Ever had a session where you know you played like crap?  Nevermind…it’s a rhetorical question.  If you read that first sentence and started shaking your head you’re either delusional, very lucky, or very very very good.  I’m none of those things, so I’ll happily admit there are days where despite everything I’ve learned about poker over the last few years I still play like a randy virgin taking his first shot at popping his cherry…in other words, I am completely devoid of insight or style, and generally fumble around or **** things up. After a hell session it can sometimes pay dividents to reflect on where things went wrong, and get back to basics.  In this post, I’m going to revisit some of the core texas hold em poker tips to avoid donkey plays, particularly in tournament poker.  

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In texas hold em winning hands with massive holdings is easy.  It doesn’t take long to learn what beats what, and when we hit a monster like a full house or flush it’s less a question of whether we will win but how much we can extract from a hand.  However, in hold em, particularly tournament play, we won’t always hit the big hands we need to stay alive.  When this happens, winning hands without the holdings can be key to our enduring success.  Many players simply lack the experience or balls to make strong plays when our opponents show weakness, so we’ll examine a few of the situations where we can look to take down pots, even when our hole cards are against us.

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