A top pair pre-flop is likely to give any player a shiver – the good kind. This is their chance to make it big.

Starting hands chart tell you that a pair of Aces, a pair of Kings, or a pair of Queens is a wonderful sight to behold, indeed.

Given such excellent pocket pairs, they say, you should raise or re-raise when raised wherever you are positioned in the table (early, middle or late).

Pre-flop

This advice makes sense, but only pre-flop.

One should not forget that pre-flop is the time to move in for the kill with such an extremely good pair of pocket cards.

You should kill all the other players with less than beauteous cards early on in the game so that you can maximize the value of your cards.

If you raise or re-raise pre-flop, you are likely to scare off the tight players who are leery of challenging such confident maneuvers.

Their loss is your gain in such an instance.

After the Flop

After the flop, though, there may be still three of you still in the game.

For instance, you are holding KcKh. The board reveals a combination of Ad9s2c.

At this point, should you continue betting or should you fold?

It is pretty obvious that the chances of getting a good card combination are nil. Yet some players, blinded by the beauty of their hole cards, continue to bet rashly.

This is the downfall of players who spend less time thinking about their odds than thinking about how beautiful their starting hands are.

The good player, at this point, is much more likely to fold than to go on, unless they are playing with players who can get easily intimidated by continuation bets.

Good poker players think about their current situations; they do not rely merely on how good their starting pair looks like.

The Oblivious Player

After the flop reveals very unfavorable odds, the good poker players fold their hands and wait for another chance as long as there are no extenuating circumstances (for instance, they are playing with a weak player whom they can easily intimidate later on).

The oblivious player will continue betting on a dead hand; they consoles themselves with the thought that, surely, the turn and the river will give them the out that they need.

This often turns out to be mere wishful – and quite expensive – thinking.

If you want to be more than just an okay player, then you must learn to let go of a good pocket pair if the board and the betting starts turning south for you.

You need to master this skill or you’ll be paying more for hands that you’re unlikely to win.