Control

There are so many elements in poker you have no control over, it’s important to make the most of those which you do. To take control of a hand usually means to be the one forcing the action, to make the other players respond to what you are doing and not the other way around. The best way to control a hand is to be the aggressor in it, to either open the action with a raise or seize the advantage by re-raising. In particular, the best time to take control of a pot is when someone else has limped in or made a tiny raise, by definition they are telling you they are weak so they should be much easier for you to manipulate.

When you take control of the pot by raising, you do a number of things. First of all and not to be underestimated, you give yourself an immediate chance to win the pot by making everyone else fold, effectively doubling your chances of winning right away. Equally important, taking control of the pot puts the decision on your opponent. You make your own decision making process much easier while putting pressure on your opponents, and pressure can lead to mistakes. To quote Doyle Brunson, ‘the key to No Limit Hold’em is to put a man to a decision for all his chips’. It doesn’t have to always be for all the chips, but good poker is making the other guy have the hard decision to make and not yourself.

Position and taking control of the pot go hand in hand, it is so much easier to control the pot when you are in position and in turn, it’s much harder for your opponents when they are out of position. In fact, often if you are in position you don’t even need a hand to take control if you sense weakness at the table, you can just take down the pot with heavy aggression. You can of course take control out of position, but it’s much better to have your strongest hands when you do and to be betting big to compensate for having to act first.

There are of course times where it’s a bad idea to try and control the pot, most often being when someone has indicated they are in the driver’s seat themselves. An early position raise or a re-raise from any position is usually indicative of a strong hand and/or a strong player, so it’s much better to wait for a big hand or an easier spot to take control than to get into shouting contest with another aggressive player.

Poker School

Poker Articles