this instance I asked him if he was using tracking software and he told me that he wasn’t. He held the Jc-10c and wanted to know how to play his hand. Actually I get asked this sort of question a fair bit and it is really the wrong type of question to be asking.

My first question to him was to ask how long he had been sat at this table and what information or conclusions he had of his opponent. Were they aggressive or passive and if so by how much? As it turned out, he hadn’t seen this player before and he had only been sitting at the table for about ten hands or so.

There are multiple dynamics at work with all situations that involve poker strategy and there are few clear cut situations in poker. In this instance then raising, calling and folding could all be optimal plays but you need to know what criteria are work in order to be able to ascertain which play is optimal. If you are playing against an opponent who raises a lot from position but who also backs down to a three bet unless they have a strong hand themselves then re-raising with the J-10s would be the optimal play here.

Any player who does not raise liberally from the button and suddenly folding may be optimal. But even then, this is incredibly vague as knowing what an optimal line of play is simply isn’t that straightforward. You not only need to have a very good feel of what hand range you are up against but also what your opponent is likely to do both pre-flop and post flop.

You also need to know how they are reacting to you as well if at all possible. It simply isn’t possible to know everything and Texas Hold’em poker is a game of incomplete information as are all poker variations so you are going to have to make educated guesses most of the time. Many people would argue against calling but what if you are in a deep stacked situation where if you three bet, your opponent four bets very liberally?

What if I also said that this opponent was an absolute maniac who would launch multiple street big bluffs often? Now you can call the $7 raise with $193 behind so if you hit this flop hard then you could stack your opponent here if they decide to fire multiple bluffs. Or you could maybe raise them on the flop or float them and look to make a move on the turn.

When you make any poker play then you are not doing so in isolation. This is why poker hands are not independent of each other and what has gone off before has a huge impact on what will happen in the present and also in the future. So you may be looking for answers to the J-10s situation but I cannot possibly give them because I never had the information myself to begin with.

What you are looking for in any poker hand is to use multiple changing dynamics and game history to then attempt to make an on the spot decision regarding optimal or satisfactory poker play. It is folly to think that you will find optimal plays all the time, this simply isn’t possible in a game like poker. The more that you discover in how to play poker then the more that you will discover this truth.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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