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Playing Marginal Poker Hands

Back in the day when new poker players were trying to grasp the intricacies of the game, ‘marginal hands’ was a bad phrase. They were to be avoided at all costs. The very first rule players learned about poker was to not play too many hands. The number two critical rule was to study poker starting hand charts to gain an understanding of how hand values worked based upon position. Coupling these two rules produced the mantra of the day – Play only quality holdings and play them aggressively. While rather simplistic, it was (and still is) good advice to keep new poker players out of trouble.

However, mixing it up so that opponents don’t become too familiar with your playing style is a fairly rudimentary part of playing poker. To become predictable is not the poker strategy of winning players. In poker you have to play different hands the same way. If you fail to do so, opponents will glom onto your hands simply by virtue of how much you bet or raise with your holdings. Therefore you have to play some non-premium hands the same way you play your best hands, simply to give those good hands some cover and disguise.
Marginal Hands Have Potential

Marginal poker hands come in all sizes and shapes but are mostly good drawing hands such as connectors, suited cards, smaller pairs, and even two gapped cards like J9, T8, 53, etc. These are the hands that don’t figure to win without improvement but with improvement they have lots of potential. This is because no-limit hold’em is a game of implied odds and a marginal hand can become a monster – and can take all of an opponent’s chips in one fell swoop, if played correctly.

There is a big difference between playing marginal hands and playing junk hands. Generally speaking, marginal hands have the potential to become strong hands while with junk hands you need your opponent to abandon their holding to take down the pot uncontested. Most junk is normally played out of the big blind for free. If you find yourself playing junk from other positions then you’ve probably wandered too far.
The Management of Deception

Playing solid hand values from appropriate position is still the cornerstone of winning hold’em play. The key part of that dictum is appropriate position. In order for you to maximize your winnings on good holdings you need to give the table the illusion of action. As the old western sage said, “Ya gotta give action to get action”. In no-limit hold’em we amend that slightly and say; “Ya gotta appear to give action to get action”.

Much of poker is the management of deception. Playing marginal hands cheaply from late position and when appropriate from earlier position, gives you the inexpensive illusion you desire – while giving you the potential to connecting to a big hand and make a lot of money.

If you show down a marginal starting hand once in a while, it will do wonders for your ability to gain action on your top quality hands. Notice I said “once in a while”, because if you do it too often it won’t serve you well. If you start playing too many marginal hands it will deplete your poker bankroll instead of enhancing it.
Outplaying Your Opponents

If all you play are good cards then you’re really just playing ABC poker and hoping you’ll get more good hands than your opponents. You know that isn’t going to happen in the long run so at best, unless you resign yourself to playing break even poker, you need to be thinking about how to outplay your opponents so you can win pots without good cards. How would one do that? One way would be to seek out profitable situations to play marginal holdings. The two critical elements to consider are your opponents’ playing styles and your position.

There is another element that I believe deserves a note of caution. Winning pots by your wiles alone can become quite intoxicating – so much so that many on that slippery slope succumb to the urge of overusing this tactic of playing poker without solid hand values. I don’t need to tell you what happens when everyone around the table realizes how you have been winning so many pots. Pick your spots combining adversary knowledge and position and you’ll do just fine.

There is a caveat to the above advice, and that’s if you regularly play against losing players that seldom pay attention to your playing style. In such cases you have no need to mix-up your play in an attempt to confuse them. After all, they are not thinking about what hands you might be playing – so you’d be far better off by sticking to “ABC poker” and exploiting their weaknesses rather than deviating into the realms of fancy play syndrome. Remember that most of the money you’ll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but by the ineptitude of your opponents.
From Marginal to Junk

Don’t fall in love with your starting hands. Starting hands change their value as they progress. Let’s examine a poker hand that would qualify as marginal and worth playing but may lose some of its luster as the hand progresses.

