Avoiding Trap Hands
We all like to have premium hands like A-A, K-K, Q-Q, J-J, and A-K fall into our hands while playing Hold’em. Unfortunately, the reality is that these hands don’t come around nearly as often as we’d like them to so we’re forced to play a lot of second rate hands. And when you play second rate cards, you definitely risk being dominated by the aforementioned premium hands.
In fact, you can even get trapped when you play hands such as these just by limping into a hand. For instance, if you limp in with a second rate hand such as K-J and get raised by K-K later on then you’re not only dominated but also looking at either a wasted bet or, even worse, further wasted money by calling the raise. In either situation, you’ve been trapped by limping in with your second rate hand from an early position.
Some other examples of trap hands besides K-J include A-J, A-T, K-Q, Q-J, and J-T. These hands are all good enough to make calls with yet they are vulnerable to premium hands. And if you’re making calls with cards such as these in early position then you could be in for a lot of trouble on down the line.
Of course this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t play these hands because they can earn you a lot of money on down the line if played right. For instance, if you hold J-T in late position and nobody has called the big blind then you can call to try and hit something big on the flop or just raise and steal the blinds. Just make sure you have position when trying to pull off these moves though.