Now this is a common trend for this writer and I’m sure it’s common for many other players out there as well.
Basically I’m going to outline a few things to always keep in mind while playing a hand and discuss how I ignored these during the hand in question.
Chip Stack Size
Always, always, always pay attention to the size of the chip stack of the other players at the table. You may be holding a strong hand and think you put in a nice sized bet but if someone has a ton more chips than you, well, that “big” bet you made doesn’t appear to be as big to them.
Number of players at the table
The number of players at the table affects the strength or weakness of your hand. If you are playing at a table with only a few players, the hand values go up. If its a full table the hand value goes down.
Tournament or Ring Game
If it’s a tournament and your opponent has a ton of chips and you don’t really have many, well, according to most pros the guy with the most chips is expected to try and take you out. Some pros disagree with this strategy but being that it’s more common to hear “knock the guy out every chance you get” well you should just assume that most players will take every chance they can get to take you out.
Investment Odds
If someone has a lot of chips they can take more calculated risks. Someone with less chips does not want to play as many hands as they’ll just be bleeding chips trying to pick something up. If the person has a lot of chips and the blinds are relatively small, then they can play more hands in the hopes of knocking out an opponent. They risk little for a big reward, whereas when you don’t have many chips you basically just need to pick a spot and run with it.
Playing Style
This is the big one. Know your opponent. Are they calling every bet? Are they betting every time? Are they playing conservative, aggressive, coy, etc?
OK, so let’s run down what happened. I was playing in a sit n go where the blinds weren’t increasing. There were a total of 3 players at the table, one guy had about 15k in chips, I had around 2k, and the other player had something like 500 chips. I had big slick (AK suited), and the player with 500 chips moved all in preflop. I of course called, and so did the guy with the 15k. Flop came something like 7 A 9. I moved all in. The guy with all the chips called me. He had hit 2 pair on the flop. The blinds had been 5 / 10.
Now of course I could argue that he should have never called a 500 chip bet with 7 9 in his hand. Then again if you do the math 500 chips to someone holding 15k in chips is well 1/30 of their chip stack. For me it was 1/4 my chip stack. Big difference there right? Also the guy was calling every bet because he had enough chips to take risks and hope for a good flop. In this case he got it and knocked us both out at the same time. He risked 500 chips to see a flop, with 1,500 in the pot (so he was invested for 33% of the pot.) Now, he knew if he hit something on the flop he could take the rest of my 1,500 as well. So he risked 500 to see a flop at a chance of taking down a total of 2,500 chips for the right flop. Now his investment seems better. Had he not hit he would have simply folded and waited for another chance to get me.
As it was a tournament he was taking the approach of knocking out at least 1 player if not 2 if he hit the right hand, so once again he was following protocol.
He was playing every flop, as he could afford it, and would then bet the minimum on the flop, again on the turn, then bet big on the river. He did this every hand. Basically he was just bleeding chips out of the short stacks as he knew if he bet big enough on the river we couldn’t call or raise him. Being that I was aware of this I was able to double up on him once before and was hoping to do it again.

Long story short, I didn’t take into consideration what he was up to. I saw something good in my hand and wanted to double up. I overplayed my hand, or undervalued the size of his chips.