Low-stakes tournaments and home games are packed with players who don't want to fold. That might not seem like a great thing when you get your aces cracked by 7-2o, but it is. And Alex Fitzgerald's new book, How to Beat Players Who Never Fold: Succeeding In Casino Poker Tournaments And Low Stakes Home Games, is here to teach you why – and how to beat them. The book is available now from D&B Publishing and Amazon.
Folding Separates Pros
What truly separates pros from average players is their ability to fold.
A pro is capable of folding a small flush when they believe their opponent has a greater flush. The average person simply doesn’t have that capability.
Most normal people want to make decisions based on their hand strength, because humans are in love with shortcuts. Humans notice that it’s hard to make two pair, sets, flushes, straights, or better. They automatically assume because they waited so long to find one of these hands that these hands must be valuable.
For this reason, most people are not in the business of folding when they make two pair or better. Hell, most people don’t even want to fold when they make a pair. Poker is less fun that way.
You can always tell who is the pro at the table because they will be comfortable with folding. When they do enter a pot, they don’t act as if their day will be ruined if they lose it.
Many nits will often wait to enter pots, but it’s not because they don’t hate folding. They hate having to wait for hands just like everyone else. They just hate getting beat so much more. That’s why, when they do enter the pot, they’re openly hostile if they end up losing to a bigger hand.
Pros won’t behave this way. They will wait for the right situation. If that takes a couple of hours, they won’t love having to wait but they can tolerate it. They know it’s worse to force something. They would rather let the moment come to them. They don’t want to botch everything by trying to create the moment.
Pros will often raise preflop, get called by one player, and simply check/fold on a bad board. They know any continuation bet will be wasted on the specific board they saw. They know that their opponent is likely to have hit the board. They’re not going to put one more chip in the pot. They understand saving bets is just as important as winning pots.
Normal people do not think this way. Nits, stations, maniacs, and regulars alike see quitting on a pot as a sign of weakness. They believe they’re owed something because they’re the preflop raiser. They believe they’ve shown strength, so everybody should respect them. They’re not seeing reality on reality’s terms. They know deep down that their opponent likely hit a coordinated board and is unlikely to fold to them, but they’re refusing to accept that. That is the mark of an amateur. A pro is in control of their emotions. They might feel the same form of entitlement, but they ignore it and instead make the right play.
And the right play is folding. The right play is folding a lot. If you’re at a full-ring table then you’re up against eight separate players. It’s literally eight people versus you. Eight random hands are going to beat your one random hand almost always. You’re going to go hours without winning sometimes.
Could you imagine a street fight with eight people attacking one person? The correct response for the one person in that scenario is to run!
You’re in a similar situation. Your job is to run almost always. You only run back towards the eight opponents when you find a weapon in the form of a strong starting hand. But if that hand goes bust on the flop and becomes worthless, your job is to start running again.
You can’t win if you bust yourself right away. You can’t win if you just run at the other eight players nonstop. You have to take the hands one at a time. You can’t rush your work.
Humans want to play poker for the same reason they check their cell phones every thirty seconds. Humans get bored easily. They’re looking for a way to not feel bored.
Playing a hand is fun. Folding is boring. Because of this, most of us unsurprisingly choose to play more hands than we should. We have a bias towards playing because being bored sucks.
What this means is that we should always be suspicious of ourselves when we want to play a mediocre hand. Do we actually believe we found a profitable situation, or are we just bored?
Stations, maniacs, nits, and regulars can’t resist the siren song of gambling enough to be profitable. We must be different than them.
If it feels like we’re folding too much, then we’re likely playing correctly.
Our inner compass is off. We can’t trust it.
You can buy your copy of How to Beat Players Who Never Fold from D&B Publishing, Amazon and all good book shops now. Alex Fitzgerald's other books include Exploitative Play in Live Poker, The 100 Biggest Mistakes that Poker Players Make and The Myth of Poker Talent.
