No limit Texas Hold’em carries with it a very different dynamic to limit hold’em because pots grow geometrically when you play in cash games on sites like www.888poker.com . This means that even the slightest bet or raise can and does have huge potential consequences for the final pot size or its likely size. In tournament play then hands like A-K are often considered powerful hands.
However there are two clear reasons for this and that is because A-K is only rarely dominated as having an A-K drastically reduces the number of A-A and K-K combinations that can be out against you. So when you get all in with A-K in a tournament then you tend to be up against hands like Q-Q and J-J rather than A-A and K-K.
Also in tournament poker then the number of big blinds that you have tends not to be that many as the rapidly escalating blinds and antes means that your stack rarely becomes very large. So your decisions with hands like A-K in tournament poker tend not to be all that difficult. However in cash games then the situation is very different where you may have 100bb or even more. This means that your stack is deep enough to be able to play through the streets.
When you are betting every single street with half pot to full pot bets with a hand like A-K on a board like A-10-9-7-Q and you are getting called all the way then your A-K is not a strong hand in this instance. If you get all in on the flop for say 15bb then you basically have not made a mistake in a tournament if you get called by a better hand. But if you bet say two thirds of the pot on the flop and turn and been called both times in a cash game then you had better watch out.
Pot escalation is a dangerous enemy in deep stack big bet poker and is a factor that cash game players have to deal with. This is why you see many cash game specialists check with hands like A-K on boards like A-Q-9-7 because the risk of checking and giving your opponent a free card to out draw you is not as dangerous as the pot escalating to silly levels while you are left holding a weak one pair hand. So keep this advice in mind the next time you are dealt a big pair in NLHE.
