My Utile Center

There’s a time to buy the pot. The beginning of the poker game is not that time. I was playing a home game last night, and I was getting some pretty dead cards at the beginning. When I’m in the middle of a dry streak at the poker table, my tendency is to look for any way to grab chips that I can, and the best way to do that is to buy up uncontested pots, so whenever the poker hand checked around, I’d have a huge urge to place a big raise and try to buy up the pot. This urge was even stronger when an opponent was making a transparent bluff attempt. However, I chose to hold my ground and play tight for the first few rounds.

I know that it sucks to let an opportunity to buy up a pot pass away, but the important thing is that you’re seeing them. Take the early rounds as an opportunity to fine tune your observations to the point where you can see a vulnerable pot with a bare minimum of doubt. It doesn’t pay to go into a pot early on, because not only will you doing so with less assurance that you’ll be uncontested, but every time you buy a pot (or attempt to buy one), your credibility and your bluffing ability along with it will decrease.

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