In Approval

In his ‘Theory of poker,’ one of the most early things David Sklansky warns against in his discussion of intermediate poker strategy is the wariness of continued aggression when the flop comes down with a pair among its cards (such as 2 2 8, or 9 9 J). In this spot, when you bet with an overpair and receive action, it’s hard to tell if your poker online opponent actually has the trips or full house, and slowplaying is so common it can be much akin to a situation where you are setting yourself up to be given a beat, or at least stolen from.

In this spot, even when you have AA or another big poker online pair, and you can’t imagine that your opponent has the trips, it is a tough duality when faced with a reraise: should I protect my hand, or should I give him credit for the unlikely? In many cases, with the situation of the 9 9 J above, there is a range of ways your opponent could be operating under. Is your opponent the kind who would raise your bet with just a jack here? Is he the kind that would just call with a 9 and let you continue to hang yourself? Though all of these stripes involve an amount of levity, in that the more you know about your opponent’s play the more you can assume, the final condition remains that when receiving action on a paired board where you don’t have at least trips, you might want to slow down.