fundiver199 said:
I dont think, any hand gives me particular headache. Maybe it can be argued, that junky hands like 73o or T2o are easier to play, because we can mostly just fold them preflop. But any hand, that we regularly play, can put us into situations, where we need to make decisions, that are not always clear. And frankly this is, where poker players make or lose their money, so its just something, they need to get used to. If its a general challenge for someone to play AK, when its A high, or JJ, when its third pair, then many other hands are also going to be a challenge.
Yes it's those middle type of hands that are more difficult. AA we can easily open, and usually continue. 72o we can easily fold. What do we do with 97s?
If we are having trouble playing certain hands, it is a sign of inexperience. We need to study more and practice more, to learn more skills which make it easier to play a wider range of hands with confidence post-flop. Pre-flop should be easy. A hand is either in the range that we are comfortable opening/defending with or it isn't. Play that accordingly. But when we have thin value with a meh hand post-flop, or a draw, what do we do with this hand?
I have found that the more that I study, learn new techniques and then put them into practice and review that practice, the more confident I am continuing with more hands. For instance, once I learned proper pre-flop play and learned the advantages of being tight, the game became too simple. Since I always have strong cards, if I hit them it's easy value bet time, and if I don't I can just give up. And I had success with this (not as much success as I have now of course) and this led me to think that luck was the deciding factor of whether I win or not. And to a large degree it was. Certainly my choice to be tight pre-flop and only play strong hands is considered skill, it's not a huge skill but it is a better decision than all of the fish who limp-call me and chase draws, but whether I win the hand really came down to if I hit or not. If I hit my strong hand, I value bet and most of the time I win, and if I whiff my strong hand, I check and check-fold and most of the time I lose. There had to be more to the game than this. And of course there isn't too much more to the game than this when we only play strong hands like AKo QTs and JJ. What I had to do was learn some more skills and techniques so that I could play weaker hands.
If we play 97s and hit 2nd pair 9 and back door straight, it's NOT straight forward. This is where we need to learn check and evaluate, or blocker bet (if Villain is aggro and splashy) or price out draws (and overcards), or what have you. This is where position will play a massive role because we will have more options in position than out of position. This is also where Villain tendencies might play a huge role here as well. Are we watching the stacks? Are we heads-up?
I remember the first time that I decided to play J8s after learning to play tight. It was nervewracking throwing down a strong opening from the button. It didn't help that I hit, barreled 3 streets, got called and my dumb opponent chased the back door and caught it. I was like, "what did I do wrong??" I needed to study the hand and have a couple of friends help me to assure me that I had played it fine.
Once I learned to c-bet I suddenly became very confident opening very wide in late position and was taking down all of these pots with borderline junk like Ax or J7s. Then I learned more about board textures and Villain ranges and this allowed me more ways to bluff which gave me more options post-flop. Now I still play tight but I am able to add a few more speculative hands into my ranges, and I'm not nervous post flop with them anymore.
Another thing is when you win more, you tend to have a bigger stack, so when Villain bets half pot, it's not too hard to continue when the bet doesn't really damage your stack.
My game is now at a point where I may hardly be a great player, but I have enough skills that no 2 cards that I am dealt ever make me nervous. It's only the icky boards post-flop that once in a while make me nervous.
