In the incomplete information game that is poker, it’s all too easy to dismiss situations as standard instead of actually thinking about them and finding an edge. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of straightforward situations, but lots of times as players, we take the easy route and excuse a play that we pass off as standard when there was actually enough information available to make a different and better decision.

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Twenty big blinds deep and you have Q-Q and end up all-in against A-A. Yep, that’s pretty standard no matter the other circumstances. I spend most of my poker playing time in live cash games often well over 100 big blinds deep. In those spots, standard situations are much less common, especially when you’re over 200 and 300 big blinds deep and get to where you have a long history with many of the players you are up against.

As players, we very commonly make mistakes with what we estimate our opponents can and will do. Even a player who can conceptually grasp a play and seems like they should be capable of making some moves and mixing it up is often unable or very unlikely to pull the trigger on the big bluffs. What we think someone should do is often far from what is in their range of probable plays. Assigning probabilities to their actions based on faulty assumptions can cause us to define a play we may make as standard when in reality it is not. And all players are different; just because we think we would act in a certain way in a certain situation does not in any way mean our opponents will.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote up a hand where I was playing in a $2/$5 cash game with a stack that had my opponents covered. The other stack that came in had around $1,200 to start the hand. At this point, I was effectively playing 240 big blinds deep and all of the money ended up going in pre-flop.

Some of the feedback I received was that the hand was pretty standard. Without rehashing the hand in great detail, it was a matter of what to do with Q-Q pre-flop against someone who moved all-in on me after some raising and another short stack went all-in. Against the player I was up against, it was a call, but far from a simply standard one.

In a live cash game, if someone gets 200+ big blinds in pre-flop, they usually have a hand unless they are a special type of player. I went back through all of the players who were in the game this particular night and the player I was up against was the only person I would have called in that spot.

That should be qualified a bit by saying that a few of the other players would almost never let themselves be in a game that deep. But, there is just no way that some of the guys I was up against were going to get 200 big blinds (or over $1,000 no matter what it represented in terms of big blinds) into a pot pre-flop with a hand that Q-Q was ahead of, including A-K. Should they? Probably. But what they should do doesn’t equate to what they will do.

I used to say I would never fold kings pre-flop, using the logic that by the time I figured out I was beat, it would be too late and the pot would be too big. As the games I play in have gotten bigger and the stacks have gotten deeper, there have been a couple of times where I have folded kings pre-flop. It takes a special circumstance, deep stacks, and a player you have a lot of information on, but not dismissing those spots as standard or just coolers has allowed me to save bets and be more profitable.

How you play in certain situations has way more to do with who you are up against and how they play than anything else. Being dismissive and lax on your own analysis of your opponents and situation will have a negative impact on your game and leave you sitting around telling bad beat stories wondering why you are so unlucky and can’t beat the bad players.

Court Harrington has worked on the business side of the poker industry in roles including tournament reporting for PocketFives, radio hosting for PokerRoad Radio, coaching for the WSOP Academy and privately, and a variety of behind-the-scenes responsibilities for poker media businesses. He also plays in cash games and tournaments. Harrington is currently doing consulting work and exploring business opportunities outside of the poker industry. You can contact him at Court@CourtHarrington.com.