Once you set yourself a high standard for calling the first bet, you have taker your first step toward becoming a profitable player. It is the poker player’s coming-of-age moment. Your motivation for playing the game changes. You realize that fun is no longer your intention at card table. The search for entertainment is left to the sheep you will fleece. Clever players do enjoy themselves, but it’s only incidental byproduct of a growing mastery of the game.
Now the question moves from what hands to play and when to how long each should be played. there are only a few reasons you should continue playing in a hand. The first, obviously, is if you think you hold a winning cards. That’s an excellent justification for continued participation. But what if you’ve got an incomplete hand, if you’ve on a draw – how long do you continue to play then? This is where the notion of “pot odds” enters the picture.
Calculating pot odds is the keystone upon which a winning poker strategy can be built. The first step is to figure out what kind of hand your competition is holding. In most cases ot helps to be a catastrophist.
