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Poker glossary

Fold

What it means

Folding means discarding your hand and forfeiting any claim to the pot. When you fold, you’re out of the hand completely - you can’t win the pot, but you also can’t lose any more chips. It’s poker’s most fundamental defensive action and often the correct play.

How it works at the table

You can fold at any point when facing a bet or raise. Simply push your cards forward face-down or verbally declare “fold.” Once folded, your cards go into the muck and can’t be retrieved.

Here’s a typical scenario: You hold 7♣ 6♣ in middle position with 50bb. After you raise to 2.5bb, the button 3-bets to 8bb. The blinds fold back to you. Facing this aggression with a marginal hand out of position, you fold. You lose your initial 2.5bb raise but avoid playing a large pot with a weak holding.

Strategic context

Folding is how you implement selectivity in poker. Most hands you’re dealt should be folded - playing too many hands is a classic beginner leak. Good players fold around 80-85% of their hands preflop in full ring games.

The key is recognizing when you’re beat or when the pot odds don’t justify continuing. Folding saves money in the long run. Every chip you don’t lose by folding a losing hand is just as valuable as a chip you win.

Common mistakes

Players make three critical folding errors. First, they fold too infrequently, calling with weak hands because they “want to see what happens.” This curiosity is expensive. Second, they fold too much to aggression, letting opponents bluff them off decent hands. Third, they fold in the wrong spots - like folding getting 5:1 pot odds when they only need 20% equity to call profitably.

Folding connects directly to pot odds calculations - you need to know when the price is wrong. It also relates to hand selection and starting hand charts. Understanding when to fold requires reading betting patterns and recognizing when your hand has become a bluff-catcher against an opponent’s value-heavy range.