Imagine holding 8h9h in middle position. Two players limp and the next player min raises. Since it was only a min raise and you’re feeling frisky, you call as do the first two limpers. Now the flop nails your holding making you a straight with tcjdqs. Your flush draw just became history but a made straight on the flop is nothing to sneeze at. Now the first limper bets out half the pot, the second limper calls and the original raiser re-raises:

Figure 1

Wow – what just happened and what should you do now? This is the moment that you come to grips with the fact that you’re holding the proverbial idiot end of a straight, also known as the sucker straight, and could be in real trouble. Your suited connectors were a good, marginal hand that just turned into junk. Try not to go to war with the bottom end of a straight. Many a stack has been sacrificed in that manner.
Domination

Marginal poker hands that are easily dominated will be your biggest long-term money losers, if you lack the discipline to get away from them. If you decide to enter the fray with a suited Ace-rag then remember the reasons for playing the hand in the first place. Your objective with such a hand should be to try and see a cheap flop in hopes of making a flush. Don’t get too frisky if an Ace falls on the flop – someone could easily have a better Ace.

A hand like Ace-Jack is also marginal, in that it can be easily dominated. The same holds true for hands like K-Q, K-J, K-T, etc. When viewing an early raise while holding a marginal hand, I have found the old poker axiom of “When in doubt, get out” to be very wise advice. That wisdom can save you a whole bunch of chips. Instead of viewing these marginal hands as playable, think about how much you enjoy others playing those hands against your Ace-King.

You might flop something spectacular with a marginal hand, but the sad truth is that the best hand going in is usually the best hand coming out. So when you start second best, it’s all too easy to seduce yourself into sticking around with something that’s second best and figures to stay that way. Avoiding domination is one of the best bankroll preservers in my view. Try and be the Dominator not the Dominatee – it’s a great deal more profitable.
Conclusion

The evolution of how to play no-limit hold’em, fuelled by the expanded literature, televised poker and the internet, now includes the value of playing marginal hands. With the changing poker landscape, the play of marginal hands evolved from perceived weak, undisciplined play to a brilliant, profitable strategy. Playing marginal hands is a critical part of playing poker well. If you aren’t playing any marginal hands then you are playing too tight and that is not the most profitable way to play.

The main keys to successfully playing marginal hands are pretty much the same keys for all elements of winning poker play. They include knowledge of your opponents’ tendencies, position, an awareness of the image you have been projecting, and the possession of a certain degree of discipline. Possessing discipline is critical to bankroll preservation so when you just catch a little piece of the flop you don’t wind up married to the hand which many times will lead to getting divorced from your chips. There are no prenuptial agreements in poker.

By Tom "TIME" Leonard

Implied Odds and Poker

Even first-time players knows that poker is a game of odds, and while newbies might not be able to figure them, at least they realize that there’s a relationship between the chances of making a winning hand and how much money is in the pot. But they probably don’t know much about the concept of implied odds (and reverse implied odds) – which sounds complex and foreboding but is really nothing more than the opposite side of a slightly more sophisticated way of thinking about risk and reward at the poker table.
Estimating What You Think You’ll Win

Implied odds offer a comparison of what you think you’ll win – including all the money in the pot right now along with any additional money that figures to come into the pot through bets and calls on future wagering rounds – compared to the cost of a current bet. If this sounds somewhat less than a precise measure, you’re right. Unlike mathematical odds, implied odds involves estimating – or guessing – about the future action of your opponents. When you base a bet or a call on implied odds, you’re wagering not only on the odds related to making your hand, but also on your ability to forecast your opponents’ behavior when your hand comes in.

Let’s look at some examples to clarify this. Suppose you flopped a flush draw, and with two cards to come, the odds against completing it are 1.86-to-1 against you. But without knowing how much money you figure to win if you have to call a bet to draw to your flush, you can’t tell whether it pays to stick around or not. After all, with the odds at nearly 2-to-1 against you, if the all the pot offered was even money – you’d win as much as you contributed – it wouldn’t pay to keep drawing.

In poker, whenever the pot odds exceed the odds against making your hand, it pays to keep playing. When the odds against your hand coming in exceed the reward associated with it, it’s usually a bad deal. A simple way to think about this is that whenever the prize exceeds the cost of the game, keep playing. When the cost to play is more than the money you figure to win, you should fold.

