Getting hit with the deck

When you are making big hands often is it better to trap or go aggro hoping they won’t believe you are running so good?

Both have risks… unless you have the nuts, trapping can lead to someone making a better hand on later streets. Blasting may cause everyone else still in the hand to fold loosing you possible chips. It is also very dependent upon the other players in the hand and their playing style. callbot? bluffer? nit? lag? There is no one size fits all answer. In poker everything is situational. Learning to your opponents and trying to predict their reactions is what it is all about. Keep copious notes. Hope this helps…
Peace! :smiley:

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This is why it is so important to have a consistent approach. That way your opponents don’t get alarm bells going off when you have a big hand, because you are doing a lot of the same things you do when you don’t have such a big hand.

Against weak players you can change your play depending on the strength of your hand, as they probably aren’t paying much attention. But against good competition you will not get away with it for long.

I make sure to be polarized with my big bet sizes: I mostly either have something very good, or something very weak like a missed draw. This makes it harder for my opponents to fold when I have the nuts, because they know that I can also have NOTHING a nontrivial % of the time. So just because I am betting 1.5x pot doesn’t mean I always have the nut flush :slight_smile:

In general, aggression wins in poker. It is better to develop a strategy that involves making more bets, and larger bets, than to develop one that involves more passive play, checking for deception, and calling instead of raising. You will win bigger pots when you “have it” and win more pots (by bluffing) when you don’t.

Also notice how much of a difference it can make to our bottom line when we start building the pot early. For simplicity let’s imagine it is heads up, our opponent will call any resonable bet, and there’s 400 chips in the pot. If we check flop, bet 1/2 pot on the turn and 1/2 pot on the river, we will win a 1600 chip pot. If we bet 1/2 pot on the flop, 1/2 pot on the turn, and 1/2 pot on the river, we will win a 3200 chip pot! Missing a street by checking for disguise/deception on the flop cut our winnings in half.

There are of course good spots to slowplay/trap, especially when your big hand covers so much of the board that it’s hard for anyone to have much (AA on A83, for example) or when the board is clearly setup for one specific holding (AcKc on a monotone club flop). But in general, being aggressive is the better strategy when you hold a really big hand.

You want to build a big pot when you have it! And you want your opponents to know that you will bet aggressively when you are strong—otherwise how are you going to get them to fold by betting aggressively when you are weak?

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I will add as a caveat—some board textures are heavily over-bluffed. These can be good spots to exploitatively play your big hand for value on all three streets. I’ve won some really big pots in ring games in exactly the situation I just cited as a good spot to check the flop: when I flop the nut flush. Many aggressive players are willing to go bet-bet-bet on flop, turn, and river just holding the Ace of (whatever suit the flush is), even if their other card doesn’t complete the flush. So you can play off the fact that experienced players are aware of this, and may call you down with a strong but non-nutted hand because they are “non-believers.”

So I guess it’s not a very satisfying answer but a lot of it comes down to knowing your opponents, and how they perceive you :slight_smile:

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