Stop...Before you play your hand....think why am I doing this?

Seems simple....but it's a real question we should all be asking ourselves...

So many factors go into every raise/bet/check/fold situation that we really should focus on the why of what we're doing. What's your position, what's your stack in relation to the blinds, how tag or lag are the players left to act, what are their stacks plus about 20 more quesitons you should be thinking about.

Is your goal to steal the blinds/play a big pot/use pot control to manage a hand/ or wait ugh oh I just got reraised from the SB all in and I'm in the cutoff...Ugh what could this mean? Does SB really have a hand? Am I above his range? Why am I in this pot to begin with...I snap call with my JJ, damn he has QQ, I was 60 BB deep why did I do this? Prolly because I wasn't thinking about the big picture. Sure JJ looks pretty and SB has been fairly active but should you really be risking a deep stack on this exact hand?

This situation comes up often and it's this kind of situation that should easily be avoided. Why have your hand on the trigger...take your time and THINK through the situation...It's early let it go...you can't win every pot and when your deep pot control is very important to protect your stack. There will be plenty of opportunites that warrant shove fold and much better spots to get your chips in...Don't be afraid to play post flop.

Basically if your shorter say 20BB or so it's an easy call why? Because you made the decision to play for your stack as soon as you put chips in the pot..there is no situation where you should be raise folding here. Your goal should be live or die.

This is just a small example of a situation where a lot of low level thinking players go broke...Was the SB even justified in shoving 60BB? No but you can't control what he did you can only control how you reacted.

Moral here is to think through hand situations and what your trying to accomplish...there are plenty of fishes that play without thinking...do your best not to swim in their school.

One Love