Moving-All-In in No-Limit Texas Holdem
One of the exciting aspects of no limit Texas Hold em is the option to move .all-in,. putting every one of your chips on the table (or every one of your opponent's chips, whoever has more) at risk. This is the most aggressive and pressuring move you can make in a no limit Texas Hold em game, as unless your opponent has the nuts (unbeatable) hand, he is hard pressed to call and risk losing everything.
Neutralizing your opponent's skill
The all-in move has been called the .Great Poker Equalizer,. in reference to the fact that there is little a professional can do to counter this move. If a player is willing to risk all their chips on their first two cards, there is nothing even the strongest player can do to outplay them. Some tournament experts have proposed an .all-in. strategy in tournaments as a way for novices to defeat professionals. However, if you are a strong poker player, you may want to be more judicious in your use of the all-in move.
If you are confident in your poker skills, moving all-in, especially pre-flop or with a deep stack of chips, should generally be a weapon of last resort. Some players love to move all their chips in pre-flop with a hand like A K. They reason that even if they are called, they are either way ahead or not too far behind, as they are nearly 50 percent to win against any pair other than KK or AA, and a large favorite against hands like A Q.
Turning a good hand into 7-2
The problem with this reasoning is that you will usually only get called by hands that are likely to beat you. Most of the time you will win the blinds, and when you get called, you will almost always get called with a pair (or another A K) which means you will at best be risking all of your chips on a 50-50 proposition. If this is your interest, you can go ahead and flip coins for your bankroll and get better odds. If you are playing in a tournament, the situation is different. If you have reached a point where the blinds are quite large relative to the average stack, the chance that everyone will fold and allow you to win a good sized pot, or that a desperate shorter stack will call with a hand weaker than yours, makes the move worthwhile. In a cash game with a deep stack of chips however, it is usually an error.
Similarly, moving all in with AA in a cash game is a mistake if the blinds are very small relative to the stacks. If you want to put in $200 to win $7 you can do that just as easily with 7 2 off-suit as with AA. Your goal in these cases should be to limp and let someone else raise so you can re-raise what may have become a sizable pot, or bet enough to force out draws and make a pot worth winning if you are called.
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