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How (not) to Play the Very First Hand

I sat down to play a tournament at the local casino. In the very first hand, I managed to lose half my stack with a marginal hand. I was in the big blind and it was folded around to the small blind who made a nominal raise. Probably more as a piece of psychological warfare than a display of actual strength – at least that’s what I thought. I looked down at K-2, no great hand, but I called and planned to steal the pot on a later street.

The flop came with a king high, giving me top pair, although with the worst possible kicker. My opponent bet out, I raised and hoped he would fold, but he called. On the turn he checked and I checked after him. This may have been a mistake on my part, maybe I could have picked up the pot with a good-sized bet at this point, but I’m not sure. When the river card landed on the board, my opponent went all in. Obviously I couldn’t call the rest of my chips with a pair of kings without a kicker. I had wasted half my stack with a K-2.

Poker is a lot about tuning. As soon as you have played a few rounds at a table, you get a feeling for your opponents and what they are capable of. You know who plays a little loose so you can play back with weaker hands, and you learn whose raises you need to respect. You have had time to set up a table image and inspired a certain respect. You have made sure that your opponents do not see you as an easy target and try to run any easy gimmicks on you.

But this is not the case in the very first hand of the session, when you just sat down and haven’t even had the time to arrange your chips. If someone raises you in the very first hand you play, you can get the feeling he’s just being cheeky with you, that he’s feeling you out. You may feel an urge to prove right away that you are not someone that can be trifled with.

As we saw above, this can prove expensive. A cheaper way might be to just lay the hand down, let your opponent steal whatever few chips are out there, and use the first couple of rounds to get a feeling for the table.

/Spinner

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 2:12 am and is filed under Poker, Gambling, Texas Hold'em. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.