But implied odds can change that equation, and here’s why. While the current size of the pot might not be sufficient to make it worthwhile to take another card or two, if you reckon that the pot will grow substantially on future wagering rounds, your decision might be a different one.
Implied Odds are Best with Hidden Hands

If you’re going to use implied odds as justification to call an opponent, then be aware that some draws have greater implied odds than others. Flush draws are pretty obvious, and most opponents will at least stop and ponder when an opponent who has been calling all along comes out betting when a third suited card hits the board. In other words, unless your opponent is very loose or figures you for a bluff, implied odds with flush draws tend to be smallish, because that third suited card can put a serious damper on any forthcoming action.

Things are different when your hand is hidden. Because hidden hands are more deceptive, your opponent might not realize the strength of it and pay you off with a second-best hand. The best implied odds draw is a double belly buster straight because of its stealth nature.

An example of this type of hand would be a flop of AJ8 while holding QT. While the board looks somewhat disjointed you have eight outs (four Kings and four nines) to hit your straight.

The odds of hitting your straight on the turn are just over 4-to-1 against. The pot odds in this example are just over 3-to-1, so you are not getting the right price to call based only on pot odds. However, the implied odds are favourable with such a hidden hand. An additional upside to a hand like this is that an opponent may have a hand like AK and if a King hits the board he will give you plenty of action and many times never see your stealth nut straight coming.
Betting Structures and Playing Styles

Pot-limit and no-limit games offer larger implied odds than fixed-limit games because of the potential for bigger wagers on subsequent betting rounds. But structure alone is meaningless without an understanding the playing style of your opponents. Passive opponents – the kind of players who call but rarely raise – increase your implied odds because you can draw inexpensively against them and count on getting paid off handsomely whenever you make your hand.

Players have to guard against self-deception when figuring implied odds. Because there’s a certain amount of subjectivity associated with them, some players get into trouble when they use implied odds to justify weak calls. Here’s what we mean.

Suppose you have a flush draw on the turn and with $20 in the pot your opponent bets $10 (as shown in figure 2). Your immediate odds are 3-to-1 plus whatever implied odds you assign to the final betting round on the river.

But unless your adversary is completely transparent or you have a terrific read on him, it’s all too easy to be overly optimistic – and therefore self-deceptive – about how much more money your opponent will be willing to invest in the pot if you make your hand. You might complete your hand on the river and try for a check raise only to have your opponent check behind you. You’ll probably win the showdown, but you would have won more if you wagered an amount your opponent would call.

So the check raise failed. Next time you’re in this situation suppose you bet a large amount instead of trying for a check raise. You’re hoping your opponent thinks you’re bluffing and will call. But instead, he ponders for a moment and then releases his hand. Would a smaller bet – presumably one sized to easily attract a call – have worked better? Or would this have been the time to try for a check raise? You just can’t be certain, and this is the part of poker that’s an art, not a science.
Predicting What Your Opponent Will Do

Let’s back this up a bit. Before you decide to play your draw on those earlier betting rounds, you need to have some idea about what your opponent will do when you complete your hand.

If your opponent is willing to call big bets on the river, you can take a short price on the turn because you know that when you make your hand, the payoff will more than exceed all those times you drew, failed to get there, and either folded or bluffed the river only to have your opponent call and win the pot. But if your opponent is the kind who hunkers down whenever a scare card hits the board, a better play might be to eschew the draw, and bet for value against him whenever you have what you believe to be a better hand.
Warning: The Fast Path to Self-Deception

For some players, the idea of implied odds is a fast path to self-deception at the poker table. You’ll see players calling bets with far the worst of it and if you asked them why, they’ll tell you that implied odds made it a worthwhile bet. While implied odds are a bit of a guess, those guesses need to be fairly accurate to pay off in the long run. Otherwise it’s just self deception – a way of talking oneself into playing hands that really should be folded.

Players who do this are savvy enough to know they shouldn’t play hunches at the poker table, but they still lack the requisite self-discipline to ensure they’ll beat the game. In order to sound like they are smarter than hunch players and any-two-cards-can-win maniacs, they’ll cloak their desire for action – even when the price is clearly wrong – in the mantle of implied odds.

By Lou Krieger

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