Hedging your bets

Poker Variants / Marcus Bateman / 04 February 2010 / Leave a Comment

Most poker players hardly ever think about the importance of hedging bets when playing the game, but actually poker is one of the most important areas to understand why you often want to hedge your bets when looking at the long term.

The term 'hedging' when applied to gambling activity typically refers to a strategy where you try and counter balance your risk in one area by making other bets that provide wins if your original area fails, usually at a slight expense to your original bet.

The infamous financial hedge funds run from offices all over the world do this in finance by investing in a much wider range of financial products than regular investment funds, using this wider range of bets to increase the risks they can take, and therefore hopefully generate much larger returns on investment.

Most poker players hardly ever think about the importance of hedging bets when playing the game, but actually poker is one of the most important areas to understand why you often want to hedge your bets when looking at the long term. The poker players who will make the most money over their career are usually those the most adept at hedging their bets, and in poker this takes the form of being skilled in all the variants and structures.

If you had been introduced to poker in the 1980's in Vegas, you would generally be playing seven card stud cash games. Had you just stuck to this game, grinding away at stud, you would have won a decent amount of money by the present day. Had you gone and tried to become skilled at other forms of poker, such as no limit hold'em tournaments, you would have made much more money in the post Moneymaker boom. Had you also managed to play Omaha to a relatively high standard, you could have cleaned up in the very weak Omaha games of the past five years. Best of all, if you had managed to become proficient in all forms of poker, you could be making a lot of money right now in the very weak mixed games.

All of this would have cut the rate you made on your stud games, but in the long run opened up doors that would have made you vastly more money than just sticking to your one game. Just like hedge fund managers using numerous financial products to take advantage of the best bets available, the very best poker players are able to always sit in the best games, simply through being able at all games. It is better to be good at all games in poker than it is to be excellent at just one. Fashions change, structures and games of choice fluctuate, fish move to different places.

It is important that you are able to follow these trends and be able to sit in any good game, and as a result, mastering all games should always be a priority in your development as a player, even if it eats into your hourly rate a little at your best game - it will pay for all of it plus interest in the long run.

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