Never go broke in an unraised pot-Doyle Brunson
Don’t go broke preflop with a Queen in your hand.
The wisdom is abound on this.
With the exception to High Stakes Poker aka. “the best damn poker show period”, most of the poker games you see on TV is tournament poker, and most of that is only late in the tournament if not just the final table.
Since many of the rookies playing poker learned it by watching TV, it is no surprise that they tend to take that game play and strategy with them from the TV to the poker table.
I’ve already talked about people overplaying AK, but the other thing that needs to be discussed is the “cash game overbet push” or CGOBP.
There are all kinds of odds to calculate when you are playing poker, pot odds, implied odds, odds of hitting your draw, odds that your opponent has a better hand than you, but many tournament players forget to check the odds they are betting when they push in a cash game, especially in deep stack poker.
When you are in a tournament the blinds increase, so the longer you play, the more expensive the game gets. And since you can’t buy chips and you have to pay at least a blind and a half every 9 or so hands assuming a full table, you need to win some of those back just to stay even. Tournament poker is “sink or swim”, you can only tread water for so long.
BUT
In cash game poker you can rebuy. If you get blinded away with 62 all night long, you can either gamble with it, try and steal the odd pot, or just rebuy and wait out the cards. Patience is a part of poker. A big part.
I’ll give an example of the cash game overbet push
$1/$2 cash game with reasonably deep stacks, lets say $600 each
Player 1 raises UTG with QQ to $10, a fairly standard raise for this game, but from first position, most players give respect to this being a first or second level hand. It’s folded around to the Cutoff who makes it $24 to go, the Button, Small and Big blind both fold. Player one moves all his chips into the middle, AKs is a great hand right?
Sure it is, but lets examine the odds here.
The raise was to $24, there was $13 in the pot before the raise, total in the pot was $37 before the all in push.
So Player 1 just bet $590 to win $37, true if he gets a call and wins he is betting $590 to win $603, but that is a secondary point.
The point is that he has bet $590 to win $37
$590/$37= almost 16:1
Are there any poker hands where you have a 16:1 advantage preflop?
The answer is no
Even AA vs AK which is about as good as it gets in a preflop match up is only 9:1
The best hand preflop AA vs. the worst had preflop 72 with the suits covered is still only 9:1
AA vs KK which is a huge match up is only 4:1, same as QQ, JJ, TT you get the picture.
What does this mean?
It means if you bet like this, even if you do it with AA only, and you can’t win every time you are supposed to, and you can’t get the other player to lay down and extra 8+ times, you are going to go broke in the long run.
Happy betting.
Tags: Add new tag, how not to play queens, no limit hold'em, overbetting, poker, poker school, Strategy