Reraising With Nothing

Written By: RuffPoker.com

If you have played a lot of poker, then you already know that one of the most important parts of the game is to get information about your opponents. During a hand, you should be evaluating you opponents along with everything they do and try to put each opponent on a range of hands. Once you do that, there are different things that you can do to test your predictions. One of those things is to re-raise your opponent’s bets. Sometimes, you will even want to make a solid re-raise with nothing at all.

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Reraising with nothing is a very bold and gutsy move, both attributes of a good poker player. If you are afraid to make bold and gutsy moves, then get a different hobby or get used to being a losing poker player. That sounds pretty harsh, but it’s very true. If you don’t have guts, and you have fear of losing your money, this game could cause a lot of stress in your life.

The best reason to reraise with nothing is to test your opponents. If a player raises, a reraise is a very strong sign. Even if you have nothing, it is a very good play to test out the waters. Your opponent will have a reaction to your reraise, and if it is a reaction that represents weakness, then you will have a very good chance at winning the pot with nothing. You do not always need good cards to win at poker; sometimes it just takes some guts and good timing.

Example:

• You are sitting in a ring game with about $500.00 in front of you
• You end up in a $300.00 pot (on the flop) with one other player
• You completely missed the flop, but you believe your opponent has as weak hand
• Your opponent is first to act and has bet $100.00 into the $300.00 pot to make the pot a total of $400.00

In this example, it doesn’t matter what your hand is, because you have nothing. Looking at the information above, it is safe to say that you have two choices. You could reraise or you could fold. Well, if you fold you are letting your opponent just steal a $300.00 pot with nothing. If you reraise, then you are giving yourself the chance to steal a $400.00 pot with nothing. Considering that you think your opponent has completely missed the flop, that leaves you with one option – reraise.

The one thing to keep in mind here is that you need your opponent to fold, and you need them to fold now before it is too late and they become committed to the pot. If you reraise and make it $200.00, that is only $100.00 more into a $600.00 pot. There is no way that your opponent is going to fold there. The perfect raise here would be the size of the pot, which is actually going to be almost your whole stack. That means that you will have to reraise all in here and hope that you’re right about your opponents hand.

If you’re right, then you will win a $400.00 pot without a made hand, all because of your reraise. Your opponent really has no choice but to bet when they are first to act. Even if they have nothing as well, they cannot show that they are weak. All you have to do is have the guts to reraise with nothing in this kind of situation and you will have almost doubled your chip stack. For more tips like this one, check out 101 Poker Tips the pros use to win.