But losing the minimum with bad hand and winning the maximum with great cards – this is the mastery of betting. This is exactly what this post is about. But before we go into poker betting secrets, let’s quickly mention the terms.

Bet: A wager of any sort; the action required by a player whose turn it is to act and who wishes to wager money on his poker hand.

Call: To match a bet made by another player. When you call you retains the interest in the hand and become eligible to win the pot (as long as you call each bet to the showdown).

Check: To make no bet, but to still hold your hand and have the option to fold, call, or raise when the action gets back to the player. But you cannot check when you are the first to act (when there is either a blind bet on the first round of a hold’em or Omaha game, or a forced bring-in bet on the first round of a seven-card stud or seven-stud/8 game).

Fold: Quit participation in the hand and surrender any equity in the pot.

Raise: To increase the wager, in other worlds – adding a bet equal to the betting limit (for a no-limit game it means increasing the bet by any amount equal to or greater than the previous bet or raise). Depending upon the type of the game the amount of raise is different, but the key issue remains the same – you raise the wager. 

Checkraise: To refrain from betting a very strong hand in anticipation of a bet from another player. This allows the checkraiser to raise when the action gets into the hands and trap the original bettor and anyone else who might have called for multiple bets.

Reraise: Raising the bet of a player who has already raised. The size of reraise also depends upon the type of the poker you play. 

Bet your hands when you think you have the best hand: try to drive out players who may beat you if you allow them to draw for free. Unless you have got a trily powerful hand, the best strategy is to bet your good hands. Discourage the opposition from taking shots at cards that might beat you.

With really big hands, give your opponents a chance to catch up and don’t push the early betting. This is because you can win even more money from them.

When you have a drawing hand instead, a “wannabe hand” that makes you long to see the next card as inexpensively as possible – thi is the time to check, hoping your opponent will, too. If you succeed – you have odds to chase this player down. As long as there is no cost to keep testing your luck and improving the hand – it makes sense.

Once all the cards are dealt and there is no potential to improve the hand, then remember that betting won’t win you the pot by making it too expensive for your opponent to see another card. This is because the winning hand has already been dealt.

If you check and your opponent bets, then this player can have a good hand or bluff.

Take your time and think about the situation before you bet. Bet if you think you will be called with a lesser hand, or if you believe that betting will cause another player to fold a hand that might be stronger than yours or could grow into a bigger hand than you have.

With betting you get two ways to win – show down the best hand or bet to make your opponent to fold.

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