The Price of Intelligence

  Under most circumstances, if you are giving away money during a game of Texas Holdem somebody has explained the rules to you wrong. With that said, there are some situations where throwing your cash around strategically is perfectly acceptable.  Unless we are speaking about an old school Kung Fu movie, blind people usually aren't very good when it comes to a duel with swords. You need your eyes to get a look at what your opponent is doing. In Texas Holdem, your "eyes" are not necessarily those things in your head that you are staring at your cards with. If simply gawking at players gave us actionable strategic intelligence, then anybody ogling Jennifer Leigh in the new issue of Playboy would have a good chance of beating her at the tables. When the term "eyes" is used, we mean your intelligence gathered by breaking your opponent's play down.  Sometimes it is a good move to play with bad cards just to see what your opponent does. You don't want to waste a good hand on an unknown entity, so why not just waste a few bets in order to get them to give up the sort of information you can work with.  Try not to think of this as giving money away, try to imagine it as an investment in future hands. Once you have enough intelligence on a player to put them on a hand successfully you will make your money back with interest.  Good Luck!