Play Free Poker And Learn How To Avoid Making Bad Calls

In any type of poker be it free online poker or cash games you will get situations where strong hands become marginal at some stage in a hand. In such cases, decisions which would have been mathematically or psychologically justified in earlier rounds in the hand may now be bad decisions.

For instance, your Straight may be powerful now, but may become marginal if you continue and, say, the Board pairs or there are three of the same suit and your opponent bets heftily. However, bad calls are generally linked to poor hands. For example.

BLINDS: 40k/80k

PREFLOP:

A has Ad-Jc, raises to 250k
B has 2h-2d calls 250k
C has Ks-Qs, is on big blind, calls 140k (pot 880k)

FLOP: Ah-2c-10c

A and B and the ones to focus on. Now A raises with A-J from early position and B calls with a pocket pair which has evolved into a Set. B has position over A, plus A may make the very bad decision to bet the high pair but QUESTIONABLE kicker at this step. The kicker is questionable since there are 2 other players involved who might have better kickers (or even 2-Pair with A,10).

C checks

Remember that there is also a Straight draw (which C has) and a Flush draw (which everyone thinks the competition may potentially have). So now A will attempt to defend his strong (but questionable) made hand with an overbet:

A bets 1m
B raises to 2.67m
C folds
A to call all in 1.67m (Pot 4.55m)

First, A invested 250,000 in the hand, then 1 million (1.25 million all in all), which is about 40% of his stack, and now he may be on the brink. Is a call his best move? Now he might think that the reraise from Bs all-in doesn't imply that B is on a draw (B can't call an overbet with a draw), but it could imply a good hand like A,K or A,10. Nor is it an attempt to banish A from the hand, because A will be getting 3-1 on a call, but calling will give him the knock-out.

Is 3-1 the best proposition, however? He has 3 outs to pair his kicker and a small percentage for running outs for a Straight or a Flush. His probability of winning is just about 14%, and the fair proposition for a 14% should be about 7-to-1. (He is only getting about 2.7-to-1.) And, as for the unlikely Set, he is almost drawing dead, while he needs cards for a running Full House. At this time his A-J is already a bad hand. So he has all the ingredients for a bad call all-in, which he makes.

A calls all-in (pot 6.22m)

The turn and the river of 5s and 8s, respectively, won B the pot. A's call will be a good call had it been A-K (you decide if A-Q will be every bit as good). He is able to put B on an Ace with a lower kicker and then take the lead with an overbet in which B's decision will be an all-in (then A can call as a big favorite) or a fold (then A wins the pot). But no; he made a decision to overplay a marginal hand and that cost him heavily. At the very least, he chose to call all-in when calling all-in could be too dangerous.

Getting your brain to think like this is not something you can learn overnight. For best results practice and play poker online for free on free poker games sites at first and when, only when, you are confident, move up to low stakes cash games.