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Choosing Your Battles in Poker According to Your Capabilities

In poker you have to play mostly winning hands and fold the loosing hands, you would want to bet when there are chances of winning or just fold when you don’t hold much chance. It's very similar to how you would play casino games such as blackjack, not every hand can be a winner, remember to look at the big picture, and not focus on each individual game. These are just the basics but one of the most important concepts in the game is choosing your battles. You have to select your battles based on your bankroll and your skills.

Money Would Always Go to Money.

Big stacks do have an advantage at any type of poker game. The game is all about taking risks, investing and making money out of it. In the games with big bets, bigger stacks do beat the smaller ones simply because they can manipulate them. They have more options, which the smaller stacks do not have.

The more money you have, the more money you would be able to make in the game. This should always be kept in mind, not only does your bankroll matter, but also the money on the table matters a lot. In poker, repetition of the successful tactics makes money. When you repeatedly apply pressure on the weaker players you would earn profits. It doesn’t have to be flashy or noticeable, but your advantage in terms of money will make you a little profit each time you do something right at the table.

Take an example of the live or online casinos; they make their money through a small but regular cut from each pot or through a collection charge. Although, it might seem to be a trivial charge, in the long run the amount comes up to be quite staggering.  

The same goes with players too. If, for example, you have an option to bet $100,000 on a hand that has an opportunity of 60/40, what would you do? It might seem to be a very tempting situation, but the fact is that it is still quite dangerous. If you loose, you loose big and if you win it is definitely good. Letting an opportunity like this pass is the best decision since there are other, less risky methods to get the same results.  

Play Little Pots

It is much better to play smaller pots. Good players would still want to make large profits, but they do it in smaller units which decrease the risks for them. Bad players would want to win big money fast and so they would go for the bigger pots. In a tournament, such players would even enter monster pots with just medium strong hands. For most players, playing bigger pots is not a good decision expect for those who either have a monster hand or are otherwise extremely good players.

Going all out is not always the best road to success since it also has many pitfalls. The best way is to go small and steady. However, if bigger pots come along your way when you have an advantage you must definitely take a shot at them. If you don’t do that you are again loosing out to your opponents who might not even have better hands. If you have a good hand, you must be bold and not stop at anything, if you fold you would giving over the money that belonged to you to your opponent.

So the trick here is to choose the pots where you have the best advantage, small or big. In tournaments, the size of your bankroll always matters a lot and that is why you must win as many small pots as you can and try your hand at the bigger pots when you have very strong hands. That is how you would increase the size of your stacks steadily.

If you choose your battles correctly and structure your game accordingly, then you can definitely get what you want more often.

Who am I

My name is Roy Bennett. I have a sport column in Chattanooga Times Free Press. Chattanooga, Tennessee is a great city - this is where Ted Turner came from. His life and great deeds inspired me to be a journalist. There was a vacant place in Sports so this is how it all begun. I knew more about all kind of sports and poker is for sure my favorite one.