“Overall strategy is something not many players think about much, but it’s a critical concept the higher you go and the more aggressive and attentive your opponents are. Poker is not a series of independent trials, like roulette or craps. It’s more an interconnected web. What you do this hand affects all your future hands. It will have a psychological effect on your opponents, and it will cause them to change the way they read your hands.”

thought it was worth repeating to be honest…great article aswell,it is a good way to balance-mix your game while keeping up the aggression.And in this article being in a short aggressive game ,it is another good way to fight back and keep them at bay i suppose…plus i think its a good way to set up future plays, especially if they think they know what you’re doing?

Given my luck, I’d be taken out with a straight, or trips. LOL

IMHO Ed, the SSH book is the one I have found invaluable and have stuck with along (especially the questions) with the chart on Hold ‘em for Adv plyrs. Although Im starting to find online opponents much more aggressive, Ive still been able to manage an alright standing.

Cheers.

I’ve seen people fold two pair or even a set in situations like this to the “obvious” straight.

I’ve also seen people call with worse hands like A7. If you don’t fear a bluff-raise, then I like the bet for the two-way value. You might get a worse hand to call, and you might get a better hand to fold.

A better question is why on earth do we want villain to fold to a river bet here? I’m all for firing when we miss, but let’s induce a bluff or a too-thin value bet when we make top pair. Unless villain is extremely weak he’s never folding a better hand.

But obviously people will, and they do. People show up with weird hands, and they fold weird hands too.

(Yes I know there’s no such thing as deuce high… )

It’s actually one reason I picked this hand for the first discussion. I sort of expected some of the responses to be on the weak-tight side, and I think many of them were.

It’s important to remember that you need to bluff/semi-bluff/push draws relatively frequently to push people off weak hands and to provide cover for your made hands.

It’s easy to get disheartened because they “always call you down” or “they always have something,” but the fact is, they don’t, and they don’t. You have tons of equity and plenty of leverage. I’m going to push pretty hard most of the time when I catch a flop like this.