Poker Room Radio

Pokeroom.com – When looking at this question in a very broad sense, we could say that the answer is simple. Players will place a bet into the pot when they think they have a strong hand. I am sure that this is how the earliest games were generally played, with poker players simply betting on whether they were holding the best hand or not. I would not have taken long though, for players to realise that they can bet heavily on their cards and force players to fold without having any sort of hand at all. This is commonly known as bluffing and is a bet placed to represent strength and force your opponent to fold.

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On the other side of the coin, there are bets which are usually smaller and are made in order to induce a call from your opponent when you have a strong hand. These smaller bets can also be made if you are drawing to a big hand and wish to build the pot a little without committing too much in chips.

As well as the aforementioned reasons, bets can sometimes be made simply to ask a question of other players, as betting is the only real way of extracting information about how strong your opponents hand might be. If you find yourself in a pot and th action is being checked round, placing a bet can sometimes be enough to pick up the pot uncontested.

The point to remember is, that all bets have a purpose and the skill of poker, is understanding that purpose and reacting accordingly. www.pokeroom.com

Full tilt poker – If we are lucky enough to reach the final two players in a Multi Table Tournament, then as players, it is important to know how to give ourselves the best chance of winning.
There are some players out there who may feel that caution is the best approach, and while I would certainly agree that cautious play does have it’s place in poker, I don’t think it is in heads up play.

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The fact is, that in a MTT, when you reach the closing stages, the blinds will be very damaging to you, and so you cannot wait for a strong hand to get involved. Every hand that you fold preflop, you are giving chunks of chips away to your opponent in blinds, and this, will begin to give them the edge, unless of course you start with a big chip lead. In the situation of starting with a strong lead in chips, you can afford to wait to an extent, but I still feel that applying immediate pressure, could swing the chip count further in your favour before your opponent makes their move.

The only situation where I would choose not to be immediately aggressive heads up, would be if I am shortstacked myself. In this situation, it is true that you need to gamble quickly, but I would wait a few hands to try and pick up either suited connectors, any two paint cards, any pair or Ace. If I outchip my opponent by a considerable margin, I will probably shove with almost any two cards every hand. Fulltiltpoker