Another Hand Primed For Action

You hear comments like this from online Texas Hold'em players, normally after losing a lot of money on a hand in which they had no business calling large bets. The faint implication is that the online site rigs hands to encourage a lot of betting because that increases their rake.

But actually there is an important lesson in it for beginning players.

Texas hold'em is a 'community cards' game, all the players sharing the board to make their hand. Community card games are naturally inclined toward boards where several players have good hands.

Boards like the following are fairly common in Texas Hold'em:

:Ks: :Kc: :Qs: :Qd:

If you multi-table you may actually see several an hour that are like that.

And with a board like that and several people in the pot it is easy for someone to have a Kings-Queens full house (any pocket King), another to have a Queens-Kings full house (any pocket Queen), another to have the spade flush (two pocket spades) and yet another to have chased his :Jc: :Th: all the way to the river to finally hit his straight.

You can play a stud game (not a community card game) for a hell of a long time before you see a hand where two people have a full house, another has a flush and another has a straight. It just is not nearly as common.

My point is if you are on the button when that board comes and a player puts out a 1/2 pot bet and a reasonably solid player pushes All-In over the top and another reasonable player calls that bet, you should not be calling with any straights, flushes, or Queen high boats because you are beat. And calling when you clearly have 0% pot equity is spewing money no matter how 'pot commited' you think you are.

While most of you may be thinking that this is obvious, many people's online play indicates that they clearly do not understand this. Night after night I watch people calling calling huge river bets, often behind several other callers, when their hands are obviously beat. Because while the first bettor may be bluffing, the caller is clearly not. But instead of learning from this experience and starting to think about what hands other players might have that would justify their betting, they make some comment about 'another hand primed for action'. This makes them look even more stupid than calling with their clearly dominated hand.