In cash-game poker one of the key skills that will affect your bottom line is how much money you make with your winning hands. Seems obvious, right? In general terms the greater your skill level the more you’ll make with your good hands. One of the ways you can improve this is by value-betting thinner than other players. This doesn’t mean you have to closely monitor your calorie intake or suck your cheeks in as you bet. It means you have to be more aware of when your hand is best and be more prepared to bet with marginal holdings.
Let’s define our terms – a value bet is a bet made to extract value from your hand, in other words to be called by a hand worse than yours. The ‘thinness’ of the value bet describes the relative strength of your hand to that of your opponent’s and the likelihood of getting called.
For example, if you hold A-A on an A-J-9-2-4 rainbow board you have the second nuts (to 3-5) and almost every player in the world would bet and hope to get called. This would be a very clear value bet. However, if you held the same hand but the Four on the river brought a third heart and your opponent had been calling you on every street, making a value bet now would be more marginal or ‘thinner’. Not only might the river flush card have cost you the pot but critically it makes it much harder for you to get paid, as your villain may now fold paired Aces and two-pair fearing the flush or better.
Value-bet or check?
When deciding to make a value bet with a marginal holding you should be evaluating your opponent’s range of hands and whether he will call with enough of that range to make your bet profitable. It may sound confusing but it’s not. Just think how often you’ll realistically get called by a hand that’s not beating you. Of course making these bets is highly player-dependent so it’s vital that you adjust how often you value-bet against thinking players and with how marginal a hand. Against calling stations or players that can make hero calls you can value-bet much more ‘thinly’.
It’s critical to develop this skill in terms of the long game otherwise you’ll find yourself leaving a lot of money on the table.