In a game of poker, the term dead money refers to chips that have been put in the pot and are seemingly up for grabs without too much resistance.
For example, if you’re in a big blind and see three players just limp into the pot, you might be incentivized to raise with a wide range of hands because there is so much dead money in the middle.
By limping, these players have shown that they probably don’t have a strong hand and will likely fold to any reasonable 3-bet. They hope to see a cheap flop, but if they can’t achieve this goal, they’ll just let their hand go.
The concept of dead money is quite applicable to lower-stakes games where players aren’t too familiar with the strategy and will often play their hands almost face up, allowing you to pick easy chips without much resistance.
