Fantastic folds are something you will see rarely, even in the professional game. Every person will have their hands where they think they are beaten of course, and make a good fold, but to dodge those hands that seemed tailor made to end your evening…these are the folds I mean.
One such hand in the professional game I will give a mention to, took place between Phil Hellmuth and Frank Passantino. Hellmuth raises to 1,500 first off with (A,K). Passantino looks down at (A,A) and reraises the pot to 3,000. After thinking for a while Hellmuth says ‘ok, thats good enough, I call’ then quickly checking the flop and turn which brings a board of (4,4,A,Q). After a 10,000 bet from passantino, he folds his hand face up, but his check on the flop indicates that Hellmuth already knew he was beaten, despite hitting the flop perfectly.
Personally, I have a favourite fold of mine too, where I put down pocket Queens on the river, preserving half of my stack after a flop of (3,3,3). The turn was a Jack, and river a 7, but I sensed danger as soon as my bet was flat called on the flop, and managed to get away as soon as I was heavily reraised. I think most players would have lost all their chips there to what eventually turned out to be my opponents four of a kind. These sort of folds save you a lot of money and chips over the long run I feel, but the other side of the coin is that people can try too hard to make good folds and fold the winning hand too often. As with many aspects of poker its about striking a logical and carefully thought out balance.