No-limit hold’em is a fascinating and subtle game which has wholeheartedly taken over the world of poker. One of the reasons for all the excitement is the ability to get all your chips in on any given hand, but the best players know that the real importance is being able to choose the size of your bets. Good players are excellent at understanding the range of weapons this puts at their disposal and can adjust their bet sizes to achieve whatever they want in a given situation. Weaker players do not pay attention to bet-sizing, causing them to lose value in some spots and give up too many chips in other spots where they’re losing.
All bet-sizing should be understood in relation to the pot, as that’s what we’re trying to win when we bet. The other way of understanding a bet is in relation to the effective stack (which is the smaller of ours or our opponent’s) but most of your bets will be dictated by the size of the pot
What is a standard bet?
When people refer to a ‘standard’ bet they mean anything from half the pot up to the full size of the pot. There are several reasons for this but all of them relate to the bet size being right to achieve what we’re trying to when betting, which is what you should think about when choosing your bet size.
If you’re value-betting – betting a hand when you want a call from a worse hand – then a standard bet size will often extract the maximum, making sense in relation to the pot and what your opponent can win. It also often offers your opponent the wrong price to draw for the next card. So let’s say the pot is $100 and you bet $60. Your opponent has a flush draw and has to call $60 into a pot of $160 – he is getting odds of 2.6-to-1 on his call when his true odds of hitting his flush on the next card are close to 4-to-1.
When bluffing – betting when you want your opponent to fold – you want to bet the minimum you need to achieve this result. Again, this is a bet that makes sense in relation to the pot. If you bet $20 into that $100 dollar pot your opponent is getting a great price to draw to improve his hand or even to find out if his weak hand is ahead. You’re very unlikely to get a fold. However, once you start betting $50 or more your opponent has a real decision to make and your bluff may be successful.
Small bets
It’s a generalisation, but usually a correct one, that good players don’t make small bets (by small bets we mean less than half the size of the pot). Small bets aren’t often used because they don’t make opponents fold better hands, they don’t extract maximum value when you’re winning and they give other players too cheap a price to draw to a better hand. However, like everything in poker there are situations where they can be used to good effect.
One use of smaller bets is to extract value in spots where you’re sure an opponent has a weak hand and you’re comfortably winning the hand. If you make a normal-sized bet you will always get a fold, but they may pay off a small bet out of curiosity. Let’s say you’ve had the lead in a hand, which you’ve been semi-bluffing with a flush draw and your opponent has been calling. On the river the flush arrives and your opponent checks again. If it’s an opponent who plays their marginal hands weakly this way and almost never has a big hand in this spot, you may make the most money by making a small value bet to make him curious with a one or even two-pair hand. It’s important not to overdo this though, because you only need one big bet to be called to equal many of these smaller bets being paid off.
Defensive bets
You can also use small bets as defensive or blocking bets. These can be used either to set the price of continuing when you have a drawing hand (hopefully stopping your opponent from charging too high a price with a bet size of his choosing), or to prevent yourself being bluffed off a winning hand on the river if you check. Blocking bets are a great tool against weaker players but stronger players will often attack them, putting you in some very difficult spots.
Another reason for using small bets is to reopen the action in an attempt to induce errors from your opponents. For example, you’ve called a three-bet from an aggressive opponent who is in the big blind when you raised on the button with Aces. The flop is 4d-5c-8h and your opponent bets. You have several options here and often the best line is to make a normal raise. However another option is to make a small bet in the form of a minimum raise. If he’s an okay aggressive player this will often encourage him to shove in this spot with a variety of losing hands, thinking your min-raise bet is weak.
Big bets
A big bet can defined as a bet that is close to pot-sized or larger. It’s rare to see a bet bigger than the pot from experienced players, unless it’s an all-in bet or a bet made to set another player in. Making big bets (also known as overbets) doesn’t make sense in most situations, because if you’re trying to get paid there comes a point where your opponent will only call if you’re in dire trouble. Making big bets to bluff is often a mistake because you’re risking more chips without changing the result (in most cases). That is, you could have made a smaller bet and achieved the same number of folds. That’s not to say there aren’t times when big bets aren’t a valid option though.
Using big bets to your advantage
Big bets can be used to gain maximum value when you run into a drawing hand and think your opponent will pay over the odds to continue. Let’s say the pot is $100 and a normal value bet would be around $70. In this spot if you make a value bet of $140 you need to get called half as often to make the same money. Therefore if you are in a hand or against an opponent where it seems that the size of the bet is not the key factor as to whether they’re calling or folding, you should often be betting more. In fact, your value bet should be as big as you think possible without strongly affecting how often you get called. This price will vary depending on the hand and your opponent. After all, if you would have been called for more than the amount you actually bet, that money is coming straight off your profits.
Over-bluffing
The other use of overbets is as an act of raw naked aggression when it’s a bluff you think your opponent just can’t call. This is particularly useful in tournament situations when a player sets another player all-in for more than the pot, either because he has a stack a bit bigger than the pot or the bettor thinks his opponent can’t make the call ‘for his tournament life’. Here’s an example of one of the best in action, as Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan forces his opponent off the winning bet by making a bet he just can’t call despite suspecting he’s ahead.