What are you thinking? Or better yet what you should be thinking as a hand plays out

There are many factors that you should be thinking about but let's narrow that down to just one topic right now.

Equity

If a player shoves their shortstack into your hand and you look down at AKo, then player flips over their QJo....then you have 65% Equity in the hand. I'm not going to go into calculations here but you don't have to worry about those either....spend some time with your friend PokerStove, work on ranging your opponents and make a more educated decision at the tables.

Fold Equity

Simply put the equity gained due to the chance your villains will fold. This goes hand in hand with 3 betting. (For an excellent video on this watch Chimp Greg's 3 bet video http://vimeo.com/3310149) If a player proves to be weak/tight proving not to bet or call unless he has a solid hand then you get more fold equity, however for a strong/aggressive player the opposite is true hence the 4 bet. Be aggressive in fold equity situations, practice what you learn, this does work, sure every situation is not going to play out to your favor, but if you get this principle down and use it you will have more top finishes.

Let's say your opponent at blinds 5,000/10,000 raises 24,500 2 off the cutoff, and he has 195,000 behind, a VPIP of 37(Voluntary money put in pot % using programs such as poker tracker, holdem manager) And a PF% of 26 (Preflop raise percentage) You have 32BB from the small blind and are sitting on AJs, hand doesn't really matter here as your basically trying to get villain to fold and not go to showdown. This is a good situation for your 3 bet but how do you give the perception of fold equity. Bet a little more on your 3 bet...sure your not going to fold a 4 bet shove with your stack given your opponents semi wide range but to give yourself the best chance of not seeing a flop be comfortable betting around 100k or a lil more...this will give the perception to the villain that there is no way this guy is folding after putting so much of his stack in. And for the most part he's right but if his stats were a lil different and we did this then we do still have the option of folding after a 3 bet, were just working for perception. After all if you fold you still have 20 or so BB what do you have to lose? Some chips...What do you stand to gain? A possible win!

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