One of the biggest errors that novice and even intermediate players make in no-limit hold‘em, is that they don’t create the correct amount of action with the type of hand that they have! As an example, a player raises pre-flop with KK and gets two callers. The game is NL100 full-ring so the blinds are $0.50-$1.00. There is $12 in the pot and the flop comes 10d-7s-5c.

This player then bets the pot to protect his hand and makes it $12 to go and it gets a caller on the button. The pot is now $36 and both players started with $100 stacks prior to the hand. The turn card is the Qc and our hero fires out another $25 bet which also gets called. This swells the pot to $86 and both of these players only have about $60 left which isn’t even a pot sized bet.

The river card is the 2d and our hero checks and the player on the button shoves all in for his remaining $60 which our hero reluctantly calls. The button shows 7h-7d for a flopped set and scoops the pot. So what went wrong? Well firstly our hero ended up getting all-in after several rounds of betting in a full-ring game for 100 big blinds with nothing more than a pair.

He was blinded by the size of that pair and ended up giving far too much action for the size of his hand. Allow me to make a really obvious statement here for a minute, hands like pocket aces and kings are only one pair until they improve. Fine…..so I have just won the award for the obvious statement of the year.

But yet all poker players know that one measly pair comes pretty far down the ranking of poker hands. They all know how weak one pair is even in hold’em in escalated pots. They wouldn’t dream of giving that amount of action with a hand like A-5 on a A-10-J-5-3 board or with J-10 or a J-8-7-3-2 board. But yet change that pair to pocket aces or kings and suddenly players go absolutely crazy.

Yet we are still looking at one pair in both instances. The aces and kings in overpair situations are only marginally stronger and need to be played with caution in deep stacked full-ring situations. I dare say that many novice players actually lose money with AA and KK in deep stacked no-limit full-ring play. They will tend to win a lot of tiny pots when they raise with these and it gets folded around or a continuation bet takes it on the flop. But the flip side is that they end up losing huge pots when they allow the pot to escalate over several betting rounds and they get all-in.

Pots in no-limit hold’em have a tendency to trap the unwary in how they can escalate. After the flop betting round, another round of betting on the turn can escalate the pot to a level where pot commitment is a serious issue. This is something that you are going to have to pay special care and attention to if you ever want to play no-limit texas hold’em cash games.

Tournament poker doesn’t create the same situations as most of the time the blinds have escalated to a level where your stack is substantially less than 100bb and this makes getting all-in pre-flop or on the flop pretty automatic in most cases. Transferring from tournament poker to cash game poker is far more tricky than what many players realise and I often see players get sucked into playing big pots with weak post flop hands like aces and kings.

Also recommended:

1. How to use pocket aces with maximal effect in Texas Holdem
2. Slow-Playing Before the Flop in Texas Holdem
3. Slow playing After the Flop in Texas Holdem: Candidate Hands
4. Playing the Game of Omaha High
5. Testing Hutchison’s Point Count System in Omaha High