Stop Playing Dominated Hands

This article will discuss why you shouldn’t be playing dominated or second best hands. It’s an important concept to keep in mind when developing your preflop strategy because you can lose your entire stack when ignored.

One of the biggest mistakes new poker players will make is they will call raises with dominated hands like ATo or QJo. This can be a costly mistake for inexperienced players because they lack the post flop skills to be able to get away from the hand when they make some kind of hand on the flop.

Dominated hands are worthless because they will usually only when a small pot when you do have the best hand, but they have the potential to lose a big pot if you have the second best hand. For example, let’s say the UTG player open raises and you call with AJo on the button.

The flop comes A 8 5 rainbow. The preflop raiser makes a continuation bet and you call. The turn is a 4 which really doesn’t change anything, and the preflop aggressor bets the turn for 2/3 of the pot. You know this player is fairly tight and you haven’t seen him get out of line. The best play is probably to fold. When you are facing a lot of aggression and you have top pair with a reasonable kicker, then you can be pretty confident that you will have kicker issues and you won’t have the best hand. You can avoid spots like this by not playing dominated hands preflop.

The best strategy for beginners is to tighten up preflop so as to avoid tough spots on later streets where you can be unsure if you have the best hand. This can be achieved simply by throwing your dominated hands in the muck, because that is what they are worth. Beginners tend to overestimate the value of Ax and Kx hands especially when they are suited. While they can have some potential in multi-way pots, when you are only facing one raise and you don’t anticipate many callers, it’s best folding the hand because you are more then likely playing a dominated hand.

If it gets folded to you and you are in late position, then it would be fine to raise with them. For example, you could have KJo in the CO and the action gets to you, you definitely want to raise in this spot in an attempt to steal the blinds, however if a tight player 3bets you, you need the discipline to get away from the hand.

In saying that, poker is situational, and there may be times where you want to call with a hand like KTs in the blinds when you know the player on the button is raising a wide range of hands. However, the most common scenario is when someone in early position open raises and your decision is whether or not to call with a marginal hand in middle or late position.

Click here to visit Bodog Poker – Still accepting US Players!

Click here for more Poker Strategy articles