I have included this example from small stakes online poker to highlight what I believe to be a serious flaw in the games of many small stakes players. This was a hand that was sent to me by a player who later became one of my students. He was in the small blind with the 9s-4c and three players limped into the pot for the dollar and it got around to him and he called the extra fifty cents.

I see many players do this and their thinking is that they are getting nine to one pot odds with $4.50 in the pot and only needing to throw in a further fifty cents. But this is a leak that is apparent in the games of many small stakes players. The chances of an unsuited 9-4 making anything that is substantial enough to take the pot are remote, remember that we are not playing online poker tournaments here!

You basically have to hit the flop twice to get into a good situation either with a board like 9-4-2 or 9-9-3 for instance. But the problem with many flops is that you can be only a marginal favourite or a huge favourite where you simply will not get paid off like with the 9-9-3 flop for instance. In that scenario, you hold all the cards and are unlikely to get paid off even when you hit.

Also in that situation, you could easily be in a lot of trouble if someone else held a nine as they would surely have a bigger kicker than you. On boards like A-9-4 for instance then you are still vulnerable to the board pairing on the river like with A-9-4-5-5 for example and now anyone holding a bare ace has you beat. If you flop two pair on a A-9-4 board and someone is holding a hand like A-J while another is holding something like A-7 then that presents a further six outs that can beat your two pair.

I could go on and on quoting potential problems with this poker hand even after you have hit it. This is before we even get into situations like where a player flops something like 9-5-2 and they have top pair poor kicker. The hand is poor and out of position and not worth playing even despite the appealing pre-flop odds.

But these fifty cent losses start to add up as do the times when you get into trouble with the hand. So the moral of this hand example is to muck all those junk hands from the small blind even when there have been numerous limpers and the pot odds seem appealing. The small blind is one of the most difficult situations to handle on the poker table. You are out of position to every single player on the table and even in a blind versus blind situation then you are still going to be out of position to the big blind. This situation needs to be handled with extreme care and attention.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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