By Mark Freedman

His palms are sweaty, he’s never gripped his cards so tightly before, and he just finished recounting how many chips he invested into this pot for the fourth time. Here it comes; the river card. It’s a dud, and now he’s thinking ‘how can I still possibly win this hand’. However, this should not be the first idea that pops into this player’s head (especially during tournament play). If a player happens to get into this situation (and everyone has), the first thing that should come to mind is, ‘Is it still possible for me to get away from this hand?’. A player may be surprised by this answer, but it is always ‘YES’! No matter how much a player has invested into a pot to try and win, there is absolutely no sense in just throwing in the rest of his/her money because they were ‘pot committed’ with their busted straight (which now leaves them with 7 high). A talented poker player has the ability to come back from a large hit to their chip stack even late in the game. This may seem obvious to many, but this same mistake is made over and over again in the poker world. Let’s have an example to show what is being stressed here:

Alec (10000 starting chips) is holding 8, 9 of hearts in the big blind (300 chips). George (30000 starting chips) is the only caller to the hand, so Alec checks. The flop comes 10h Jh Kd. Alec checks, while George leads off with a bet of 3000. Alec calls for the draw. The turn comes 2c. Alec checks once again. George bets 5000. Alec once again just wants to see this draw play out, so he makes the call. River comes Kc. Alec is now staring at a dead hand (9 high).

After having invested 8300 chips into this hand, Alec now has 1700 left and is probably thinking, “I’m done either way; I might as well try a bluff”. Alec has made 2 big mistakes in this case (neglecting his faulty poker playing). His first mistake is that George bet about 4 times his stack the previous betting round, which not only indicates that Alec’s bet is probably not going to scare away George (unless he happened to catch him in a bluff, which probably wouldn’t be the case in this situation). His second mistake is that he has forgotten poker’s most infamous saying, ‘all you need is a chip and a chair’. If Alec were to fold on this hand, yes he would be short stacked, but his odds of winning a future hand are likely better than his odds of winning this one. A poker player must never feel committed to a pot when he/she KNOWS they are going to lose (the only exception is in a cash game, where one wanted to see the player’s cards so they could learn for next time). A player can always come back from a deficit, with some smart playing, and it can all start by throwing away that dead hand. However, given another set of circumstances, Alec could have been able to make a convincing bluff and win the pot (i.e. if he had had more chips to make his bet believable). So get back to the tables and get your money in on winning hands, not the dead ones.