Playing a game like poker lends itself to interesting situation. Often times the most challenging aspect of the game happens when you are facing a big raise that will put you at risk of being busted from a poker tournament or cash game. Making correct decisions requires careful analysis of everything your opponent and table has done up to that point. A situation that occurs fairly frequently is when people play for a chop. A chop is a split pot. Playing for a chop is ok as long as you know that you will not be left holding the second best hand.

The first part of knowing what to do depends heavily on you being able to put your opponent on a hand range. If you cannot put your opponent on a hand then you are left guessing and guessing is not a good way to make money or defend your poker chips. Nothing in poker is more depressing than making a big call and realizing you are drawing dead. After assessing some type of hand range of your opponent then you move on to your own hand. You need to be honest and figure out just how strong your hand is. Knowing what hands you can beat and what hands beat you is a very important part of real-time hand analysis.

So what do I mean when I say chop and the potential for holding the second best hand? This example will illustrate the point. Let’s say preflop it folds around to the button that makes a standard raise of three times the big blind with a hand like the ace and ten of hearts. You look down and decide to defend the big blind with ace ten offsuit. If the flop comes king of hearts, queen of clubs, and jack of hearts, what do you do? Notice you both flopped a straight, but you are out of position and there is a redraw to a flush on the board. You can check and give up control of the pot, or you can lead out and see what happens. Either way you do not want to be calling and putting yourself at risk when you have the same hand but your opponent is still the math favorite because of a redraw to the nut hand. Failure to put your opponent on a hand is a huge mistake and can leave you in a situation like this where you are only playing for a chop. If you do not have much invested folding is the right move. Playing for a split pot against someone with a redraw to the nuts is not a good play.