Flush
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 406
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Point 49: Extracting maximum value from your winning hands.
One huge difference between good and great players is whether they can extract the maximum value from there winners. Very easily said, very difficult to do.
Well here is what not to do, flop a big rig and immediately shove them all in. Premature echipulation. How many times do you see someone do this then, show the hand to a chorus of nh, gh, or wow. That is horrible play, you may not get another chance at nice pot for an hour and you need those chips to survive coming storm.
So in order to get maximum value, you have to either induce a bluff or disguise your hand as a bluff. Todd Arnold says you need to constantly misrepresent your hand, the same point.
Now to set it up you have flopped a set, flush, straight something really strong. How do you induce a bluff? Well first of all dont bet so much you chase them out of the pot. If you have 2 cards working here the chances they have much are less than normal. Your flop bet is like a permission to chase bet, you cant bet so much they have to leave, but you want to bet enough to get them really interested in the pot. Situation specific but somewhere around 1 to 3 BB's. You generally will want to make this type of bet when you are last to act or there is a large field that saw the flop.
Heads up i think you really should check as people are far more willing to bluff heads up and a permission to chase bet is not necessary and likely will drive them off. It also relies heavily on your previous reads of the players in the hand of course.
Now to induce a bluff, you are just going to have to check the turn or bet a smaller amount than you did on the flop. You have to look weak. Now a strong player will pick up on this and check down with you, but a strong player probably isnt in there swinging with nothing and they probably raise your flop bet to find out where you are and where they are anyways.
Now your hope is your opponent will interput this as a sign of weakness and go all in or make a pot committing bet. Happens all the time.
Sometimes you will have to make your hand look like a bluff. This will depend largerly on table image. If you have shown down some rags and your table is live, check the flop and bet huge on the turn when a rag falls. Maybe checkraise the minimum amount. Think about all the times you watch a play and think to yourself that is bs. The best time to make your hand look like a bluff is on the river when a nothing card falls and way overbet the pot. You will trap both strong and weak players with that one.
The types of hands really worth trapping are hands like an 8 high straight where there is a whole bunch of overcards out there and willing participants who will party with you if they hit their ace for instance. Dont bet them out, give em a chance to hit that ace or that king. For an instance they will be like a schoolboy who just found a quarter, thinking about all the candy they can buy and forgetting about the rattlesnakes in that part of the country.
This post really isnt that good simply because it is really so situationally specific to try to extract chips. Pay attention and learn from you experiences. Keep a journal of all the big hands you flop, how you played them and how you can play them better. This one point is extremely important to long term success. Almost as important as being able to lay down rigs like TPTK.
JUST DONT OVERBET AND CHASE THEM OUT. You are going to have to survive some situations where you opponents have some chance to draw out, make sure you risk you chips in the optimum situations.
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