Play Free Poker And Learn When To Go All In And When Not To
Posted in Fly Fishing Gear on the February 28, 2011
Playing any sort of poker be it free poker online or cash stakes poker is very exciting when you are dealt a nice hand. But what if you go All In hoping to win big and all the other players fold?
This can happen a lot if you don’t play the situation correctly and is very frustrating, but there are ways to cash-in on such opportunities with smart play and in this article I am going to tell you what you need to know in order to be able to develop those smarts. This comes from experience, knowing about things like playable pocket matrices, pot and hand odds and by observation of the other players and the way they bet.
When you get a good pair at the start of a hand you most certainly have an advantage which can, depending on the cards that open up at the flop give you a better chance of winning outright without the need for bluffing and other such mind games! I will explain this with the following example: Your starting cards are a very nice pair, Ks, Kd, this is a great pair and gives you a strong winning opportunity.
Your options at this point are to either go all-in or wait for the flop cards to open. If you wait you must keep in mind that if a Ace opens on the flop then your winning chances are greatly reduced.
In such a case going on and betting more could be a waste and you would be advised to fold, because if someone else is betting then it’s likely they have an Ace in their hand. Or of course they might be bluffing or are maybe just a donk player hence the importance of learning to observe other players.
You might think that it would have been better to have gone all-in but you need to remember that in that case too the person having an Ace might have gone ahead and bet and you would have lost more money. As of now you are down but not out.
Now lets again take the above example of you having Ks,Kd, but this time the flop cards are 6s,6h, Qh. Well now you know that if anyone has a 6, you will face defeat.
The way to go is not to lose hope because it’s a small value card and chances are that the person having a 6 might have already folded. So just raise the stakes and see how the others go about it. If someone goes all-in then he could be having a 6 and the best option is to fold and minimize the damage.
Don’t be disheartened by the examples above, they are meant to give the impression that it’s not possible to play to win! What I am trying to get across is that poker has a lot of unpredictable probability (also known as luck) in that there are the elements of player psychology plus what cards open up as the hand progresses that affect how useful your cards are - That’s poker and sometimes even the best cards will be rendered powerless by events, so keep in mind that if you are not winning aim to lose as little as possible.
If you keep playing good cards in a solid way then probability is on your side and you will come out on top in the long run and as you have minimised your losses in the bad patches you will have money to bet when things are better.
To develop the poker smarts and experience needed to exploit good as well as weaker hands, start by learning poker online in quality yet lower risk games,learn by your mistakes but keep your mistakes cheap! Micro stakes and play poker online free games are the way to go in the early stages and be sure to read up on lots of free poker lessons too in order to learn about things like pot odds and playable pockets.