A costly mistake many, many players make is the failure to unload a hand when you are defeated. I think part of that refusal to surrender a good hand is ego, part of it is hope that you will get lucky, and part of it is plain ordinary garden-variety stubbornness.

THE BIG PAIRS

I have seen some incredible examples of playing dead hands. The other night a guy played a pair of red jacks to the bitter, and I mean bitter, end. The game was Texas Hold 'Em, and the flop had the ace of spades, the king of spades and the seven of hearts. He bet first and was raised. He called the raise. The seven of spades came on the turn and he called three bets to see the last card. That card was the three of spades. Again, he called three bets. You have to ask, ''What could he possibly beat?" The guy with sevens full of aces took the pot, and the guy with the nut flush showed his hand before he mucked it.

You see lots of strange things in low-limit poker. In a Seven Card Stud game, Pete had two pairs, kings and sixes. There were two good, tough players in the game and both had four cards to a suit, each with a king on the board; one of them had a six showing. Ralph was boxed between their raises but called them all. He was drawing a one card, his only out to make a full house.

These are examples of obscene calls. It is seldom that easy to know that you are beaten as in these two illustrations. Most of the time the clues are much more subtle. Because of the wacky nature of low-limit Online poker, it is more difficult to recognize dangerous situations. I am fully sympathetic to the problems of accurately putting a bad player on a hand. However, reading the players and the unique circumstance of each hand is a skill that will make us a lot of money, or in the case of the above two examples, save us a lot.

POKER PLAYERS AND THEIR EGOS

Let's be clear that there is more to recognizing when to get out than reading the players. As mentioned, ego is certainly a factor.
Online poker UK players, by and large, have big egos. They consider themselves decent to good players. When we allow our egos to affect our judgments at the table, quite often we take a hit in the wallet. That is a fact.

Garden-variety stubbornness will also usually cost you dollars. Stubbornness is not good. To my knowledge no one has figured out a foolproof way to avoid situations in which another player catches his magic card and creams your flush. So if you stay with a hand that is obviously beaten after a dangerous card hits the board and the betting demonstrates clearly that it was the magic card, you are allowing stubbornness to affect your judgment.

Obviously there are other factors that should be recognized for playing a hand after it is apparent that you are beaten: becoming enamored with big pairs, ego, and stubbornness are the most flagrant. When we recognize those components within ourselves, we must empower our rational side to modify the effects and refuse to lose money to those demons.

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