Top Poker Rooms
Poker Room Reviews
Poker News
Poker Tournaments for You This Week
There is never a dull moment in a poker player’s life. Obviously, the main reason for that is the constant existence of poker tournaments and poker events that one can participate in. These events are not just for making money, but also to have some fun and get better at the game in the process. Several live poker tourneys are lined up for this week and the coming weeks. Here is a note on some of the tournaments you can … Read the rest
2012 PokerStars Macau Poker Championships Announced
PokerStars is one online poker room that never takes a break from hosting tournaments. The poker room recently released details about its upcoming event, the PokerStars Macau Live Tournaments. The Macau tournaments hosted by PokerStars is one of the biggest and richest poker events held in Asia. It includes 4 major poker series – Macau Poker Cup (MPC) Red Dragon, Asia Championship of Poker, Macau Poker Cup Championship or MPCC and the yearly Asia Pacific Poker Tour event at Macau. … Read the rest
The $30,000 Winner Wednesday Dozen Unveiled
Winner Poker has partnered with pokernews.com to bring a new promotion to its new members. The online poker room announced its new promotion called Winner’s Wednesday Dozen Freerolls, which literally lets you win free money. The new promotion is open to all the new players who register with Winner Poker and make a deposit. The promo will run for three months, and all you need to do is play poker and earn as many Winner Points as you can. Here … Read the rest
How Folding Can Help Your Bankroll
Saturday, June 28th, 2008 by Phil
It’s strange when people think of good poker they usual think of the fantastic bluffs or the courageous calls they’ve made or seen on TV. We all know that Texas Holdem favors the aggressor in most situations and that’s true in most cases but there’s also a tatic that seems to be overlooked in poker.
Folding.
I’ve seen too many players go bust because they couldn’t or wouldn’t let go of their huge pocket pairs or their top pair top kicker hands.
I’ve also seen too many players call off small bets on the river with marginal hands even though they knew they were beat.
Besides nobody wants to fold, it’s a sign of weakness, it means that you can get run over at the poker tables, it means that you’re too passive, the list goes on and on why a lot of players think it’s a weak play. And of course nobody wants to be bluffed out of a pot.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not a weak play if it saves you money.
If we are to believe that poker is one long game and your decisions over the course of tens of thousands of hands determines if you’re a winning player or not then it becomes even more essential that folding is part of that equation.
For example, a friend of mine asked me how he could improve at the online cash games. He’s a winning player but he wants to improve his win rate.
He’s likes to play 25NL online. He was running a win rate at about 5x BB/100 hands. Basically he’s winning $1.25 per 100 hands he plays.
He’s a solid player and he’s pretty aggressive for the most part. The only hole that I could see was that he wasn’t folding his marginal hands enough or wasting too many bets on calling stations. We calculated how much money he was wasting by calling down with marginal hands or calling on draws that were marginal etc.
The results were interesting. Over the course of 100 hands he basically wasted $5 making bad/marginal calls on hands that he lost or when he was chasing without proper odds. That may not be a significant amount but over the course of let’s say 20,000 hands that adds up to $1,000 in lost profits.
Again, I’m not advocating folding every hand or even folding against a maniac whose range can be as wide as the Grand Canyon but I’m suggesting that playing smartly is also folding smartly. Aggressive poker is good poker but even the most aggressive players I know have learned how to fold, especially in tight spots where they have a pretty big hand. Learning or knowing when to fold in a tight spot can really save you significant amounts of money.
That’s one of the keys to being a winning player. I know it’s boring and it’s not exciting but it’s winning poker.
Money saved is money earned, and over the long run that can really add up. Do the math and you’ll see what I mean.
