“But I’ve Invested So Much Already”…So?
There is a very common mistake people make at the poker table and it’s thinking the money they’ve already invested in a pot matters in their decision making on later streets. You’ll hear something like, “Well I’ve already put in so much. I have to call now.” This couldn’t be further from the truth and flawed thinking like this will only cost you even more money.
The reason this is wrong is because once the money goes into the pot, it no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the pot. The decisions you make from this point on should only have to do with the odds concerning the amount it will cost you to call your opponent’s bet in relation to the pot and the odds to make your hand (assuming you didn’t make it already).
Here’s an example. Let’s say you and your opponent are the only two in the pot and you’ve each put in $200 by the time the betting is completed on the flop. There’s $400 and you have an open ended straight draw, no flush possibilities out there. The turn is a blank and your opponent bets $200 making the pot $600 total. You’re looking at your hand and think you still have a pretty good draw. You’ve already put $200 in so far and how can you just let it go like that with a decent draw? So you call. The river is another blank, your opponent bets, and you have to fold. You have now unnecessarily lost an extra $200. “How so?” you might ask. Well, let’s go back and look at your decision on the turn. If you have an open ended straight draw that means you have 8 outs and, as we learned in Pot Odds the Rule of 4 and Betting, with one card to come you are about 16% or just over 5-1 to make your hand. It was going to cost you $200 to win $600 which is only 3-1. You were not getting the right odds to call and mathematically you will lose money making this call in the long run.
The same goes if you make a bet and you get raised. Don’t factor in the money you’ve just bet in your decision. As soon as you push that bet into the middle, whether there’s action or not, it’s not yours anymore. You can’t pull it back unless everyone folds. Once there’s a call or a raise it’s gone too. If you started a hand with $500, bet $40 and got raised, you now only have $460 to use when considering your next move.
So remember, when it comes time to decide on whether to continue in the hand or not, base it on your reads and use the math involved at that moment and not how much you’ve already invested. You’ll save a lot more money in the end
