Overplaying Big Hands in Poker

AK is a premium starting hand in poker but it can be easily overplayed. Whenever you pair the board, you make top pair top kicker, which is often times the best hand in holdem. Beware though, overplaying top pair top kicker can be a big leak in your game which is costing you money.

Before the flop, make sure you are playing AK correctly. This article explains the poker strategy for playing AK in detail so I won’t repeat what was said. What I will say though is that it’s important that you have inititiative in hand when playing AK in poker for three reasons.

Firstly, when you have inititiave in the hand by being the preflop aggressor, you gain control in the hand which is a profitable situation to be in.

Secondly, and this point is more relevant to the topic of this article, when you take initiative in the hand, you are saying to everyone at the table, I have a big hand. So if you come up against resistance, it will help avoid overplaying TPTK in many cases because your opponent is saying back at you, you have a big hand but mine is better.

Thirdly, when you raise or reraise with AK, if you have been playing a tight aggressive poker style, you will get weak hands to fold, so will only get 1-2 other players to see a flop which is the ideal situation to be in. The last thing you want is everyone seeing a flop cheap when you have a hand like AK. You would be committing poker suicide because another player can easily make a hand which is better then only one pair.

You need to understand that overplaying a hand like AK when you only have one pair is a costly mistake. AK can be such a difficult hand to play because you will often win a small pot with the hand, but have the potential to lose a big pot, because most players will only like their hand enough to continue calling bets on all three streets when they have a hand which is better then one pair. Even though it looks like you have the best hand when you flop top pair top kicker, there just isn’t many worse hands which will call or raise when you bet particularly on non coordinated boards, so you really need to evaluate if you really do have the best hand if you face aggression. Don’t ignore the information your opponent is telling you and consider all previous history with the player.

One of the common scenarios for overplaying TPTK is when you are dealt AK, make TPTK on the flop and get stacks in the middle on the turn or river vs a flopped set. At the time you get a feeling that your TPTK is probably not the best hand but still go with the hand because you think your opponent is an aggressive poker player or whatever. You need to put your opponent on a range of hands and think about what hands they could be making this play with. If they are an aggressive player, they could be raising with a flush draw, but even this is unlikely because even aggressive players will only make this play when they have overcards and a flush draw. It’s possible they are raising the flop with a worse top pair like KQ to see where they are at. And it’s possible they have a set.

When playing TPTK and facing aggression, consider the position of the player who is showing aggression. If they called in the blinds and you flop TPTK and there is two low cards, would you expect your opponent to have three bet a hand like KQ preflop? If you would, then you can narrown down their range of hands to basically flopped sets or a bluff, so you know you are beat if you don’t think they are bluffing.

Experienced players can get away from their big hands. They know when to hold em and they know when to fold em based on reads on the other players at the table. Although top pair top kicker is often the best hand, you want to make sure you don’t overplay TPTK if the information at your disposal is telling you otherwise. When playing no limit hold em, keep in mind that although TPTK is a strong hand, generally it’s not a hand you want to play for 100bb. Top pair and top kicker is still a relatively small hand in comparison to hands which will continue on the turn and river, and your objective is to play small pots with small hands, and big pots with big hands. Don’t make the costly mistake of assuming TPTK is a big hand, only to lose your entire stack against a better hand, when you know you could have gotten away from the hand. Have you signed up for a poker rakeback account? If not, then you are missing out on alot of money every single month. We offer the best poker rakeback deals and you can sign up here. If you dont know what rakeback is, then get started with our article what is rakeback.