Push that phat pot my way . . .

Is winning a huge pot more luck? I seem to usually win the small/medium pots, but rarely take down that 18+ BB monster that will help make the night a huge winner. Raising behind limpers and check-raising a sure bettor to your left and a few calling stations after him seem to be the best way to building a pot, but I seem to never get the cards or the action when I have a monster draw. There has to be other ways to get the job done; what are the best hands, situations, and plays to insure that you are regularly building and winning the biggest pots? Thank you.

Building a huge pot for the sake of having a huge pot is wrong wrong wrong. Let's say you have 9Ts or 66 on the button and get four limpers to you. You could raise in order to get more of your opponents to stay with you if you get a flop you like (trips or straight and/or flush draw) IF, I REPEAT IF you are playing in a very tight game full of people who will muck their hand quickly on the flop. This describes 0% of the low limit games I've played in. My point is: you don't need to induce players to call you when you have a hand, they will call you anyway.


The goal for you is make your opponents make mistakes. When you "build a pot" what you are very often doing is making people play correctly on accident. When the pot gets so huge it becomes correct for those gut shots to call against your trips and two pair to call against you nut flush. The thing is these people would have called anyway, all you are doing is making them play properly.


You should be worried about the size of the pot, but not usually about making it larger. You should be manipulating the size of the pot to maximize your chances of winning the hand and to make your opponents make mistakes. "building a pot" simply to maximize your profits IF you happen to hit your hand and it happens to hold up is rarely correct.


There are roughly a zillion more ways to increase your hourly win rate (long term) than building huge pots with huge draws when proper to do so.


I hope others who are more knowledgable than myself weigh in here.


OneTime

Winning big pots has nothing to do with being a long-term winning player. It shouldn't be a priority for you.

Another new guy,


I think that a lot of winning huge pots is indeed luck, because you invariable have to show down the best hand to win, and who has that hand has a fair amount of luck invloved in it.


But the more experience I have, the more often I seem to be the guy who gets the big pots.


I think that there are two keys to winning the big pots. First, play hands that have a good chance of developing into big hands, and the second key is to play aggressively when you are likely ahead ( hey, thats good poker anyway, so you are already doing that). AND then when you are way ahead, a set, a straight, or less likely nut flush (because they are so easy to read), you can play aggressively then, and they don't realize how much trouble they are in until you threebet the turn, and then you have your big pot.


You can't make them happen though, they just do when everything lines up.


Good luck,

Play well,


Bob T.

I agree with the above posts. Read "Zen and the Art of Poker." It'll help. Small but steady wins should be perfectly acceptable. If the deck wants to hit you, let it. If it's hitting someone else, stay out of the way and make what you can.


Avidguru