Poker Strategy - Trouble Hands In Texas Holdem Poker Tournaments

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Trouble Hands in Texas Holdem Poker Tournaments

Live casino and online poker tournaments are an exciting and fun way to play Texas holdem poker. They can also be lucrative if you handle them well. There are many places to make missteps over the course of a poker tournament. Tournament ending mistakes are often made with the play of trouble hands. A trouble hand is a holding that can flop a deceptively weak poker hand, one that looks stronger than it really is, creating difficult decisions for the player holding them. The main trouble hands are aces or kings with weak kickers, such as A9 or KT. If the flop comes king or ace high, many players will feel compelled to keep putting chips into the pot, even though they may be way behind to a higher king or ace, among other hands. Texas holdem poker, especially no limit Texas holdem poker, is a game of decisions. To be successful, you want to put your opponents to difficult decisions, not be forced to make a lot of difficult decisions yourself, which is why these trouble poker hands can be such a problem.

Trouble Hands Early
The way you should play trouble poker hands early in a tournament is simple. Not at all. While with cheap blinds, it may not seem too costly to see a flop with any king or ace, or, for that matter, any two cards, the problem comes when the flop commits you to putting in more poker chips. For example, in the first round of a tournament, you have Ad 9c. You have 1500 in starting chips and it costs only 25

to see the flop, so you decide to play. The big blind now raises to 75 and another limper calls. Now it costs you only 50 more to see a flop for 200 chips, so you call as well. The flop comes Ah 6c 6d. The big blind makes it 150 and the other player calls. What do you do? It could be that the original raiser had a lower pair and made a continuation bet, or he may have an ace. And what does the other player have? You probably should fold here, but you may decide that either you are best or at least may chop the pot if another ace or a big card like a king comes, so you call. Now a 7d comes. The original bettor checks, but now the second player goes all in for 600 more. Now what do you do? The second player could be semi-bluffing with a straight draw, he could have A K, or even 7 6! You are now faced with the unpleasant choice of calling and potentially crippling your stack in the first round, or folding and abandoning your 225 chip investment. Clearly you would have been better off not playing the hand at all, a cheap option in any poker games.

Trouble Hands Late
What you do with trouble hands later in the tournament will depend on your chip stack. Once the blinds are high, especially if they are high relative to your stack, you definitely cannot afford to throw away hands like AJ or KT every time. If there is a raise in front of you, and your stack is big enough to allow you some play, it’s okay to dump these hands, but if you’re short-stacked, or if you get one of these hands in late position late in the poker tournament, you may want to raise with a trouble hand. This may win you the pot right away as a lot of players may be trying to move up towards the money and not challenge you, or you may get action, but at the very least it will define your hand, so you will have a better idea how to proceed on later streets – a sound poker strategy.

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