Cash Game Poker: the Careful Approach
Though obviously aggression is valued in online poker, it can become too easy a habit to get in the mode of firing too often. We’ve all seen the players who rocked a table by taking over hand after hand and making it difficult to defend against their continuous betting, but we’ve also seen those poker players walk into traps and lose it all.
The difference, then, in using aggression across the board, is to fit your aggression to the hands and spots where they will be most applicable, and reap the most reward.
My outlook (in the event of flopping mediocre hands) is to not invest any more money into the pot unless you’re fairly certain you can pick it up with a bet. Playing against 2 or 3 players, often a bet will take the pot down and end it there, but when you’re in a pot with 4 or more, there’s just no telling who has that card out there. The phrase ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’ equates to ‘Money you don’t lose is money you made.’
If the pot is worth a small feeler bet to try and take it, do so. Otherwise, there’s no harm in checking down a pot, especially on a board where people can have anything. Safe play in small pots can save money in the long run. Winning at online poker is not a hand by hand adventure: by that I mean, you don’t have to be in them all, and you certainly don’t have to win every hand you enter. It’s the big pots that make you money. Sometimes a player needs to err on the side of caution.
