Don’t Give Your Opponents Too Much Credit
I was playing in an ONLINE POKER tournament last month and I was doing pretty well at my starting poker table. Before long, I was one of two dominating stacks at the table, and we were slowly picking off the small stacks. I hadn’t had the chance to go up against the other big poker stack, but I noticed that he was going to the river with a lot of different hands. Eventually, I was dealt pocket Aces and made a large preflop bet to chase out any smaller hands. The preflop raise was intended to get a read on the other players, since my assumption was that no one would risk half their stack to play lousy cards. When the other big stack called me, I figured that he had a lower face pair, and that I was set if the flop was low. That said, when 9-9-3 came out on the flop, I figured that I had it made, so I went all in, figuring that I could buy up the pot and eliminate any risk. My opposition called and turned over K-9 off suit for his set, which held up through the river and ended my run, and teaching me a valuable lesson-just because a player is the big stack doesn’t mean he’s a good player.