If you asked a painter to draw a picture of a chinning dog, chances are he wouldn’t, because it’s a relatively difficult thing to do. It’s true, the chinning Dewapoker player does a lot of hard work to improve his skill, but at the same time, he is trailing along in the hustle of the kitchen while the dog eats. Seems a bit unfair, and in some ways, it is. It’s nigh impossible to sift out the good players from the bad. They all play hardball, and play every hand, but they are about to fall in love with AK – OK, so they’re going to call you play Ace King, but what are they going to do when you let them see a flop?

If we limited ourselves to ace king offsuit, sure, we’d probably lose. But what about some other hands? For example, Take a hand like AK. Serious gamblers and writing staff alike would look upon an ace high flush as the greatest hand in the world, and nothing less than an ace high flush will do. Should ace high flush come your way in the center of the table, you will be l fascinded. Run that hand through the formula, and you’ll be right back with your car keys, ready to return home and open the champagne bottle.

But what if you’re not dealt a strong hand? Let’s say you call the raise in the above situation with nothing sound. The board might improve to 4h 5h 6s Qs and you lose. Ouch. So what? Nothing? You might as well call it a hand?”

While it’s true that you should sometimes throw a big hand away, particularly when your opponent has great control of the hand (as in the above example), you should usually aim for a big pot. The only time you should feel guilty about playing a hand is when you feel so compelled to act that you can’t think straight. If you have a bad hand and you feel obligated to act, you’re not giving your opponents a free card – your hand is weak and you have no other choice.

There are exceptions to that principle, of course, but the main rule to follow is: if you have a hand, you should play it strongly. If you don’t have a strong hand, you should fold (for a variety of reasons, discussed in the next chapter) unless there’s a compelling reason to be in the hand.

That indispensable ingredient to feeling like you actually belong in the pot is making money do you feel like you actually belong there. Here’s an example: You’re in the small blind with 77. You raise with about 77 on the button, and get one caller. The flop, predictably, is garbage. You check to make a continuation bet about one to two thirds of the pot, and the button makes the call. Boom! You’ve just made the blinds. But before you get your check exposed, the button raises and your aggressive opponent calls. What are you supposed to do now?

When there’s a strong correcting mechanism in place in a game like hold ’em, you can get out of a hand before it gets ugly. Let’s say the flop misses you. If it misses you more than 66% of the time, I think you ought to fold.

It doesn’t matter if the other player is aggressive or passive, when a highly experienced opponent makes a friendly raise from the button to your preflop raise, you ought to fold without hesitation.

That’s one of the more difficult problems in limit hold ’em, that you, the limit hold ’em player, have to worry about being dominated. But that’s not to say that you can’t win by playing tight or taking some chances.

Sometimes you can get lucky and win big, and you’ll take that chance whether or not the other player is in the blinds or in the pot. If the other player is in position, no matter what he may think of your hand, you can make a powerful check-raise. You can hit the flop and make a hand that will scare your opponent. You may even make your opponent fold his hand.