New players and even experienced players often make a fundamental error when thinking about the money in the pot. When is the money that you bet into the pot your money and when is it not your money? This is a very fundamental rule that you should always remember: Once the money you bet is in the pot, it is no longer your money. Sounds simply enough right? Well it isn’t.

Let’s say you had raised a Hold’em hand before the flop with KK. You bet those kings again on the flop and once more on the turn but a big fat ace falls on the river and you are sure that one of the other players has an ace. Some players will make what we call a “crying call” on the river with their kings, even though they are sure they are beat. The faulty reasoning for giving away that last bet? “Well I already had so much of my money in the pot, what was one more bet.” Wrong!

Money bet into the pot by any player is immediately part of the pot that money belongs to no one until the hand is settled and the dealer pushes those chips to the winning player. Later we will be talking about pot odds and those calculations require you to correctly evaluate what each bet will mean to you versus the entire pot, not your pot or their pot or just the part of the pot that is a win for you.

The chips that are “yours” are stacked up right in front of you. The chips in the pot are there for you to win or lose but they don’t belong to anyone. Keep that lesson firmly in mind and you will be well on your way to making better decisions about betting, raising, calling and yes, folding.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #21

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 10:37 pm 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.