I'm catching up with last week's World Series of Poker broadcast. In one hand, the action on the turn card is Phil Ivey checks, Joseph Ward bets 200K, Ivey check-raises to 600K. But in the voiceover, Lon McEachern says, "Ivey with a reraise here to six hundred thousand."
Reraise? How can there be a reraise when there wasn't a raise first? A raise after a previous raise is a reraise; a raise after a bet is just a raise.
People make this mistake all the time. Somebody bets the flop, and the next player announces, "Reraise." Even people with enough experience to know better screw this up. One of my best friends does it on a fairly regular basis. And I just don't get it. I essentially never announce reraise. There is no situation in which one needs to use it. The word raise works perfectly well for every occasion where reraise is acceptable. So why not just eliminate the unnecessary word from one's working vocabulary, stick to raise for everything, and never risk making an embarrassing mistake?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
"Reraise"?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
But then you'll get the people that announce "raise" when it's checked to them.
Probably a holdout from the days of nothing but limit hold'em. That's where I used to see it used all the time. Before such fancy terms as three-bet.
Bet
Raise
Re-raise
Cap it!
"...never risk making an embarrassing mistake."
People certainly would learn the difference if making this mistake were actually a source of mortification to them.
But it isn't.
Everyone knows what they mean, and since something is more than nothing (i.e., the first bet), on an intuitive level "reraise" makes some sense.
Besides, "reraise" sounds more intimidating than "raise." (Just like "raise" sounds scarier than "bet.") And all those cool guys on TV are always saying reraise too.
I personally like whenever possible to reraise it up.
Post a Comment