Playing A Strong Hand That Might Improve

In most game conditions, this kind of hand, which is probably the best hand, should be played aggressively on the flop. You want to bet or raise in order to reduce the pot odds that players calling with draws are getting.

When the game gets loose, however, and especially when the game gets very loose, the situation changes. Now, if the flop contains draws, in particular a flush draw but sometimes also a straight draw, the idea of Morton's theorem kicks in and the best hand is not always the one to benefit from bets and raises on the flop. In loose or very loose game conditions, usually you should bet top pair or an overpair, but you usually should not raise with it.

In very loose-aggressive games, often you should not even bet top pair. The chances of being raised by a draw and getting many callers are just too great, and you won't benefit from those bets on the flop if there are many loose callers. The benefit will go to the best draw, not the best hand. When you add the possibility that you might not actually have the best hand, then it pays to be careful in very loose-aggressive games with hands that you would be betting very aggressively in tighter or more passive games. The looser the game, the more often the best thing to do is to wait until the turn to get aggressive with strong hands.

Examples of what I mean by strong hands that might improve are Ad-Ac with a flop of 10h-9h-3s or the same flop with a hand of Ad-10d. In both case you probably have the best hand. With the overpair, if you're not best now then you probably have about five outs, another Ace or a 3 will probably be good enough. With the top pair and a good kicker, you might only have the three Aces as outs, because if you're not best, then it's likely that another 10 makes a full house for someone.

In either of these examples you should usually play the hand very strongly on the flop. The exception comes when the game is both very loose and aggressive. Then you're likely to have players with good draws raising and reraising. As I showed earlier, if the field is large and their combined outs are large, then you won't benefit from bets and raises on the flop, even though you probably have the best hand.

Just a small change in these hands, however, can make a big difference. If you had Ad-Ah or As-10s to give you a three-flush backdoor draw, then that would add about the equivalent of two outs to the hands. Those extra outs, combined with the value as the probable best hand, are usually enough to play the hand very aggressively, even against a large loose and aggressive field. In close situations look for a little extra. If you don't have it, you should slow down.