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Always be aware of extra outs. Otherwise you may fold hands with which you should have called. In such situations you must reduce your odds of winning and sometimes throw your hand away. For instance, a four-flush against three-of-a-kind in seven-card stud is a much greater underdog than a four-flush against two pair because threeof-a-kind is more than twice as likely to improve to a full house. The ability to fold correctly when you suspect you are drawing dead or drawing with too little chance of ending up with the best hand is one attribute that distinguishes a good player from an average one.

The reason is that when you bet in a limit game and the pot is large, your opponent's hand, though second best, is rarely so much of an underdog that he is not getting good enough odds to chase you. Hence, his calling you with good odds is a profitable play for him in the long run. Since he is correct to take the odds, you do not gain when he calls. You gain only when he folds and turns down those odds. When he calls, you lose even if you happen to win that particular pot; for over the long run his call has positive expectation.

You have won a very small pot with a hand that potentially could have won a huge pot. The Cost of Giving Your Hand Away This extreme example points up a basic poker dilemma. You want to make the most of your hands by maximizing your gains and minimizing your losses, yet what are you costing yourself when you play in such a way that your opponents should know what you have? The answer to this question is contained in the Fundamental Theorem of Poker, which states that every time opponents play a hand differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play a hand the same way they would have played it if they could see all your cards, you lose.