A Bet Saved is a Bet Won

by: Lou Krieger©

It’s no secret that we poker players are an aggressive lot. We like to play. We want to win. We are eager. Given a chance to play a poker hand, most of us leap to the challenge. The good news is that most poker players seldom let opportunity pass them by. The bad news is that we frequently play too many hands, and play far too deeply into many of the hands we play.

Someone once said, “Poker is a game of money played with cards.” And it’s true. Poker is all about money; the cards are only a means to an end. Sometimes they’re even incidental.

What many poker players fail to realize is that a bet saved is equal to a bet won. The money you save by refraining from involving yourself in pots you shouldn’t play, with cards that are better off folded than played, spends just as well as the money you win when you have the best hand or can induce your opponents to fold. At the end of the day the money in your pocket is represents more than the bets you won. It’s also a product of bets saved because you folded your hand and didn’t toss bad money after good. In other words, what you don’t lose, you don’t have to win.

Far too many poker players go flat out in an attempt to play and win as many pots as they can. This results in their playing far too many hands than the can be justified by the cards that are dealt and the willingness of one’s opponents to call rather than fold.

When you are confronting players who call more than they ought to, it means bluffs will succeed far less than they would if successful bluffing could be predicated on the strength of an opponent’s hand. When opponents are prone to call with far too many hands, you won’t be able to bluff successfully all that often. But an opponent who calls too much allows you to bet your good hands for their intrinsic value because your opponents will pay you with hands a better player would have released.

The implications of players who involve themselves in too many hands are far reaching. If you refrain from bluffing because your opponents have shown a marked propensity to call, you will save money. The money you save winds up in your hip pocket at the end of the day just as surely as the money you manage to win when you bet your hand for value and you are called by others.

Folding gets a bad rap because it looks weak. It’s not as glamorous. Not by a longshot. Running a spine-tingling, breath-holding, nerve-rattling, pulse-raising bluff feels a lot better than saving a bet by folding — and it’s much more fun when you can finally exhale after your last opponent folded and you’re able to rake in the pot. But at the end of the day, the money you save is just as valuable — and spends just as well — as the money you win.

Playing poker correctly is a high-wire act where you’re working without a net. A bet saved means bluffing less, folding more, and refraining from calling as some sort of default response to a bet by your opponent. It also means betting aggressively with the best hand. It’s a fine line that has to be walked between betting and playing aggressively in order to ensure that you maximize your wins with the best hand, and the need to present as small a target as possible to your opponents, to play deftly and cautiously in order to save money when you don’t have the best hand, in order to ensure that you keep your losses to a minimum.