Playing Trash Hands

This month we will be taking a look at trash hands in our series of no limit hold’em cash game strategies. Trash hands include hands like 7-2, 8-3, Q-4, J-5, 10-2 etc. In short, these are hands with low money making potential on the whole. Notice here that I said “on the whole”, this is because even trash hands can be profitable in the right set of situations.

Because to quote the famous line from the movie Cool Hand Luke….”Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand”. Against the right type of opponents in the right situations then any two cards can be played for profit just like any four cards can in Omaha. It can be correct to raise with 7-2 and also correct to fold A-K and it is this fact that confuses many players. The often quoted saying in hold’em of “any two cards can win” while being true, is in fact very misleading to many novice poker players.

The flip side to this statement is that “any two cards can lose” which is a line that I have never previously read anywhere. In fact as an addition to that we could also say “any two cards can lose even aces if they are played incorrectly”. One of the problems with poker for many people is that players expect junk hands and powerhouse hands to literally play themselves.

They automatically fold the junk and go too far with strong hands and the end result when you play poker on auto pilot is that you lose money or you do not win as much as you should which amounts to the same thing. It is this slow drip feeding of money away from your stack that is the silent killer in poker. So we will now take a look at how to play junk hands from all positions starting with early position.

Early Position

In a full nine handed ring game or even a short handed ring game for that matter then simply fold the trash. There is no other sensible play to make. But….I still see many people limping in with hands like Q-6 suited and J-7 suited from early position and the only reason why they are doing this is because the hand is suited.

Well let us take a look at the flaw in that strategy right here and now and lets face it, you don’t have to look hard do you? Your hand simply cannot stand a raise and with your position being early then the likelihood of there being a raise after you is high. This means that you are either throwing money away when you limp like this and have to fold or throwing even more money away when you limp and then call a raise and have to fold on the flop.

But what if your hoped for multi-way pot does in fact materialise, and you flop your flush draw with the QD-6D. The fifth diamond arrives on the turn to complete your hoped for flush and you lose your 100 big blind stack because someone limped in after you with the AD-3D. Flush beating flush happens a lot more frequently than what you might imagine in hold’em and you limped in hoping to make a non nut flush from bad position….that is not sound poker!

Do not be fooled by the suited nature of your hand either, in the overwhelming majority of cases your hand will be simply unprofitable from such an early position. Even if you can limp in cheap then do not let that sway you from making the proper play and that is to fold junk.

Middle Position

Nothing much changes in middle position even if it has been folded around to you. In a nine handed game, then even if three of four opponents have folded to you then you really have no right coming into the pot by limping or raising. Trying to steal raise from middle position with trash can really only be done with absolute rocks to your left but even then the sensible thing is to fold.

You simply do not need to get involved with such poor quality hands. It is from middle position that many players feel compelled to get involved with hands like king little suited for instance if it has either been folded to them or there have been several limpers and they are looking to make a flush on the cheap.

Even from middle position then these types of plays still have problems even then. One of those problems in today’s online poker climate is that many players are aware of the “pick up” play. This is when one of the players in the blinds usually the big blind makes a largish raise after there has been several players limping in.

They are only too aware that limpers are generally coming in with speculative hands and want to see a cheap flop.

So you can easily once again be contributing money to the pot without ever getting to see the flop that you were hoping for. Another problem is that middle position is still quite early to be playing weak hands like these even if everyone has folded to you. Most of the time in poker, the simple solid straight forward play is the best play and this certainly applies to playing trash hands from middle position whether you can see the flop cheaply or not and steal raising is just pushing the boat out a little too far.

Late Position

It is from late position that the playing of trash hands begins to get a little more interesting and less straight forward and predictable. Even then, if it has been folded around to you and you have been dealt a hand like 9-3 then simply fold the hand. Likewise if there has been a raise to your right then re-raising or calling with junk just trying to do something fancy after the flop is asking for trouble most of the time in a full ring cash game.

This is not final table tournament poker, you are under no pressure to accumulate chips and the blinds are not escalating and if you get low on chips then you can either leave the table or buy back in and top up your stack. You simply do not need to get involved with trash hands even from late position. However, poker is certainly not a game where predictability is rewarded and I suppose that many people these days are either aware of that or instinctively feel it to some extent.

But there are times when getting involved with trash hands can and is profitable in the right situations against the right opponents. If you have been sitting in a game for a while and you have started to get the feeling that the players to your left are very tight from the blinds then why not attack them even with trash?

In this particular situation, you are not playing your hand but your opponents. In a $10-$20 no limit cash game then there is $30 in those blinds and if they are there to be taken then why not take them? Those $30 steals will certainly add up over the space of a year. While it is advisable to fold trash hands most of the time, do not just simply fold trash hands automatically and robotically. Always be on the lookout for opportunities where you can exploit a situation that has presented itself to you.

Likewise if you have a tight table image coupled with very tight players in the blinds and it has been folded around to you on the button, you can raise here with almost any two cards and show a profit. Even if your pre-flop raise gets called then if your opponents are as tight as what you think they are then chances are that they will check fold on the flop anyway thus contributing even more money to your stack.

The Blinds

The blind positions in no limit hold’em have a positional disadvantage throughout the deal and you need to bare this in mind. If you are in the big blind in an un-raised pot then you are playing the hand whether you like it or not. But even then, you can still pick up money in these situations as long as your table image is right, you know your opponents and you don’t do it too often.

From the big blind with say a couple of limpers then you can quite often pick the pot up with a pot sized raise. Most of the time your opponents will fold simply because they were limping in trying to hit a good flop with a speculative hand. They did not want a confrontation with a raiser. But beware of the player who suspects what you are up to and calls your raise with the intention of taking the pot away from you from the pot onwards.

But these types of play are starting to move into “fancy play” territory which can be a highly dangerous and costly place to be. Most of the time you are simply better off just checking and seeing the flop with no added risk because fancy poker is certainly not what I want to be teaching in these articles because that is not how you win money in poker most of the time.

Because no limit hold’em is such a positional game then even in an un-raised pot in the small blind, I will not complete the bet most of the time. Why do I want to toss in an extra $5 in a $5-$10 game just because the pot is multi-way and it is cheap with a hand like 8-3 in a cash game?

You only get yourself into trouble with hands like these when you flop something like top pair. The errors tend to be made when you actually make something with the hand because they are easy to play when you miss, you just fold.

But many players defend far too often from the blinds simply because in their own mind, they are “defending” what is already theirs and the guy who has just raised from the button is “stealing” and the player in the big blind has already mentally steeled himself and is telling himself that he “is not going to stand for being pushed around”. Well do you know what? If more people became less confrontational in poker and just prevented their own ego from taking control of the situation then more people would be winning poker players….and that’s a fact!