Nursing Your Poker Chips
Mar 27, 2012 Play Poker Game Poker Tips
In poker tournaments, a player can hardly enjoy playing poker with a small stack of chips. But when luck does not favor the player and he ends up with a short stack, he does not have any other option but to play with it. Saving and utilizing chips properly becomes one of the factors which eventually decides as who is going to stay and who will be eliminated.
Like for every situation in poker, there is slang or a term, likewise for someone who plays carefully to protect his small stack of chips in any poker tournament. It is called Nursing in poker. Now let us see some useful tips that one can follow while nursing chips in poker.
In a no limit poker game there comes a time when a player cannot go for a standard raise without committing himself to the pot. This point in the game is sometimes called the point of no return. This is so because here the player has to decide on two things; pushing all in or simply folding.
Now the question that occurs is how any player knows whether he has reached in a point of no return in the nursing strategy in poker. It is actually not very difficult. The moment when making a raise means putting a large proportion of the chips into the pot, it is time for the player to realize that he has reached the point of no return.
Now nursing the chip stacks means being extremely careful with them and so at a point when a player knows he has a low chip stack he should not go for overtly speculative calls. Another thing one should keep in mind while nursing his stack of chips never goes for a raise with a hand that the player feels is not worth a show down. When a player raises in such a situation all he is doing is wasting his chips for nothing and that is certainly not advisable.
Until and unless the player is holding cards with high strength he should make sure that he should get into the pot the first.
A good nursing of the short stack can be done when the player is ready to push whatever advantage or edge that he has over the players to the maximum limit. A smaller stack does not mean that the chances of winning the game are very less. It only means that the player should go to nursing the small stack of chips extremely adeptly. And strategize a proper nursing plan.
It is indeed a difficult task to play with a small stack of chips but it is not impossible. Nursing your chips with great skills and taking advantage of the most profitable situations is very important. A small stack of chips is a test of how well you can strategize so as not to fall out of the game soon.
