I get asked for a lot of feedback and advice on hands, both from people with whom I discuss hands regularly and subscribers to PokerXFactor.com. This particular hand discussion comes from a group I regularly discuss with in an attempt to keep my game sharp. I highly respect all players involved and their games, but I’m going to keep names confidential for the purposes of this article.

There was a hand that came up that had stirred much debate amongst the group on one of my days off, and afterwards, they asked for some feedback from me in an attempt to settle things and put some closure to the debate. Player A has a typical very tight/aggressive style, though not in a predictable way. He bluffs with the right frequency for his style, and he generally fights hard for the pots he enters. Player B has more of a loose/aggressive style. He likes to splash around in a lot of pots, but he always keeps the pot fairly small unless he has the goods, and he generally relies on his ability to outplay his opponents post-flop as his primary weapon.

The discussion centered around the following hand: Early/middle stages of a tournament, all the stacks are fairly deep. You have AKo UTG and make a standard 3x raise. It is folded around to the BB, who calls. The flop comes 8 3 8, and it is checked to you, so what do you do? On the surface, this hand seemed pretty mundane to me, and I was kind of surprised it really stirred much debate. Player A felt that you had to continuation bet this flop, while player B felt the superior line was to check behind and re-evaluate on the turn. I thought about it for a little bit, and finally after some additional discussion, I said, “I think you’re both right.”

Now, I know that seems kind of counter-intuitive. I mean, doesn’t one line have to be better than the other? The truth is, no, not really. Let’s dig further. Player A, as we stated, is fairly tight/aggressive. Being that he doesn’t enter that many pots and is entering from a great position of strength (UTG), his raise should get him a great deal of respect. The big blind, in theory, should recognize this and give him credit for a very strong hand, and unless the big blind has a very strong hand as well, he should lay down to a continuation bet most of the time for fear of running into a monster. Player B, though, is known to splash around in a lot of pots and is less likely to get respect for his raise than Player A. He’s more likely to get played back at on that flop, as people are much less likely to believe him. Sometimes he may even get moved off the best hand. Checking would allow player B to improve to the best hand, and it will also give him a chance to pick up the pot with a lot of cards on the turn if it gets checked again and he makes a delayed continuation bet.

So in looking at this, we must realize that while this is the same hand for both players, it is two entirely different and completely unique SITUATIONS depending on who the player is that is involved in the hand. I know it’s repeated over and over again, but poker is a game of situations, not hands. If you still think of the game in terms of “how to play pocket pairs from middle position,” then you still have a lot to learn. There’s nothing wrong with that; we all start out with that sort of formulaic approach to the game from reading books or studying various hand posts. Without fail though, that can only take you so far. To move to a truly advanced stage of the game, you must learn to think in terms of situations, as well as recognize the sorts of situations that present themselves often.

The above hand is a just one example of how players with different styles run into far different situations with similar hands. For the sake of discussion, let’s change the flop in the previous hand to A A 8. How does this change what both players should do? Well, you could make a strong arguement that now player A should slowplay and check while Player B should bet out, the exact opposite of what they should do when they both miss! In this case, since Player A is generally tight, his continuation bet will almost always be believed unless the other guy does have an Ace, and since he doesn’t splash around a lot anyway, his check may not be seen as a trap, but rather what someone would do if he has KK or QQ and is afraid of the flop. Player A is very likely to get further action on later streets, either by a complete bluff or by someone making a second best hand. However, since Player B is loose and splashes in a lot of pots, a check will seem more suspicious from him, since he is contantly taking down these small pots (which is part of the reason you check the 8 3 8 flop–it looks stronger from a loose player than betting at times). However, if player B bets, he is much more likely to get played back at by pocket pairs above 8s or a complete bluff. He is least likely to raise suspicion by betting, because that’s what he always does.

In my next article, I will dig deeper into playing styles and how they impact your betting/bluffing decisions. This article barely scratches the surface, but hopefully it gets everyone in the mindset of thinking about poker in terms of varying situations, not just hands.