Poker Superstition
Most people will tell you that superstition has a place in poker online, but sometimes too much of it is a bad thing. I was playing recently in a casino and sitting next to a friendly fellow whom I chatted with periodically throughout the game. As often happens when one spends a lot of time at a poker table, you strike up friendships with some of the players around you, that is until you win a big pot from them, or they you. Anyway, this fellow had a peculiar habit of never looking at his poker hand in the big blind. That is, if everyone called to him, he would simply check without even looking at the cards. If someone raised before him, than he would obviously look and decide to call, re-raise or fold, but I found it odd he wouldn’t look at them before the flop if everyone just called. He told me because it was a superstition of his. Anyway, one particular hand was like that, four players called and he just checked without looking. The flop came down A-3-5, and one player made a bet, and three others folded to this fellow. So he finally looks at his cards, and decided to re-raise. The other player than re-raised all in. after much consternation, this fellow calls. Well, the guy in the big blind who didn’t look at his cards preflop had A-K. Great, right? Well the other guy was holding A-3, and he ended up winning the pot. Bad luck, for sure. But had the fellow actually looked at his big blind hand, he probably would have raised, and maybe gotten the A-3 guy out of the hand. Needless to say, I don’t think this fellow will be continuing this superstition of never looking at his big blind hand.
