Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Betting After the Draw
Betting After the Draw Another general-strategy Texas Hold'em Poker rule like the ones cited in Chapter 4 is: Don't bet into a one-card draw. It is true that a hand that drew one card may turn out to be a straight, flush or full house made on a one-card draw to two pairs. The theory is that it is not smart Texas Hold'em Poker playing to bet against a one-card draw when you have something like three of a kind or two pairs, because if the hand did not make a straight or flush, it would fold, and if it did not improve its two pairs it might just call. If the hand improvement made a straight or flush and your hand failed to improve, it has you beaten. It's as simple as that.
However, if you never bet into a one-card draw,
However, if you never bet into a one-card draw, you will lose considerably more than you should have collected with your winning hand than that lost to a successful one-card draw that beats your hand. What you must do is to decide to your own satisfaction what the one or more one-card draws mean. Suppose there are six active players in the pot. You opened under the gun with three aces. The next five players played, the first two players drew three, and the following drew one each. It would be foolish for you as the opening bettor to check. Of the two players who drew three cards each probably had a pair of kings or less and could not beat you if each made three of a kind. The other two players probably had two pairs and the odds are about 5 to 1 that neither made a full house. The last player may have had a four-card straight or flush and the odds are roughly 5 to 1 that he failed to fill the straight or flush. If you check and no one improved his hand, the players holding two pairs will also check and you will have lost the amount of the call bets. The odds favor your chance that some player will call a bet, rather than that some player will have bettered his hand with the one-card draw. Furthermore, if your bet is raised, the chances are that your three aces are beaten, but it will cost you only one bet more to call the raise than it would have cost to check in the first place and call a bet later, which you would have had to do unless you are a mind reader or know your Online Hold'em Poker-playing opponents awfully well.