In the first installment of this two part article we talked about how Pocket Kings stand up against other hands (pre-flop) and gave you a single rule for playing them. Now here are some guidelines…

The Guidelines: After the flop, if no aces appear then you should keep raising and re-raising. Keep in mind that if there are no kings or aces on the board, a player with pocket queens or pocket jacks probably think they are still good, whereas you have them beat badly. Let them put all their chips in!

If something really “scary” comes up (for example, three of one suit when neither of your kings matches it) you should still give one strong bet. This will most likely get rid of any bluffers, get rid of a good number of flush chasers, and possibly even get rid of someone holding those troublesome aces. If the other person re-raises strongly, then you need to analyze what that player’s normal style is and consider a fold.

If nothing scary appears, but the person keeps re-raising you, go ahead and take your time to make sure you did not miss anything. Chances are high that you have that player badly beat, and by taking your time to make sure, the other player might mistake your caution for weakness and put in more chips. If they do, double up on the sucker!

If an ace shows, there are arguments on how to play this. Some players say check to see how others bet, but this almost guarantees that if everyone checks that the last player may bluff at it–and even worse, that player may have the ace and you won’t have any clue if that player is bluffing or not! Try a good size (but not huge) raise. If there is a call or two, that player likely has an ace with a low card, or something else that they hope holds out. If you get a large re-raise, then that was a good bet because you can throw away instead of getting suckered in.

The thing to remember with pocket kings is to not overanalyze when you seem to have the lead. Yes, there will be times where you get a really bad beat, there will even be streaks that seem unbelievable (I once was knocked out of a poker tournament in three hands–my three hands were pocket A’s, pocket Q’s, and pocket K’s in that order!), but play the odds for the long run. The odds say pocket kings are 70%, so play them and play them strong! It is the only winning strategy for the long run.

Tags: Poker School, Texas Hold'em Strategy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Poker School, Texas Hold'em Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.