Advanced Strategy - Dominated and Second Best Hands

When deciding whether to play a hand or not, you should consider two main points:

* what are your chances of winning with your hand, and
* how big is the pot going to be

You should definitely play the hands in which you have a good chance of winning a large pot. But you should shy away from hands that will only win a small pot or that will lose a big one. Hands like AJ or AT are usually ’win a little, lose a lot' hands.

If you hold AJ unsuited, an early position player raised preflop, you called, and the flop is AT5, if you are the only one with the ace you probably won’t get any action. On the other hand, if the bettor has AK or AQ, you are probably going to lose a lot of money by paying all the way to the river. Let’s see what your chances are of winning with AJ against AK: the flop is A85, you have only 12% of winning, your opponent has 87% and 1% for a tie.

Any aces or kings with a low or even medium kicker are potential dominated hands if not played carefully. Therefore, folding a preflop raise is probably the best decision.