Doug Sahm's Poker Journal

  • Placing your bet
  • Playing low pocket pairs

Placing your bet

Placing a bet or wager into a poker pot is more than just placing money over a line on the poker table felts, its a statement to other players who are seated at the same table as you.

Placing your bet is telling your opponents one of two things:

That you feel that you have the best hand available and you are willing to place your FullTiltPoker stack on the line in order to show them.

Or

You think that they are holding a hand that isn’t strong enough to win the hand and you intend to make them pay in order to see if they can better their hand.

The initial idea of betting in the game of poker is that a player would place a wager on their hand been the strongest, with players folding or killing their hand should they feel that their hand isn’t strong enough to win the pot.

With the popularity of poker still to hit its peak and growing massively every day, that concept changed due to the number of players who decided that they were going to start to place bets in order to bluff their opponents into thinking that the betting player has a strong hand.

With this in mind, the best possible poker stars betting strategy is to mix up your betting style, placing bets into the pot with both strong and bluffed hands in order to prevent seeming like a passive player, a player who is seen as one of the easiest players to face up against.

You should be aware that the style of your betting also carries messages of strength, with a player who check – raises into the pot showing that they are willing to let their opponent place the first bet in order for them to raise the amount of winnings.

This is a show of great strength in their hand, letting you take the option of taking a free card if there are no further bets.

If you find that you are subject to this style of betting you need to think back to previous hands and how the player has been playing as this could be a show of great strength and a time that you should be considering folding your hand or making a strong play if you feel that you have the nuts.

One thing for sure, you should be confident when you are placing your absolutepoker.com stake into the pot, failure to show confidence makes your play easily read by opponents and will result in a sharp loss of funds.