You know how you really want to see that river card but the price is just too high for you to call. Don’t you want to fold but have the dealer turn up that last card? Well, first of all–bad idea! If the fold is the right action then fold and move on to the next hand. Most card rooms and casinos have a strict policy against showing any community cards after the hand is over, it slows down the play. But seeing them does have a name–we call it rabbit hunting. You will see rules in most rooms that say: No Rabbit Hunting!

Now don’t confuse rabbit hunting with “Running it Twice”, which refers to a variation where some of the community cards (all five or only the turn and the river or just the river) are dealt twice. This is a cash game variation not tournament.

Let’s say one player is all in after the flop and he gets called. The all in shows KcKd to a board of AsKhJh with two hearts; the other player shows AhTh. The three kings are ahead but can lose to any heart; any queen and several runner, runner combinations. The players may decide to ‘run it twice’. A turn and river card are put out and half the pot goes to the winner with those two cards; then a second turn and a second river are put out and the other half of the pot goes to that winner.

Some houses do not allow running it twice but most good card rooms do. So you can usually run it twice but you can’t rabbit hunt.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #63

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 1:44 am and is filed under Poker Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.