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Trouble Hands Suck at No Limit

Let's say you just sat down at a $3/5 blinds NL cash game and don't know any of the players. You are on the button with QJ offsuit and everybody folds to you, so you raise to $10. The small blind folds and the big blind raises $10 more to you. What do you do? Seems like an automatic call for just $10 more since there is already $33 in the pot, right? Plus you have position and might be able to outplay the blind. Most people will make this call without thinking.

However, it's a bad call. The "most" people who instantly make it are forced to simply fold on the flop the large majority of the time. But that's not even the real problem. The real problem is when you flop a pair and the blind keeps betting at you. This puts you between a rock and a hard place, and it's a great way to lose half your stack (or more).

Let's say the flop comes Q85 rainbow, what looks like a pretty good flop. With $43 in the pot your opponent now bets $30. What do you do? To raise in order to find out where you are, you have to put about $75 in the pot. Sure if you get re-raised you can let it go, but suppose he calls and checks the turn. Then what? If you are going to bet it needs to be at least $100, and if you check you are looking at a $100+ bet from your opponent on the river that you pretty much have to call. That's a lot of money to put in there with a relatively weak 1-pair hand.

Let's say you just call the flop and now your opponent bets $75 on the turn when a 3 hits the board. You have no idea where you are in the hand! That could easily be two continuation bets (after your call looked kind of weak on the flop). But the smart thing to do, since he isn't showing any weakness, is probably folding here. That's $30 + the extra $10 for calling the preflop raise that you blew off, not too terrible.

If you call that $75 turn bet and he checks the river you might win - then again you might not, and he might value bet the river with something you have to call! If you raise the turn, you will find out where you are really fast - but again this jeopardizes a ton of chips on a so-so holding. If he calls your raise you should check behind him on the river and expect to see him turn over AQ.

In fact, let's say that is your opponent's hand, AQs. How do you best play it? Raising the turn and checking behind him on the river is decent, you lose less this way than most of the other scenarios just discussed. But the best way to play it was to fold the preflop raise!

After alll, what were you hoping to flop? Queens and jacks? That's more than a 40-1 longshot. Trips? That's more than a 70-1 shot. A straight? That's around 80-1 against! If you can't root for any flop you can reasonably expect to get, and you don't have any fold equity by being the aggressor, you don't belong in the pot.