Playing With Bad Cards

Yeah, we watch those movies where the hotshot poker pro, holding nothing of value but acting on sheer audacity and nerves of steel, offers his best "poker face" and bluffs all of the other players out of a monster pot.

And we want to be just like that guy, don't we?

Well, put that six-shooter away for a minute, cowboy.

Unless you are in a game with complete novices, you are not going to be able to bluff your way to profit. Most players stay in too many pots, which means they hang in there without any cards much more often than they should. they wait for the Fifth Street card, hoping to make a hand.

Playing with bad or ineffective cards is the major obstacle for the novice to overcome. The longer a player stays in the pot, with a hand that is, for all intents and purposes, is hopeless, the more money he or she is throwing away to the other players.

Perhaps there's some kind of psychological barrier that prevents people from throwing bad cards away, because it hurts too much to sit there and watch the other players battle it out over a pot. This is a hurdle that has to be cleared, because take our word for this - it hurts much more to be down to the short stack all the time. And remember, better players can sniff out the suckers who play everything they're dealt, so the degree to which this weakness in your game can be exploited could wind up being greatly magnified.

Players in general need to exercise restraint when it comes to pulling the trigger with an empty gun, as it were. Be much more discriminating in terms of which cards to play and which cards to leave alone.