Texas Holdem Strategy
Texas Holdem
» The Stop And Go Technique
-
This is a technique which requires a bit of courage and luck!! It works on a lot of occasions. Early position in the table, (ie first player to act) is sometimes the most difficult time to bet, but some players learnt to bet big first scaring most of the players at the table! There are often hands when the first person to bet wins! These are the hands where the flop really hasn't helped anyone and no one feels confident enough in their hand to call a decent bet. The first person to get a bet in is likely to win and steal the pot!
-
What's this got to do with the stop and go technique? Stop and go is an extension of this idea in order to beat a bigger hand from the blinds.
Suppose you have JJ in the big blind and your opponent has say AQ.
If you reraise him he's likely to call or rereraise you himself. Inevitably all the money will end up in the middle in a 5050 situation. Can you do anything differently to improve your odds of 5050? -
Since AQ is a strong hand pre-flop, if you reraise preflop he's very likely to call. Psychologically it is very hard to take a player off a hand if they have raised it preflop With a reraise unless that reraise is a large all-in!
Not something you typically want to do with JJ . Stop and Go technique only works if you act before your opponent in the round. -
If you had JJ, you simply flat call the reraise. The flop is more likely to come without a card over a jack than it is to have an overcard.
When the flop hits you will be FIRST to act and you can bet your JJ confidently hoping to take the pot. AQ will find it very difficult to call here with only two cards to come. So, for the same amount of chips that you were going to reraise him(and find yourself in an all-in situation and basically a 5050 chance), you’ve successfully bought yourself a nice pot! -
But what if the flop is AKQ? Now you bet to represent a solid hit of say, two pair and hope your opponent was holding a medium pair! (not wise I think!) Or you could check/fold and congratulate yourself you didn't get involved and out of the game!!
-
So try this technique for yourself. You will be amazed how many times you take the pot by acting first, unless you walk into AA!!
» BAD BEATS!
-
Every player goes through a run of bad cards and bad beats! You know the feeling AA beaten by player who calls your all in with 27 and flop is 27Q turn is 7 and you cant believe it the only card that can save you now is an ace!! But the river is a 3.
-
Then later in the day you get a pair of 6s and the flop is 6 4 A so you go all in the other player who beat you earlier with 27 has an AK of course the turn is a 4 giving you the full house BUT then the river comes and of course its an ACE giving him a higher house AAA44 depressing!
-
Its all you can think about for hours! Then you get angry and call stupid all ins with 44 or A7. When you talk to another player, they always tell you about the bad beats they had NOT about hands when they won OR hands they won when they shouldn’t have ! In a game where any weakness shown can be fatal, I love it when someone gets depressed with a bad beat, they get reckless and I call with the right cards of course.
-
Next time someone tells you a bad beat story, instead of yawning, listen to them and think about this ----- is this person telling me this because of the highly improbable events or is it to seek confirmation he did nothing wrong!! I would say it’s the latter!!
-
But, every player in their career at some stage feels like a total fraud. I once one 4 tournaments in a row through pure luck, not great play. How many times have you heard comments from other players eg “you are terrible” but they probably are worse that you but have just been lucky yo get to chip leader, so I never worry what they say.
-
Remember you cant win them all and remember “your time will come!”