Dont ya Hate..

[SirFWALGMan]

Dont you hate it when you bust AA with 77, and take his whole stack, then get all theological about not going all in with a pair, and THEN lose your stack to KK with QQ, because there is no way he would have raised 13 bucks pre-flop with KK? Lol.

[omahilo]

sometimes its easy to fold AA,KK, and QQ when your beat for sure and then its hard to fold them.

People at Party/Empire might just be going allin on AT on the Txx flop or they could actually have you beat.

[Zybomb]

I think one of the things players, even good players miss so often (myself included) is not knowing your opponents. At a table of people that you dont know, you can fairly quickly catagorize most of them, and have a pretty good idea of cards they are likely to be holding when they make certain moves...and thus you act accordingly

Am I saying you should put your stack all in with AJs when the maniac at the table who's gone all in 6 times in a row pushes in again.....no. This is another mistake I see people making so often. Even if he has a duece seven, you aren't much more than 3 to 2...in a cash game do you want several hundred dollars on the line like that? Thats assuming he doesn't have a real hand, which some of the time he will.

When playing at some tables (like party for example) realize there are tons of chasers, and hundreds of players just DYING to pay you off. You in fact get raised when they hold bottom pair often, and they are content to call the way down with it afterwards. Overanalyzing a situation where a player doesn't understand it can work against you.

I think classifying players is very important (and one of the main reasons at a new table standard advice is to fold the first 5 or 6 hands short of AA KK QQ AKs, to try and study the players and put them into catagories...that and if anything youd get classified as a tight player, so when you make your moves it makes them that much stronger.)

A classic beginner's mistake (not suggesting he is a beginner, just that he made a beginners mistake) I saw on the American Poker Championship, where a player (I forget the name) had Ace Queen, and was in a hand with Josh Arieh where he held K5. The flop land K,Q,x. Arieh led out, and this player was content to call all the way down with his ace queen. A raise on the flop may or may not of won the hand right there, but at least it will tell you where you are, rather than have you call all the way down not knowing a single thing...if you are reraised you can fold, or if you are called you probably bought yourself a free card (or a chance to stab if you think he showed weakness on the call), and then if you are bet into again on the river you can reconsider your situation. Short of a great read, its unlikely Arieh would of taken the hand down if he had been in the pot against a better player (although with his super aggressive tendencies, and great reads you never know) I also think its unlikely he would of bet at the pot three times, if he was against a different player....he played the hand a certain way because of who he was against.

Knowing your opponents can and should effect the way you play hands...even if they are the exact same hands as youve played before.