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Know When You Are Beat

By launchpoker, Jan 9, 2008
Know When You Are Beat


  In most sports it is very easy to know when things have gone horribly wrong. If you are playing football, and find yourself on your backside with somebody sticking smelling salts under your nose, chances are you have been on the wrong end of a play. In baseball, if the pitcher is watching the ball sail out of the park with a look on his face that says he would rather be in Paris, chances are this is not one of his crowning moments. In poker bad things happen, but because you have no idea what cards are in the other guy's hand, you won't know how bad things are until it is truly too late. The key to financial solvency in poker is not winning every hand (this is impossible) but limiting the amount of money you throw away on losing hands.



  A real world example of knowing when to fold is from Andy Bloch's act of desperation against Chip Reese during the final hand of the WSOP's first H.O.R.S.E. event. Andy was holding a very weak and unsuited 9/8 combination. Little did he know that Chip was holding an A/Q, both clubs.



  An unsuited 9/8 is not the sort of cards you want to be holding when an important championship is on the line. That hand needs a lot of luck to win, and a player of Chip's caliber probably won't be easily bluffed in this circumstance.



  The flop delivered a Jc/7d/7c. Andy had to recognize that he didn't have the kicker to have that pair go his way, and all he had left was to hope a 10 came his way and he completed a 7/8/9/10/J straight.



  Nobody will ever accuse Andy Bloch of being a bad poker player, but on this hand his hopes were exceeding his grasp. Most really good players try to minimize the role of luck in their game. Andy was hoping for a bad beat. If he could justify holding on after the flop, to keep going after the turn only produced a 4 was an exercise of pure optimism. The river was also a 4, and Chip had won based on his stronger cards.



  The proper strategy for Andy was to stop before he started with this hand. He would have lost some with the high blinds, but he still would have had a chance in the next hand. This one was doomed almost from the start.