In poker we define the size of bets in two main ways: by the number of big blinds (preflop) and as a percentage of the pot (postflop). In tournaments a ‘normal’ bet after the flop can be anything from a quarter of the pot to a pot-sized bet, while anything over the pot is deemed to be an overbet. Preflop, a normal raise is anywhere from 2.5x the big blind to 3.5x the big blind. And a three-bet of an opening raise is generally around three times the opening bet; for example at 50/100 with a raise to 300, a ‘standard’ three-bet would be somewhere between 750 and 1,050.
One move that has become more common in tournaments in 2009 is the over-shove – a large bet in relation to the pot and usually an all-in bet. This bet is primarily for value and therefore has been called the ‘value shove’.
When to value shove
Value shoves can be used on any street in no-limit hold’em and are effective for different reasons at different stages of a tournament. In the early stages of a tourney, when stacks are deep and there are still many bad players with chips, you can use it to help someone stack off light. If you hold A-A or K-K a big over-shove preflop after a raise can look a lot like A-K or A-Q, and you may well get called by pairs like 8-8 and better and A-Q+, putting you in a very favourable spot. This is a great move if there’s a raise and a call in front of you because it looks so much like a squeeze play. You can also do this with big hands if someone opens for an unusually large raise – say 4x or 5x instead of their usual 3x – because this type of raise is almost always A-K, A-Q or 8-8 to J-J, and if you hold A-A, K-K or even Q-Q you have that range absolutely crushed.
Another reason to use the value shove, particularly on the flop, is if there’s a high number of turn cards that could kill your action and make either your opponent (or you) slow down. For instance, imagine you hold 5s-5c on a 9h-5h-3s board and you suspect your opponent may hold a hand like Tens or Jacks (no heart). If a heart, Queen, King or Ace comes on the turn (roughly a 40% chance) he’s going to be very reluctant to get a lot of chips in the pot, whereas on this flop he may well suspect you’re shoving with some sort of draw.
Picking value-shoving spots
While it’s true that most of your profit in poker will come from bad players, finding a good spot to value-shove often has as much to do with your position at the table as the type of opponent you’re facing. It’s widely known that online tournaments have become very aggressive in the last few years, with players throwing in three-bets and four-bets with abandon. A year or so ago the phrase ‘under the gun is the new button’ was coined because button raises (and late-position raises in general) no longer garnered any respect. For the same reason it’s easy to see that value-shoving is likely to be very effective in these seats, as few players will ever credit you with a big hand.
For example, let’s say you’re in the early stages of a tournament with effective stacks of around 50 big blinds. If you open the button to 3BB with a strong hand like Q-Q and get re-popped by the small blind to 9BB, your options are to flat-call, reraise to around 25BB (effectively committing yourself) or value-shoving all-in. Clearly you don’t have to value-shove and get called very often for this to be more profitable than calling or four-betting to 25BB. Flat-calling preflop here with Q-Q is arguably the better play, but both flatting and shoving all-in will disguise your hand far more than four-betting to 25BB.
The mid stages
In the middle stages of a tournament when stacks are shallower, it’s not uncommon for many players to be sitting with 20-30 big blinds, putting you in a good position to three-bet all-in preflop. So if the button opens to 3x from a 30BB stack and you have 25BB, a ‘normal’ three-bet would be to somewhere around 8BB, hoping to induce a shove. However, in this spot you can also just ship the lot in, as your value shove here will look exactly like a re-steal. Your overbet also looks weak because it appears you’re simply picking on a late-position bettor, with a good stack size for re-stealing. One of the benefits of this is that many opponents immediately discount A-A and K-K from your range as ‘there’s no way you’d do that with those hands’. Oh really?
When is it wrong to value-shove?
Okay, so far we’ve been looking at the fact that value-shoving is often a better idea than the age-old tactic of simply betting a normal amount and hoping to build a big pot from there. But obviously there are times when it's a terrible idea. I mean poker is a game of variables, right?
Personally I find that in a heads-up pot against a weak player, flat-calling when the donk leads on the flop works betting than giving him the shipping news, especially if the flop is relatively dry. This is because donk-leads are generally quite polarised into monsters – like sets or combo draws – and weak hands that will be slung into the muck at the first sight of your over-shove, in which case you should give your opponent a chance to make a good second-best hand.
The delayed value shove
Letting your opponent catch something on the turn or decide they want to bluff can be a good approach. The idea of the delayed value shove is that by the time you reach the turn or river you have manipulated the size of the pot so that a shove for the pot or more looks perfectly natural. Let’s use the example of flopping a set on a dry board. Imagine you raise to 300 from the cutoff preflop with effective stacks of 5,500 at 50/100 and pick up one caller from the small blind. You flop a set of Sixes on a Th-6d-2c board (pot 700 with 5,200 effective stacks). If checked to, many players would check behind, but if you want to get maximum value you should bet, somewhere around half to two-thirds of the pot. So let’s imagine you lead for 500 and get called (pot 1,700, effective stacks 4,700) and the turn is the Qs, completing a full rainbow. Again the small blind checks and you need to decide on your bet size. If you make a reasonable bet of 950 and get called, the pot will be 3,600 and the effective stacks before the river is dealt will be 3,750, making your river overbet look perfectly natural.