Good day people of the realms.
I am hosting the Stacked Deck Final Table in Clontarf Castle at the start of the new year. It is always great to see the 16 players battle it out. We have yet to know exactly who will be there, but it is shaping up to be a very competitive day. Thinking about that day, and that I will not be playing I thought I would offer up some thoughts on playing the game.
Quick note if you wish to be able to follow along or have an interest in Stacked Deck updates, please reach out to me and I will add you to the book of faces where such things happen.
When I am playing, one of the most important parts of the game is what cards to play. The game we play is Texas HoldEm. So, you only start with 2 cards. How can you know if they are going to win or not? That is a great question. The idea is that we can only control what we can control. Most hands can be folded with out too much thought. When the cards are low, or not suited. And sometimes you think you have a good hand, but when the flop comes, they just do not match up.
There has been a lot written about starting hands. Here are some of my basic takes. When you start with a pair that is usually a playable hand. The higher the better. Some pairs you are only playing to hopefully hit another one, so you get three of a kind. Twos through Sixes are most often in this situation. Now that does not say that sometimes that pair of threes will be better than someone’s Ace King if the board comes all low. But it unlikely that the threes will be the best hand by the time the river comes.
The next types of pairs might be good or might not; sevens through about tens are like this. I do not mind if I hit a set, but sometimes these cards might be good enough to win by the time the river comes along. Sometimes you will need to raise preflop with these hands as they play better against fewer players.
The last types of pairs you might have are the Jacks through the aces. These are premium hands, and you definitely want to raise with these types of cards. Two important reasons. One; you want to get weaker hands that might hit a flop to fold. Hands like 9 10 (suited or not) hands that can often make straights or two pairs when you hand still looks like its pretty good. So, you raise to isolate out worse hands. And Two: you have a big hand, build the pot, get paid. When you have the really rare, big pair, like aces or kings, make sure you can get as much value out of these when you get them.
Now if you don’t have a pair then the decision to play or not should depend on how strong the cards are. Some hands you should always play with are things like Ace King (suited or not). Cards that are both high and close to each other can make stronger straights than two lower cards near each other. If they are suited, they are more likely to make a flush. Once again playing these hands you usually only want to play against a limited number of players so most often you might want to raise to isolate. I will mention raising with a strong Ace, means only other players might play a hand with an Ace in it. There is nothing better then playing Ace king vs someone who called your raise with a hand like Ace seven, and an Ace comes on the board. Your king is probably going to win you a big pot. You both have aces, but your king kicker is better.
Any hand with two “court cards” is probably going to be a good hand but be careful if your cards are on the lower side, I would prefer to have King Queen, then Queen Jack, and so on.
Now this does not consider, stack size, position, prizes, or number of players left. Some thoughts I will address in future articles.
See you on the felt.
Duke Tao Ya Kang
