Texas Hold’em Shorthand Limit Part II

IN THIS ISSUE:
* Texas Hold’em Shorthand Limit: Part II

TEXAS HOLD’EM SHORTHAND LIMIT: PART II

Previous articles have mentioned that some of the choices you make are situational. To understand what this means, let’s look at some techniques that will keep you in the game should you choose to do so.

* Drawing Hands & Pot Odds
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When there’s a flop, you will most likely be in one of three situations:

Case #1: Your poker hand completely whiffs at the board. You have nothing, so you check and fold.

Case #2: You’ve got a strong pocket held up by a favorable flop. (See Part I) In this situation, you should bet or raise.

Case #3: This situation takes a little more explaining to do and I will go over a technique known as “drawing.”

Despite holding nothing (but you are close to holding something stronger) in your hand, you are trying to draw out a strong poker hand at the turn or the river. For example, you’re holding in your pocket a J Q and the board is showing you a K 10 3. Now let’s calculate the pot odds to see if we can draw out the card(s) that we want.

In this situation, you only need an A or a 9 to get you that flush. Therefore your outs are four A’s and four 9’s totaling eight outs. To calculate your percentage of hitting on the next card, you take the number of total outs multiplied by 2, and then add 1. In this example you will have about a 17% chance of drawing out that A or 9 on the turn.

* Bluffing–Three of A Kind
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Flop Bluffs
One of the best times to bluff is at the flop when you are the pre-flop raiser. If you raised the pre-flop with Q J, you will make everybody take notice. You put your opponents on the defensive and it becomes a situational game for them. The flop is a 7 4 A and an opponent checks to you. Go ahead and bet! You’ve got nothing but it’s likely he’s got nothing either. Go for the steal.

Semi-Bluffing
This is a ballsy kind of betting when you don’t have a made poker hand, but you are on the verge of drawing to hit something big. Betting on a flush draw, for example, is considered semi-bluffing. Let’s say you have a Ah Jh pocket and the board flops a Kh 7h 3s. You are going for the flush draw. You have two things going on in your favor here. First, the odds are good that you will hit another heart to draw a flush. Second, the confidence you put into your bets also enables you to steal the pot. Do this only at the higher limit levels. In lower limit games players are more likely to call just to see what you have.

Other Bluffs
These are shots at the dark but then again who ever said luck was never involved in poker? For instance, if the flop is checked and a bigger card such as a Q comes on the board, go for the bet. More than likely your opponents will think you have hit something and fold, unless they hit on a draw or have a poker hand themselves.

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