Help Me Laydown Cards!

[Feltin Licter]

I have one very bad weakness. I call TOO many big raises when i'm pretty sure i'm beat. I know this sounds dumb to some of you. I'm the guy holding AA who calls your $300 reraise with . The guy who calls your $200 pot size bet with a set when I know u have a flush. How do I make myself laydown cards!

[Feltin Licter]

My last hand, typical. I have AK. Flop A-10-2 rainbow. I bet pot, tight player raises, I call. Turn, 6. Now he bets $200 putting me all-in, I know I'm beat but I CALL! What is wrong with me! He shows a set of 10's !

[rambozo]

I feel your pain big guy. I have the same problem my self and just recently took sometime of to review things. I used to make that call and then guess what I'm going to be shown two pair or a set.

I taped a big sign on the side of my monitor not to make stupid calls anymore. Take alot of time to mull things over. I assume in AT2 flop hand that you raised and someone behind had called. You hit TPTK and made a pot sized pet I think that's probably OK but I think a bet of 2/3 of pot will achieve the same thing as a pot sized bet. Now you are looking at large reraise and bigtime warning bells should be going off in your head. The player behind you probably called your preflop raise with something pretty good. Try and determine what type of player your up against and what range of hands he would call the preflop raise with. Realistically the only thing you are ahead off here is a flat out bluff. Determine what type of hands you would be reraised all-in with 22, TT, AA, AT, A2, T2. We can probably eliminate A2, T2 and maybe AT depending on player types and how big the preflop raise was. Now try and determine what types of hands would be called preflop with that you are ahead here. I can only think of one hand that could possibly make this big reraise with is AQ and I find it doubtful any player would make an all-in reraise with this hand.

Take time and review the action. Remember there is no shame in folding.

[Tony.T]

Ciao!

First when you can fold a winning hand and still
feel good about your fold, this is one step towards
being a good player. It shows that the player does not think of poker in short term. This is very important. The decision regarding folding/calling should never be jugded afterwards by the outcome, because you can never know what the other guy is holding. You make a decision based on the info you have before the showdown/muck, if you where wrong make a note of it and take it into consideration next time you play the same opponent

I think you should start to give serious thought to why you play poker. For fun? To make money? As a living? Making a good value bet for 200 dollar and folding KK on a K high board when you know you a beat are two ways of making 200.
Its like a fotball team, you can´t have just a great offensive. If the defense sucks, you are going down anyway


Good luck!

[THATWACOKID]

I just got pokertracker about 2 weeks ago. To my suprise, my showdowns won was 52%. Calling river bets when I feel like I'm behind when I'm getting good odds is my biggest leak. It's almost like I know what they have, but I say to myself "I only have to win this 1 in 3 times for this to be + EV." I am almost always right when I think I am behind and I don't win anywhere near enough for these calls to be +EV. I think the fix for this is self discipline.

[Feltin Licter]

Maybe i need to get pocker tracker. I'm sure I lose with AA because of my problem of laying down hands. I actually play very well until I have to laydown a "good" hand and I call a huge raise. just need to figure out how to laydown "good" hands when my gut tells me im beat. Not sure what my problem is.

[PinkSteel]

Looks like several good suggestions here already, but Step One toward all of them is: Verbalize your thinking before you make your play.

You're not tying your brain action to your bet. The way to do it is to require of yourself that you tell yourself, IN WORDS, the reason why you're about to do what you're about to do.

Once you start doing this, you will be amazed at how fast your true good judgement -- knowing that you really are beat -- takes over and lets you fold the hand.

Got this from "Psychology of Poker", can't remember the author (2+2 book). Single most important mental adjustment I have made to the game.

[LetYouDown]

I completely agree, although I never read the book. I came to that conclusion a couple months ago. I could feel that my mind/mouse were becoming disconnected, so I started verbalizing. I've also played with my girlfriend in the room and although she doesn't understand much about poker, she'll watch. When she watches, I ask her to make me explain every single move I make, with the exception of preflop obvious folds. I win a lot more (lose a lot less) when she's around.

[The_Bends]

This might be an overly personaly question, in which case feel free to ignore it but do you have a tendency to gamble a lot? Roulette, Craps, Horses that sort of thing. One of my friends is a good player with a gret grasp of the game however his love for gambling in general make it all to easy for him to get involved in big pots with the worst of it just for the thrill and it destroys his edge.

[THATWACOKID]

Here is the one where villian didn't show:

I've played a lot with villian in the past month. Villian respects me and his pre flop raise is 1.7 % in 1,700 hands.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (10 handed) converter

MP2 ($158)
MP3 ($208.2)
CO ($319.03)
Button ($165.35)
SB ($200.25)
BB ($226.8)
Hero ($247.3)
UTG+1 ($203.55)
UTG+2 ($554)
MP1 ($94.05)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. SB posts a blind of $1.
<font color="#CC3333">Hero raises to $8</font>, <font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, MP1 calls $8, <font color="#666666">2 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">CO raises to $50</font>, <font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, Hero folds, MP1 folds.

Final Pot: $69