Holdem Poker Kicker
Poker Kicker Your kicker is the second card you are playing in a game of Texas Hold’em. To some, understanding the hand strengths is enough to get by in poker. To the rest of us, we know there is a little more to it. A “kicker” in poker is a side card that can break ties. It is the 2nd characteristic to look at when determining rankings during a poker hand. (The first would be to determine the initial rank of a hand.). A kicker is a card in poker that decides the winner if two or more players are tied with the same hand rank. A player with AK will outkick an opponent’s AQ on a AJ932 board. Both players have a pair but AK has the better 5-card hand of AAKJ9 vs AAQJ9 where the K/Q, J, and 9 count as kickers.
Description
Pre-flop
Most poker players would see major improvements if they had clearer pre-flop ranges for opening, calling and raising. It’s an essential part of exploiting other players and ensuring you aren’t exploited yourself. Kicker will help you analyse your hand histories to better understand what you currently do and then refine these ranges.
Whether you have hand histories or not, Kicker has tools to develop your ranges from scratch. You can also develop bespoke ranges for playing in different environments or against different opponents.
You can then use Kicker’s training tool to drill yourself on these ranges and develop a deeper understanding of them. You’ll then naturally understand better spots to deviate from these standard ranges.
Using your hand histories, Kicker will show you how your opponents react at the level you play at, in different situations and with different bet sizes.
Post-flop
Street by street Kicker analyses your post-flop game, enabling you to pick the right ranges. This will help you to balance bluff and value hands, plugging potential leaks in your game.
Understanding opponents’ post-flop ranges is also extremely powerful. Wouldn’t it be great to know how often your opponents call, raise or fold in different spots, with different bet sizes? Kicker has a wealth of information like this, available at your fingertips.
The essence of Kicker is to construct ranges to exploit opponents. You can clearly see how your range compares with theirs on the flop, turn and river. You will then learn the best times to check, bet, call or raise by analysing different scenarios.
Kick it up a gear
By training with Kicker you’ll soon become far more confident, both pre and post flop. For example:
- “How does a broadway board hit your ranges?”
- “When facing a re-raise, how should you respond?”
- “On a paired board, how should you construct your range?”
Kicker will help improve your win-rate in spots like these and all others you may find yourself in
Do not underestimate the value of the kicker in Texas Holdem Poker. It may mean the difference between winning or losing. You will be suprised to find out how many times a Texas Holdem hand comes down to a tie with the kicker as the tie breaker.
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Texas Holdem Poker strategy: The importance of the Kicker
A Kicker is a poker term used to describe the left over cards once players have made a hand. They are used to determine the winner of a hand where both players have the same cards but there are still cards remaining to make the best five card hand. Where two players have the same five card hand - most often a Flush, Straight, or Full House then a Split Pot situation arises and the Kicker does not apply.
Only the very inexperienced do not take the kicker into consideration when assesing the value of the hand. While you may live or die on the River you kicker can put a knife in your heart fast. The one and only time that you need not worry about your kicker is if you have flopped four of a kind. If you have four deuces and a trey kicker you are going to win the hand the greatest per centage of the time, by far.
That is why you do not waste time and money playing suited hands like [8d,2d] The eight is essentially your kicker in the flush draw. Even if you ignore the odds that over 90% of the time you will not end up with a flush by the end of the hand. Some poker player luckier than you may have come in with an [9d,3d] You loose.
In a tight game, the hand-domination perspective does lead you to the best course of action. You should check and call if someone bets. You should probably not call if there is a bet and a raise, although it actually turns out that checking and calling a raise rather than folding to a raise is not a large error. It only costs you a few pennies on average.
In very loose games, this popular wisdom just doesn't hold up. In a very loose game, betting the hand straightforwardly, and calling if anyone raises, makes almost twice as much money in the long run as checking and calling. This is not the popular wisdom. Most players would feel very uncomfortable if they bet this top pair with a weak kicker and got raised when the flop had no draws that someone may be raising on. Betting and calling is the right thing to do against a field of loose or very loose players.
The reason for this is that in very loose games you are more likely to have other players with 3s and 8s than Kings in their hands. In a loose game, your opponents are more likely to have two kinds of hands than are likely in a tight game. A hand such as Ks-2s is much more likely to be played by an opponent in a loose game, and a hand such as 8d-6h is also much more likely to be played. You'll get action, maybe even a raise from hands like that, if you bet out your top pair with a weak kicker in a loose game. In a tight game, players aren't likely to be holding those kinds of hands on the flop. Of course, even in a loose game, you are probably beaten if you get raised, but the chances are good enough that you are not beaten to make it worth calling a raise. The pot will be large enough to hold onto that hand because there are enough worse hands that loose players might raise with to make it pay off. Don't expect to win most of the pots by doing this, but do expect to win most of the money eventually.
In more typical games, the two plays, betting versus checking and calling, are about equivalent in terms of the amount of money made. The best play is to probably check and call in a typical game. It makes about the same money as betting and does so with a little less risk.
The general lesson here is to play your top pairs more aggressively in loose games while playing top pairs with weak kickers more passively in tight games. This is a major difference in how a common situation should be played different under different game conditions. I think it illustrates how important it is to think in terms of the game conditions and the kinds of hands you opponents are likely to have rather than thinking in terms of only your own hand.