When playing online poker, you get a hand, and immediately, you can tell if this will be the winning hand or if you have some work to do. If you get a royal flush, there is a good chance you will win some real money; if you get some random combination of cards, your odds of winning get severely curtailed. Thankfully though your chances of winning are not entirely zero, there may still be a way to victory with a weak hand, but you need to combine a little bit of strategy and luck if you wish for this to be the case. It will not be easy, but it is doable to remember certain things when confronted with a weak hand.
Mindset is crucial when it comes to playing on online poker real money sites, especially when it looks like things are starting to go wrong. Here’s our guide to trying to salvage an unhelpful situation or learning when to simply move on to the next hand.
Options when dealing with a weak hand.
For most players, when they look at their hand and see it is a weak hand, it may spell disaster for them, and they immediately fold. However, going right for the fold does not always have to be the case because the good thing is you don’t know what the other player has, and playing a game within a game is the best way to get a good outcome. So here are some options when you have a bad hand.
- Keep a good face on at all times – The easiest way to lose is to reveal to everyone that you have a bad hand. Even when you have a bad hand, you want to look like the most confident person in the poker room. You want to make everyone believe you got the winning hand and that they should give up. But do not oversell it because they will understand what you are doing. Keep it calm and play like normal; see what others are doing. If it looks like they have band hands also, you may have a chance. Harvard have published a review on how to maintain a good poker face, so take some of their advice and run with it!
- Passive play – Look at the players around you and try to exploit their weaknesses. If a player looks like a newbie, any deviation from the status quo will rattle them. Often, it’s easy to spot the guy with little experience; they will look nervous, check their chart, and just look on edge. You may want to raise the pot, again keep the same confidence, then they think, “They must have a good hand,” and immediately give up; another person may follow suit, leaving you with the remaining pot.
- Fold – Three is nothing wrong with folding in a game of poker. Just like in life, you are not going to win every game. You could have all the confidence in the world and raise the pot, bluff, do everything, but that does not mean everyone will take the bait. You could find yourself in a game of five down to you and one other player. This other player had the desired hand; you could play the game or fold. Often it would be advisable to fold because of its associated risk. Sometimes it is just better to live to play another day,
When you are playing, poker is more than who has the best cards. Playing poker is a mental game just as much as it is what your hand is like. Of course, you want the best cards in every hand, but that is not always the case. But lucky for you, not all hope is lost. You can apply the abovementioned tricks and increase your chances of running home with the big pot. These are not foolproof ways, so you should always keep in the back of your mind the thought that you can fold and play another hand. Not everyone gets four aces and a king, so keep this track in mind, and you could be the one who fools everyone and walk home with the prize money.
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