Sunday, January 29, 2006

Floating on Cloud Nine with Flyers

One of my favorite things to do at the poker table is play flyers.
I love playing small pocket pairs, suited connectors, or other hands like K,10 os or J,10 os or Ax suited or hands like Q,J, K,9 even, or Q,10 or, my favorite for a while, J,5, the last because I had a soldier friend who folded J,5 every time, even when he was in the big blind without a raise, because he lost to it all the time. So I started playing it and sucking out with it a lot.
For some of you aggresive types, all those hands above might not only be worth playing, but worth raising. And in a tournament, occasionally, they're worth raising in many circumstances.
But I especially like playing these hands, occasionally, in ring games, when you don't have the blinds threatening to swallow you like a porn star named Johnny Cum Lately (hi TripJax!).
Last night, I played J,10, and 10,10,K came down. I threw out a bet of $1, about half the pot,and a guy called. The fish (I knew he was at that point), then bet the rest of his $5 when a bust card came down. I put him on a K and called. He had a K and I scooped a pretty nice pot for the level I was playing.
Of course, playing flyers correctly is the difference between being a fish and being a, er, non-fish (I can't call myself a shark yet, not even a nurse shark), I don't call raises with them, even if it's a .25 raise, unless I have a terrific read on the player, and even then, I proceed cautiously. Almost always, I pitch the hand if I don't flop to it, and if I have a draw, I pitch it if I'm priced out of it. If I flop top pair, I play it aggressively until my opponent tells me he has a better kicker (but then, I think, why didn't she raise?). And I rarely play them slow, even if I flop a great hand.
I know these are no duh tips, and yet, I've noticed, it's the no duh tips that we don't follow that help us lose money. Poker is full of common sense rules, and we should constantly be viligant in following them, unless it's fun to break them by taking a flyer on a hand.

1 comment:

TripJax said...

HaHa...glad somebody liked my porn name.

I'm sure many folks would disagree with the play of those hands, but in the right situation, you can capitalize immensely as long as you play the player as well. You did that to a T and it paid off...

Good job.

Johnny Cum Lately