Today’s Texas Holdem strategy is about pocket pairs and some of the problems people have with them. When a player gets a pair of Queens in their hand before the flop, according to the poker hand rankings, the chances are pretty good they are holding the top hand at the table. At this point the best poker strategy is to bet, bet big, bet scary, and knock as many people out of the hand as possible; ideally you will knock everyone out and take the blinds. This is because at the moment you may have a Texas hold em winning hand but poker hand rankings are easy to dominate with only two cards. The playing field changes after the flop.
A winning pre-flop Texas Holdem hand can become a loser really fast when the next three cards hit the table. A flop of a Kh, 7c, 9h is a danger to your pair of Queens. If your opponent(s) starts behaving aggressively, that is a good sign that you no longer hold the winning Texas Holdem hand. While from a poker strategy perspective, this is a blinding flash of the obvious, folding those Queens is more difficult than it sounds.
This article is called “The soft tyranny of pocket pairs” because with two big cards in your hand, it is often the pair that does the playing, and not your mind. Parting with a big pair is never easy. This is because they don’t come around that often. If you are thinking of putting down your cards, it is almost as if the characters come to life and order you to take them to a showdown. Who are you going to listen too? Sound Texas Holdem strategy, or some characters drawn on a playing card? The truth is that your big pair (AA, KK,QQ) may have been a Texas hold em winning hand before the flop, but after those three cards hit the board, they are fair game. That is why big pairs are not slowplayed, and the betting is meant to whittle the competition down to 1 or 2 other players.
A good, long term, poker strategy is to lose your fear of putting down a big pocket pair. This can save you from some pretty hefty losses.
