Online Games

One of the most difficult aspects of no-limit Texas Holdem poker is in how pots escalate from street to street. Once there has been a raise in no-limit then this can start a chain of events in motion! It is like the snowball effect, the bigger that something gets then the bigger it has the capacity to become. So let us look at how a pot can escalate just by one simple action. Imagine if a player open limped from the button in NL100 and the small blind folded but the big blind called. The pot is $2.50 and now there is a pot sized bet and a call on the flop. The flop is now $7.50 and there is another pot sized bet and call on the turn making the pot $22.50. On the river we have another pot sized bet and call which makes the final pot $67.50. Now let us take a look at how big the pot gets in this no-limit Texas Hold’em example when there had been a raise of the pot pre-flop to $3.50. The big blind calls and the pot is $7.50 pre-flop. A pot sized bet and call on the flop makes the pot $22.50. There is also a pot sized bet and call on the turn which makes the pot $67.50. The same happens on the river and this makes the pot $202.50. Compare this to the previous example of $67.50 and all because of a simple raise pre-flop to $3.50 instead of limping for $1. This is why so many players get themselves into trouble in no-limit Texas Hold’em by raising and then not playing well enough post flop. The pot in this simple example ended up three times the size by the river with exactly the same betting sequence except for the tiny difference pre-flop where the player open raised to $3.50 instead of limped for $1. This difference of $2.50 ended up with an extra $135 being put into the pot by the showdown. This feature of no-limit Texas Hold’em poker is called geometric escalation and events in no-limit play seem to take on an almost chaotic pattern where there have been raises pre-flop. Novice and even many intermediate players do not treat raising pre-flop with enough care and all of this is to do with geometric escalation in no-limit Texas Hold’em poker. If you look at skilled ring game players then they use pot control an awful lot and this means checking. The process of checking basically eliminates an entire betting round and we have seen from the previous example how eliminating an entire round or even under betting a certain betting round can drastically reduce the pot size at the end of the hand on the river. This facet of no-limit Texas Hold’em comes into play even more so when you are multi-tabling. As allowing yourself to lose control on too many tables at the same time would be a recipe for disaster when you are playing poker in this way.

No tags for this post.

Related posts

• No related posts.