Poker Betting: Fold
As a great singer once said when it comes to playing cards: “You have to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em….”
He wasn’t kidding.
The poker technique that is known as folding is when a player feels they have no chance of winning a current hand, and lays down their cards to signify that they are out. In other words, a player has decided to call it quits for the round.
When a player folds their hand, they are making known their intent to forfeit their interest in winning the current pot. While the folding player is no longer required to place any further bets, they also have no chance of winning the hand in play. The standards gesture to fold is either by indicating verbally “I fold” (or “I’m out”), or just laying their hand face down into the pile of other discarded hands. This pile is called the “muck”, or “mucking”.
In some games, such as stud poker in the United States, the usual “folding” signal is turning all cards face down. In the united Kingdom, a player folds by giving their hand to the “house” dealer, who will then proceed to spread the hand’s upcards for the other players to view before mucking them.
As for the act of folding itself during a game, when is the best time to know when to call it a day? That’s a difficult question to answer, because everyone has a different tolerance of risk. When playing with a marginal hand, a player will assess their hand and the probability of it becoming a playable hand. All poker games are a little different, so it is important to know how many more cards are coming your way, and what your opponents are doing. If you think an opponent has a straight, and you have a pair, and there’s one more card coming, it may be smart to fold, as the best you can do is three of a kind, which will not beat the straight.
However, if you have two-pair, you are but a single card away from a powerful full house (and it can be any one of two cards, actually) – perhaps this is worth the risk… these are the kinds of decisions one must make. It’s the fool who tries to catch lightening in a bottle every hand, but it is also the fool who continually folds too early.
