Q&A #48: Underpairs Heads-Up In Position

Maybe the best article I’ve read in a long time. I’m sure a lot of even skilled professionals would have read the HH and gave their preferred line, and never thought another thing about the hand. Which is why I love how you got the thinking started for a number of different options and the conclusion really hit home for me.

Hi Ed,

Great post.

Is there more to be said about the free showdown play?

It surely seems like evaluating your hand against others (relative to the pot size, of course) on the flop is the most difficult but also the most important task in limit texas hold’em. I guess flop examples are the most common source for “it depends” type of answers, too.

For preflop play, one can just follow some easy-to-remember system and avoid biggest mistakes. And playing on the river is certainly not trivial, but orders of magnitude easier than playing on the flop.

I guess I’d better concentrate on coming up with a strategy to learn to understand general and specific principles on flop. (Undertanding the board relative to the pot size and the actions of other players and so on.)

It seems to me that it’s rather difficult and time-consuming to try to learn correct flop play merely by playing. You have to play too, of course, but it’s often too hard to see in the showdown whether your flop play was in fact correct or not.