How to Spot if you are Losing in a Hand

Much of the time you are playing your hands in Texas Hold’em poker based on your own hole cards strength in relation to the board. In order to step up a level and start competing against better players, you must begin to consider the relative strength of your hand based on the potential strength of hand your opponent is holding. You are then able to consider situations where you might have a good hand but are still losing to a better hand held by your opponent.

When a big hand versus big hand confrontation occurs a lot of the time the money goes into the middle and it is a case of best hand wins. Both players may know the other has a strong hand but in texas hold ‘em you need to be willing to bet on your good hands and often they will be the best. There is always a chance your opponent could be bluffing or overplaying a weaker hand so your chances to win are always a couple of notches higher than the mathematical odds suggest i.e. if you push all-in your opponent could fold as well as hold a losing hand. They could even fold the best hand!

A poker school cannot teach you specific situations where you should raise and specific situations where you should fold. They give you the basics, like a hiker would use a map, but you decide when, where and how you walk in texas holdem.

Nearly every poker article I stress the importance of watching your opponents. This fills in the blanks when a decision is required. I played a hand against my good friend Rob and it played out like this. I had AK and after raising three times the big blind Rob called. The flop was a rainbow Q-X-X. We both checked the flop and the turn was a Jack, giving me a straight draw. He checked to me and I checked again. Rob likes to bet when he thinks he can get me to fold or when he has something, so his check was suspicious to me. The river was a blank, I had missed my draw, I could have bet the draw on the turn but my stack was dwindling and I was into shove territory and I believed I might be beaten. After I checked again Rob bet around three quarters of the pot. I instantly folded. If Rob has something on the river, he bets to get paid off. He showed me a pair of queens. I was right, he had been slowplaying.

Do you see how my information on how Rob plays helped me during that hand? Without that information I might have shoved on the turn and lost to the hidden pair of queens. That would not have been a bad play but precise knowledge of his style and awareness of how he perceives my own play saved me. I had a feeling I was beaten when he checked because he is still learning deception and tends to be a weak is strong, strong is weak type of player. In this hand I lost the pot but I kept some of my stack and was able to fight on. I do not remember who won this match, which means I probably lost!

Watch your opponents carefully. Learn not only what they do right but what they do wrong and get an idea in your head over what a bet means, what a check means and what a raise means. If you are right you immediately have a massive advantage over them. Another general concept to finish with in this article is if you think you are beat in texas holdem, it is better to fold than continue in the hand getting confused by the incomplete information you always have during a poker hand.

By Malcolm Clarke