Marginal flops are characterized by a hand that is relatively strong but at the same time is not difficult to best. These hands also have a fair number of outs that add future value to the hand and improve your post-draw odds.
The move you should make with a marginal hand relies largely on two things ... the size of the pot and your opponents’ hands.
In other words, as is common in poker you are weighing your risk vs. gain. Your two best options are to go all in or to fold. This may sound like fairly aggressive playing, but your odds of losing are higher if you play this hand conservatively.
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An experienced poker player will recognize pushing or folding as the real dilemma. This logic can be demonstrated fairly simply ...
Let’s say there are two players and yourself after the flop. You have a 10 and Jack of diamonds in the hole and there is a 7 of spades, an 8 of diamonds and a Jack of hearts on the table. So this means you are sitting on a pair of Jacks with a fair shot at a straight and potentially a flush. This is when you must choose between folding or pushing.
Which move you make should be determined by the reads that you get on your competitors. Obviously if you are fairly certain another player has a better hand, then you should fold. But if you think you have the best hand, or enough outs to draw the best hand, then you should go all in.
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If you bet high or raise, you are trying to convince the rest of the table that you already have the straight. If one of them actually does have a straight, then they will most likely bet or raise also.
If they raise, you would probably do best by folding. After all, they have already beaten your
hand cleanly and at this point you only stand to lose that initial bet.
If the other players call, you can assume that none of them has the straight yet either. This is when you should go all in.
Why ? For one, you have the best table pair with a low kicker. While this can beaten by another top pair with a high kicker or even a pocket pair, a large bet will likely scare a player with those hands off, since they didn’t have enough confidence in their strength to bet on them, since at this point your competitors will assume that you have the straight, which is the highest possible combination at that point in the game.
To simplify, while you gain nothing from folding, you also risk losing less. By going all in, you stand to gain a large pot but alternately could lose everything. You should only go all in if you are holding the best hand, have good odds of catching the best hand, or believe you can get the other players to fold and forfeit the pot.
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