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Poker Betting

When it comes to traditional poker, you always have three choices when you're faced with a decision during the game, and that is to call, raise or fold. Each of these is explained in more detail further on in this section.

Poker betting is more than just making the right decision, although that also plays a very important role. More importantly, however, is how you actually play the game, meaning - your mannerism at the table; this is where your bluffing skills come in real handy. The objective is to act like you have a low hand when it is in fact high and vice versa. Of course, this needs to be done with caution as other players are watching your actions at the table; it's good strategy to act uncharacteristically to your game of play once in a while to throw others off.

Deception is what poker betting is all about really. I remember a few times when I was sitting at the table with a terrible hand, but playing it as though it was a pretty good one. You know, throwing in more money into the pot with confidence. I kept raising to the point where everyone just simply gave up and I gathered up all the chips. The best part is that I didn't have to show my cards so my technique wasn't quite as obvious.

Anyway, here is how betting is done at the poker table:

Call: When you call, that means that you are betting enough to match what has been bet since the last time you bet. An example would be if you bet 50 cents and somebody else then bid 1 dollar; in order to stay in the game, you'd have to bet another 50 cents. If you call, then you would put the amount that you owed into the pot and you would stay in the hand.

Raise: When you raise, you first have to put enough in the pot to match what has already been bet and then you would raise the pot by putting an additional amount in and announcing the raise amount (a friendly game would usually have a limit as to how much money you could raise). So if the initial bet was 50 cents, you would have to put in 50 cents and then say "raise you another x amount". Now, the other players will either call, raise, or fold.

Fold: When you fold, you're dropping out of the current hand and losing the possibility of winning the pot. You don't have to put any money in and you would only lose the amount that you have already put in the pot. Sometimes it's better to fold than lose your money on a bad hand. Poker betting is all about making the decision to stay in or drop out.