Dealing with unwanted pots in poker

Every decent poker player knows that most of the time the flop isn’t going to improve your hand -which isn’t a big deal when you hold Pocket Aces, but when you have a hand like AQ or 89s things become a lot more complicated. If you figure that about 33% of the time your hand will be strong enough to continue with in most situations, and the same holds true for your opponent’s hand, then that leaves us with a whopping 1/3 of the pots that will be up for grabs.

Typically it’s the player who fires first, shows some aggression, or shows interest in the pot that will take these pots down. It’s vital for poker players to win more than their fair share of these pots. If you’re not winning more than half of these pots than you are either playing too passively, or are up against opponents who are outplaying you, or are simply more aggressive than you are -which can be just as bad.

This is even more important in short-handed and heads-up games, where the pots are less likely, or impossible, to be multi-way, and the chances of having two or three “feeders” in the game is diminished -A “feeder” is a player who feeds the rest of the table their chips.

Here is an example from a heads-up game: Suppose you and your opponent play virtually identical and both win the pots you are suppose to win, and lose the pots you are supposed to lose. That leaves the 33% of unwanted pots to sort out who will be the winner and who will be the loser in the match.

If the average pot is $10, and you can win 20% of the 33% of pots that are up for grabs you will make a very tidy profit off of this player -roughly $24 per 100 hands -you’ll also quickly pick-up on your opponent’s weakness and could even exploit it more. You don’t have to outplay your opponent, just be a little bit more aggressive!

On the other hand, if you find yourself in a game where you are unsure if you are winning the majority of these pots than it’s best to simply leave the game and find a weaker opponent.

This principle holds true in tournament poker as well, especially as the blinds increase and stealing and defending become commonplace. In these instances both players will often be going to the flop with marginal hands at best, so the chances of hitting the flop are pretty slim.

One way to keep track of this figure is to note the number of times you enter the pot, and the number of these pots you have won. Your base number will be the number of pots you have entered compared to the number of pots where you had a hand and won the pot-we’ll use26% and 15% as random numbers for our purposes. Next look at how many hands you have won on top of this -when you bet with air. If you are in a 6-handed game where normally two players see the flop you should be raking in at least 17% of these pots.

So, if you have a VPIP of 26%, and are winning 15% of the pots with some type of hand -remember we are only looking at the times when you AND your opponent have total air-you should be winning a further 17% of the 11% of the pots where you have missed the flop, which is less than 2% –an easy number to achieve.