In a tournament when chip stacks are shallow, it is not unusual for players to commit their money with weaker holdings to avoid ‘blinding away’. The amount of chips in play also plays a part. Likewise if the board is made up of out of sequence cards with no flushes possible, your hand strength goes up. If you hold three of a kind, but there are four cards to a flush and four cards to a straight, your poker combination strength goes down. The composition of the community poker cards will determine how many strong potential hands are in play.
If they are ‘loose’ meaning they play a lot of hands, then the relative strength of their hand usually goes down. If they are ‘tight’ meaning they play few hands, then you can expect them to show up with a strong hand when they do. Your opponents playing style is also a big factor. A pair of Aces, for example, is quite a strong poker combination against one player, but against four players it decreases significantly in value. However if only two players are involved in a hand, it is less likely.
If lots of players have chosen to play the hand voluntarily, you have to assume they are doing so because they hold strong hands. The number of players helps determine poker hand strength. One of the core skills in poker is being able to determine whether your hand is strong or not, because many factors contribute to how strong or weak a certain poker card combination actually is.
