Fold 'em Up Hoss – Folding after the ReRaised Feeler Bet

One of the worst things a tournament poker player can do is hold onto a hand after that their not likely to win, letting chips slip into the pot that will bring back no positive return.

The largest example of this occurrence is the feeler bet met by a re-raise and then a defeatfull call. You’ve made a feeler bet, you made this bet to see if you had any chance left of winning this hand. You are pretty sure your opponent has you beat, so you toss out a sizable bet, that gives him odds to fold, but won’t break you. He raises back into your bet.

Now remember you already thought you were beat. So this isn’t a matter of who has the biggest nuts, you were already pretty sure he did, the ones in his hand.  There’s no reason to do battle here, if you were short stacked, you’d have shoved in all your chips, not made a feeler bet, so you’re beat and he’s raised.

This can be a critical moment in a Holdem poker tournament or frankly in any stamina sort of tournament where you need your chips to sustain you throughout the end of the game, and then catapult you into first place.

You’ve gotten some money into the pot, you put out a feeler bet to gauge your opponent’s hand, and now… you’re faced with a re-raise. Many poker players will make a very bad move right here, simply to save face. A sad, smooth, I’m beat call. Some players will even verbally admit that they’re beat, or say that they’ll ‘see one more’.

Knowing with absolute certainly they are beat, the player makes the call. The plan is to fold on the next card, the next card will come, the originally betting player will check, the re-raising opponent will undoubtedly bet, and then having... saved face? The player will fold their hand.

This happens at the poker table time and time again. The feeler bet move is a great poker strategy, but you can’t follow it by putting more chips into a pot you won’t be scooping.

The mentality here is that you just raised, so you can’t fold. But you actually can fold. In fact, you have two choices here, fold or raise, and since you believe yourself to be beat, folding is the answer.

In some situations, when your original read was wrong, the re-raiser might just check the next card, for one of three reasons, 1. To further trap you on the river, 2, he was on a draw and was putting a little feeler out there of his own.  3. He has a big hand, but fears your hand might be better, there’s a possible steal here, but more than likely, even an all in bet is getting called.