Wanted: Home for Poor Abandoned and Forgotten Poker Pots  - Poker Strategy

Picture a relatively soft game, there’s a few callers before the flop in this situation often times 4/5, not a lot of interest, perhaps a small raise, with callers. When the flop comes, it appears that everyone is doing something else, or at the very least, not real interested in this poker game anymore.

Eyes have glazed over, conversations have commenced, and ESPN is being watched in the poker room.  The dealer is reminding people of their turn to act, all in all, most the players have mentally called this hand a loss. The pots been abandoned by all, the chips inside will either be won by the highest card at the end of the hand, or bought by a skillful player like yourself before we ever see a turn card.

Be careful here if someone did raise this pot preflop, does he still look as though he’s a winner? Was he raising a small pair which is now dominated by a couple of over’s on the flop?

Or is he watching the other players, waiting to see what they will do, how they will act, lying in wait, to attack.  If he’s waiting to attack, he might be trying a little too hard to act uninterested, or, he may be following the action with his eyes, waiting for his turn to come, so that he can make his move, even if that move is to be a check.

Beware of anyone who is still interested in the general flow of the action

If however, it doesn’t appear that anyone still wants to make a play for this pot, and there’s no wolf in the henhouse… you now have a chance to steal a small pot even if your holding small cards vs playing a pair of aces. I like to call these yard sale pots.  The first person to make a stab at this sort of pot generally takes it down; in fact, tablemates may tease lightly about the small junk cards you must be playing to make a bet at that pot.

What they’re not seeing is that with 4 or 5 people in the pot, you’ve just picked up a few free rounds of poker play, and padded your stack a touch.