Poker Superstars
Phil Hellmuth
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More Thoughts on Tightening Your Cash Game |
 Last time I talked a little about ways to trim back your game when you seem to be leaking. This time I’d like to take that same idea and apply it in a slightly more broad perspective, one mainly perpetrated as a result of the influence of television poker on cash game poker. A lot of players seem so influenced by what they see on TV that they end up playing a hyped up, aggro version of what true, even stacked cash game poker is meant to be: a game not based on coin flips and averages, but on competition between players as they hand becomes more and more defined.
1. Reconsider suited connectors.
Suited connectors have earned a big gloss from some of the games’ best players on TV, when people like Negreanu and Gus Hansen punish big hands by making smart plays with connectors even when they miss the flop.
I know a lot of players, though, that play these hands just hoping to flop the nuts, and when they don’t they bail.
If you aren’t looking to use connectors against your opponent when you make second or top pair and think your opponent quickly missed, then calling too many hands with connectors is just as quick a bleed as playing every hand. These hands don’t become the nuts very often. Much more often they become the best hand but in a way that is unsure, and even more often than that they are usable by the power of position.
Also, playing too many of these for small raises or from out of position is again for the most part not profitable unless you know how to milk your situation.
2. Stop overvaluing middle to low pairs.
It can seem pretty painful a lot of the time to fold a pair before the flop. Even when I’m laying down deuces to a raise and a reraise, I can’t held but hold my breath and cringe until I see the flop and know for sure that I haven’t missed out on a set.
Though really, this kind of worry shouldn’t be as prevalent as even I allow. Flopping a set only happens 1 in 8 or so times, so unless you’re getting 8 to 1 on your money, it is ‘correct’ to not be getting your head into too many pots with small pairs hoping to get lucky. This is more ‘gambling’ than ‘smart poker’.
I think a lot of people also overvalue what is considered a ‘big pair.’ Pockets 10’s for instance, are going to be greeted with one if not two or three overcards on the majority of flops, so seeing 10’s as much different than 8’s or even 5’s is a bit of wishful thinking.
When playing ‘deep stacked’ poker, I think it is unprofitable to push less than QQ before the flop too too hard, as really you’re just prospecting still. The reason you see a lot of pros, when they are playing one another rather than against amateurs, playing slowly preflop when they are evenly stacked is that a lot of poker ‘should’ be based around what comes once the hand is more ‘defined’, rather than pushing it all in and stacking off every time you see what is ‘known’ as a good starting hand, with little to no real definition of what will transpire.
A lot of this is the fault of TV poker, where players are pushing to win big blinds and antes. People see this behavior and think this is how they should ‘win’ big cash pots.
Using this tendency in your opponents against them is one of the greatest ways to ‘milk’, especially when you know it is coming.
Overall, strong poker is winning poker. Minimize your mistakes and leaks.
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