BAD BEATS

After a long session of playing where you would have ended just about even, you would have been thinking about the several hundred dollars sitting on the table that you would have still been considering yours. Of course, the money wouldn’t have been yours because of that one last improbable card on the end that had beaten you.

With so many people staying to the end in each hand, implied collusion has been rampant. Bad beats have been an unavoidable cost of playing poker.

Putting people on hands

When there would be six hands up against you, how would you figure out what they all would be? Someone has been on a straight draw, someone has been on a flush draw, someone has flopped two-pair, someone has had a small pocket pair and has been waiting for a set. But which one of the other poker players has been in each of these situations?

A Common Mistake:

Over aggression, especially having raised after the flop. You have flopped a flush draw; a person in front of you has bet. How strong would their hand be? You have raised to find out and expect that you would also get a free card. Three poker players after have called your raise and so has the original bettor. You will not learn anything, and with this many poker players, odds would be that you would not get your free card. Often it would be better to get your flush draw as cheaply as possible and worrying about raising if you would be hitting the flush because someone would still be calling at the end.

Strategy:

Fold frequently. If you have been watching the game and have seen ten hands in a row ending with a showdown, would that change with your presence? If no one’s bets have been respected, yours will not be either. To claim the pot, you would have to have the best cards at showdown. You should forget about bluffing it would not work. What you could have been loose on in these games has been the position requirement for your starting cards.

You could have been playing drawing hands from an early position because you could have safely assumed that the requirements for playing a drawing hand large pot, no pre-flop raise would have always been present.

However, you shouldn’t have started playing garbage for starting cards and thought that, because there have always been many callers, anything has been playable. Playing garbage has been a seductive trap in loose-passive poker games because any two starting cards could have hit the flop and won a big pot.

All the pots would be big, so you shouldn’t compete unless you have had an edge at the beginning. One way to think about loose-passive poker games has been to imagine a poker player’s dream where every hand would be a large pot and you would always be dealt the best starting cards.

Would you want to realize that dream? Then you should fold every garbage hand that would come your way. With correct strategy, loose-passive poker games would be the most profitable to play in.

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