No matter what sort of of poker you play, free online poker or money games you’ll get times when a good strong hand becomes more marginal. When this occurs decisions that would have been good earlier on might become bad.
For instance, your Straight may be powerful now, but may become marginal if you continue and, say, the Board pairs or there are three of the same suit and your opponent bets heftily. However, bad calls are generally linked to poor hands. For example.
BLINDS: 40k/80k
PREFLOP:
A has Ad-Jc, raises to 250k
B has 2h-2d calls 250k
C has Ks-Qs, is on big blind, calls 140k (pot 880k)
FLOP: Ah-2c-10c
Pay attention to A and B. Now A raises with A-J from early position and B calls with a pocket pair which has evolved into a Set. B has position over A, plus A may make the very bad decision to bet the high pair but QUESTIONABLE kicker at this step. The kicker is questionable since there are 2 other players involved who might have better kickers (or even 2-Pair with A,10).
C checks
Note that there’s also a Straight draw (which C has) and a Flush draw (which everyone thinks the competition may potentially have). So now A will attempt to protect his strong (but questionable) made hand with an overbet:
A bets 1m
B raises to 2.67m
C folds
A to call all in 1.67m (Pot 4.55m)
First, A staked 250,000 on the hand, now 1 million that is approx. 40% of his total stack, and now he might be on the edge. Is a call his best move? Now he might think that the reraise from Bs all-in doesn’t imply that B is on a draw (B can’t call an overbet with a draw), but it could imply a good hand like A,K or A,10. Nor is it an attempt to banish A from the hand, because A will be getting 3-1 on a call, but calling will give him the knock-out.
Is 3-1 a good proposition, however? He has 3 outs to pair his kicker and a small percentage for running outs for a Straight or a Flush. His probability of winning is just about 14%, and the fair proposition for a 14% should be about 7-to-1. (He is only getting about 2.7-to-1.) And, as for the unlikely Set, he is almost drawing dead, because he needs cards for a running Full House. At this stage his A-J has already been a bad hand. So he has all the ingredients for a bad call all-in, which he makes.
A calls all-in (pot 6.22m)
The turn and the river of 5s and 8s, respectively, won B the pot. A’s call will be a good call had it been A-K (you decide if A-Q will be just as good). He is able to put B on an Ace with a lower kicker and then take the lead with an overbet in which B’s decision will be an all-in (then A can call as a big favorite) or a fold (then A wins the pot). But no; he chose to overplay a marginal hand and that cost him heavily. At the very least, he decided to call all-in when calling all-in would be too dangerous.
Getting your brain to think like this is not something you can learn overnight. For best results practice and play poker online for free on free poker games sites at first and when, only when, you are confident, move up to low stakes cash games. And if you are new to onlin poker then the http://www.nopaypoker how to play poker for beginners are the perfect place to learn how to play poker online for free.
