Dealing with Monster Hands in Poker

The strongest and most profitable way of dealing with monster hands in poker is to exploit them by fast playing.

Never slow play monster hands in poker. What we often do is dilly dally and wait for the opponent to wager big or try to bluff. So we bet softly, and sometimes we don't even place any wager at all. Say, if we have two aces pre-flop and we have done nothing significant except call the big blind we're doing nothing but wasting our aces by slow playing such monster hands in poker.

Or say, we happen to flop a straight. But all we do with this monster poker hands is to check passively, we're doing nothing except slow play our straight. And this is the problem with many players, especially amateurs---take for granted monster hands in poker. They think that check-raise strategies are still the best tactics in poker and then try to trap players with this.

When we slow play monster hands in poker, sharp players will easily see through what we are doing and what we have and simply fold, ruining our chances to win big. This kind of playing can reveal so much poker tells in us. The more important reason why we shouldn't slow play monster hands in poker is that we would never hope to win them in any other way except to bet aggressively on them.

Some players reason that they want to confuse opponents with their monster hands in poker. They don't need to. The real need is to bet. If we slow play we just give them a chance to further read our hand. Some think that slow play would buy time to build a bigger pot. This is true but not in most cases. It's better to risk minimal wins than to work out big ones we might lose eventually if we delay further.

Why would they be able to read us? Well, it's obvious. Most players opt to slow play monster hands in poker. And doing so would have us very predictable. They do this to build a pot for themselves and think it wise to proceed like this. This is the most predictable play and we would be helping opponents save their bets by folding to our monster hands in poker. Remember, monster hands in poker do not happen every game.

So the nest time we're dealt or come up with monster hands in poker, we bet on them, and aggressively at that.