Advanced Poker Strategy – Jamming with Trash Hands

There you are, despite your best efforts, sitting deep in an online poker tournament but in danger of going out. You are in the bottom ten percent of the players left and you keep getting trash hands over and over again; if you don't act soon, you are going to get blinded off. The ideal strategy at this point is usually to wait for the best hand you think you are going to get and then move all in, but an advanced poker tactic is to jam with a horrible hand in order to play the odds.

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Unless your hand is dominated or you are facing a pair, the worst you are going to get in a heads up situation pre flop is being about a 30% dog. If you jam with seven duce off suit and you get a caller with big slick, he is about 70% likely to win. Obviously you want to get better odds than 30% when you can, but we are assuming for the sake of this lesson that you can't, which just leaves the question of how to best jam with trash.

If you are getting kicked around and no longer have the chip stack to fight back, all you are hoping for is a double up or three to get you back in the swing of things. To better your odds of doubling up you want to get heads up.

Take this situation for example:

You are in the blind with nine five off suit. You go all in. You have a shot of picking up the blinds, which would be great, but if not you are going to hope the small blind is folding because the big blind is behind him, and the big blind is calling – he is likely to call with anything because A) he knows you are desperate and B) a typical button move is a bluff to steal the blinds.

Now if he has total garbage (like your hand) he might just let it pass, but if he has an ace or king queen he's calling – which is fine because both your cards are live.

The upshot is you are trying to control your all in, timing it to avoid having to do it when you are dominated (you push with Ace, Ten and get called with Ace, King) or when your opponent has a pair.

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