The Danger of Overplaying Decent Hands Against Stronger Ranges
This week I want to share an interesting hand in which I might have made a mistake (or two) by overplaying a strong hand.
The hand occurred relatively early in a $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament. With the blinds 50/100 and everyone still around the starting stacks of 25,000, a tight-aggressive player in the hijack seat opened to 250 and it folded to me in the big blind where I called with Q♣9♣.
That's an easy call with hand like that which can flop very well, and indeed the flop came Q♠10♥8♣ to give me top pair and a gutshot straight draw. That said, as I explain in the video below, my TAG opponent who raised preflop and who likely has a lot of big cards in his range has a range advantage over me.
I checked, he checked behind, and the turn brought the J♦ to give me the straight.
Here I checked again, and my opponent bet rather big — 500 into a pot of 550. That bet suggested a polarized range (either total garbage or nut hands), but I nonetheless responded with a check-raise to 1,700. Looking back, this seems to me like a clear overplay of my hand and I should have just check-called.
In any case, my opponent called to make the pot about 4,000, then the 10♠ river paired the board. Now what? Take a look at what I decided to do at this point and listen to how I explain my reasoning as well.
I went for value on river, another bet I don't like. Both the turn and river plays help illustrate a lesson — be careful not to overplay decently strong hands, especially when they've become marginal made hands.
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,800,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. Sign up to learn poker from Jonathan for free at PokerCoaching.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
