To be a great or good poker player you should be thinking of your own hand in relation to what your opponents have, and realizing that poker is a game of relative hand values versus absolute hand values. It’s essential to be successful you must incorporate this into your poker playing. Not grasping this concept will lead to unnecessary loses.
However difficult it might seem to be, if you really want to move to the next level of play you must learn to be able to lay down those big hands you know you are beat. In many cases in poker, it’s often just using common sense. If you are holding pocket aces (As-Ah) and the flop cards are Qd-Qs-Jd, the turn card comes 9d, and river card laid down is a 8d. Really what are the chances you have the winning hand at this point.
No matter how good you think your hand is you can’t automatically assume you have the best hand and you need to go through a process of assessing what you opponent may be holding. Of course you can only know this by paying attention and building a profile of the type of player your opponent is, and then using this profile to work out what type of hand he has.
