Everyone thinks they can draw to a winner or they think their top pair is always good. It gets even tougher to fold a good hand. When you have the second-best hand at the online poker table you are going to lose more often than not, and there’s no prize for coming in second. Recognizing that you need to fold this hand is one of the strengths of a good player.
But generally in Texas Holdem games, you want to play your premium hands preflop.
To explain, there are basically two major decisions to be made at limit Texas Holdem. The first happens preflop, whether to play your hand or not, and the second decision is to be made on the turn.
The flop decision is not that important because most of the time you will just be making or calling a small bet; you should base this on pot odds. Preflop, if you have just a marginal hand, you want to play suited connectors/small pairs more when it is a multi-way pot and less when it is about three people seeing the flop. For big cards such as AJ or KT, the opposite is the case. Be more willing to play these hands in a heads up or three-way situation. Always fold hands those troublesome hands like J4 offsuit or Ace with a small kicker. The kickers are just too weak to win a late hand showdown. Avoiding playing these starting hands is a good way to avoid trouble and having to fold a good, but not great hand.
The second major decision is on the turn. Assuming you call the turn, you should call the river because it would be a disaster to fold the winning hand on the river. Calling the turn and the river means investing two big bets, equivalent to four small bets. Assuming the pot is raised preflop and just one bet is made postflop, you would have only invested three bets to see the turn. Thus, you can fold at the turn and lose slightly less than half the money you would have lost had you called to a showdown.
The river is not the time to fold your hand. The only exceptions to this are when you missed a draw (such as a small flush draw) or if there is so much betting and raising that you know you are beaten.
