Dont Let Bad Poker Ruin Your Life

Knowing when to fold

This is about Fixed-Limit Hold'em only.

A good player knows when to play and when to quit. He recognizes when he is on tilt and is aware when a game is too juicy to just quit while ahead.

Most poker players have a sharp cue as to when to fold preflop. The decision to preflop is crucial. Simply put, you want to play premium hands preflop. In terms of marginal hands, you want to play suited connectors/small pairs more when it is a multi-way pot and less so when it is about three people seeing the flop. For big cards such as AJ or KT, the opposite is the case. Be more willing to play these hands in a heads up or three-way situation. Always fold garbage hands like Q5 offsuit.

Like mentioned earlier, these preflop decisions are important, but they are not the whole story. There are three rounds of betting postflop, and the decisions you make are not automatic.

Small Mistakes vs. Big Mistakes

In Limit Hold'em, the bets are a small fraction of the pot. This encourages action because it is cheaper to see a showdown. This aspect of Limit appeals to fish and new players who like to 'see cards.'

Most bad players lose money at Limit Hold'em over time and not on any one big hand. This is because they continually make small mistakes. They call when they do not have pot odds, or they continue to call when they are clearly beat. Every time you call when you should not, you are making a small mistake.

A big mistake at Limit Hold'em is folding when you should not have. It means folding when you have the best hand late in the pot. For example, suppose you have AQ. The board is KQ2 rainbow. You raised the pot preflop and there were 3 callers (8 small bets). It is checked around to you. You bet, someone raises, 2 people call, you call. A 5 falls on the turn. The raiser bets, the other players fold.

Basically, there are two major decisions to be made at Limit Hold'em. The first is preflop, whether to play your hand or not, and the second decision is to be made on the turn. The flop decision is not that important because most of the time you will just be making or calling a small bet; this is a decision that can be made almost entirely based on pot odds.

The second major decision is on the turn. Assuming you call the turn, you should call the river because it would be a disaster to fold the winning hand on the river. Calling the turn and the river means investing 2 big bets, equivalent to 4 small bets. Assuming the pot is raised preflop and just one bet is made postflop, you would have only invested 3 bets to see the turn. Thus, you can fold at the turn and lose slightly less than half the money you would have lost had you called to a showdown.

The river is not the time to fold your hand. The only exceptions to this are when you missed a draw (such as a small flush draw) or if there is so much betting and raising that you know you are beat.