Do Not Force Marginal Poker Hands

One of the unpleasant facts of life in Texas Holdem poker is that more often than not you are going to be dealt a poor hand that would be difficult to make anything out of. If you are a disciplined player you will have a marginal poker hand worth playing about 20% of the time and even that percentage is often based on position.

Let’s say you are dealt a small pair, pocket 5’s for example. So you have a small pair with a draw to a set and a possible straight depending on the flop. The negatives are obvious; it’s a small pair vulnerable to several overpairs, particularly in a game with several players. Let’s say you get your set after the flop with your pocket 5’s, you are still vulnerable to a straight or even a flush depending on the draws so you have to be able to read the board intelligently, evaluate the play of your opponents and the true value of your hand. If you are holding a set of 5’s but the river came with small connector cards, or cards of the same suit, your set is vulnerable. Someone else may have even made a set that is over yours.

If you play small pocket pairs or other marginal hands from an early position you obviously open yourself up to losing your chips if more powerful hands are played and raised later which means its often best to check after the flop and call before, to prevent paying anymore than you have to before seeing the next draw. From a later position you have the advantage of observing the bets of your competitors and then can take advantage of a tight table by drawing cheaply or mucking the hand if the action becomes too expensive.

The bottom line is that no matter where you are sitting, you do not want to try and force the issue with such hands and make more out of them than what they are. You will need some luck with them, being able to draw a set while the rest of the field has weak hands that they won’t raise with because if they are raising, particularly in Limit Holdem, chances are that they have something better than you and it would be senseless to throw away chips calling their raises.

Many players, in fact, will muck 6’s or 5’s and lower pocket pairs from an early position, not even going through a call, rather than take the risk, particularly in tournaments where chips are a precious commodity. In multi-pot games players may be a bit more apt to play them with the hope of snagging a set and a large pot. The bottom line is that you don’t want to be risking a large amount of money with marginal poker hands.