Poker gems, #195

Peter Herold, on over-betting the pot with the nuts, in Rounder magazine, December, 2008, p. 22. (I never thought I'd find a gem in this piece-of-trash publication, but they surprised me.)


In cash games players can be a lot less likely to call over-bets because it is real money. If you bet $1,000 into a $600 pot they will naturally have more pause because they know that it is $1,000 of real money that it will cost them to see if their hand is good. The same can be said for major tournaments, where players can spend up to $10,000 to enter the tournament so they often want to get their money's worth and last for a long time.

In small stakes tournaments, however, I think the over-bet is almost always worth the risk. People that buy in to small stakes tournaments understand that it is unlikely that they will cash in the tournament and that they will probably lose all of their chips sooner or later. Tournament players simply don't want to fold big hands and spend the rest of the day wondering if they made the right decision, they want to have fun and leave the tournament with a story. It is psychologically easier for people to call, lose and walk away from the table saying "my aces got cracked, nothing I can do about it" than it is for people to think about whether they made the right decision or not.