How "One More Bet" in Texas Hold Em Poker Can Lose You a Lot of Real Money

A classic mistake which many new and experienced Texas Hold Em poker players make is to persist with the mantra of "one more bet". They do this in the belief that the one card they need to turn their hand into a winning one may appear and that for the sake of $2 or $10 or however much it will cost it is only a small sum to pay when the potential is so huge.

In reality, this card will not come. It will be unlikely enough on the flop when three cards are dealt, but is even more remote on the turn or river when just one card is revealed on each. Whilst it may only cost a few dollars to stay in the contest and see if the card materialises, a player who is prone to this way of thinking often performs this action many times in a session, and multiplied over the number of sessions of their poker playing life it can add up to thousands of dollars potentially of wasted money that was speculative at best and should have been conserved to be put to good use behind a much stronger hand. One of the keys to being a successful Texas Hold Em player is through tight and disciplined money management, and a firm knowledge of when to put money into the pot and when not to.

Of course, when to put your real money in and when not to is a subjective question and one in which every poker player will give a different answer. The fact that there is no definitive right or wrong answer, only general guidance, is what makes the game of poker so fascinating, personal, individual and unique, as players will have all sorts of differing strategies as opposed to real money video poker which is often played to a strategy defined by a set mathematical formula as you are playing against a machine and not a human poker player.

Whatever your strategy for playing real money Texas Hold Em poker always bear in mind that no matter whether you play online poker or sat around an actual table, the cost of so many little calls just to see what the next card will bring all add up and can ultimately be many multiples of the amounts in the pots that you do actually win. And whilst you may sometimes get lucky in that the next card does transform your hand into a winning one, more often than not it won't and is just an expensive error.