Controlling False Hope in No-Limit Hold'em

Your bet in no-limit hold'em does more than just put some chips in the pot. It also sends a message to your opponents. As we shall see in this column, sometimes you send a message of hope. You want to think through what message you are sending, and make sure it is the one you want the opponent to get. You want to offer hope to your opponent only when he really does not have much.

Some basics: In no-limit hold'em, stack sizes figure importantly into most of your decisions. You not only need to consider how big the pot is, and what the odds are, but also what percentage of your stack you are committing to the hand.

Occasionally, a bet you make actually commits you to further betting. When this happens, you must realize that not only are you betting the chips you are putting in the pot now, but you may also be betting chips that are still in your stack.

Let's take a simple example: You hold the K Q and see a flop of Q 9 6. The pot is $700 and you have a stack of $1,000. Your opponent has $2,000. You decide to make a pot-sized bet, so you bet $700. Now, your opponent pushes all in and you have to decide what to do. While deciding, you might as well do some arithmetic. The pot now has the original $700, your $700 bet, his $700 call, and $300 more (he has put in more than this, but $300 is all you have left). That means you are facing a $300 call to try to win a $2,400 pot, so you are getting 8-1 for your call. You realize, having done your homework, that if he has A-A with a heart, you are only a 4-1 dog. In fact, even if he has A-Q, you are about a 6-1 dog. Since the pot is offering 8-1, you pretty much have to call.

Because you have to call, it probably means you made a mistake in betting the $700 in the first place. Yes, I know that is a nice pot-sized bet, but by betting the $700, you are committing all of your chips if you are raised, so you clearly should have bet either more, going all in right away, or less (if you bet, say, $300, you can get away from the hand if you are raised and decide you should wait for a better chance).

Even though you put only $700 into the pot, you actually bet $1,000. This sort of situation comes up frequently; when you bet more than 40 percent of your stack, you very likely are also betting the rest.

Looking at the other guy's stack: Many players understand these concepts, and apply them fairly well for their own stack and the pot size. However, some of these players start to falter when the size of their opponent's stack comes into play.

On this hand played by a student (I'll call him "Jake"), he picked up the A Q under the gun on the last hand of the first round of a sit'n'go tournament. The blinds were still $10-$15. He decided his hand was worth a raise to $85.

This was a larger raise than he should have made, as his opening raise ought to be between $45 and $60. When I asked him why he made this particularly large raise, he told me he liked to use the slider on his screen, but it was hard to control and it came out $85.

Let me digress and use this moment to point out to you that you should always be prepared to type in your bet size. Since you can bet any amount you want, you should decide the precise amount you wish to bet and then bet exactly that. When you are calculating your opponent's pot odds, you want to do it as accurately as possible. I see quite a few strange-looking bet sizes online, and until this encounter, I never realized that some of you are just taking the slider for a ride and guessing where to get off. If you are doing this, you should stop right away. You are playing for real money; how hard can it be to make a proper bet?

Returning to our hand, Jake raised to $85, and a very loose player behind him called. This player had managed to work his stack down to $335, the typical consequence of playing lots of hands early. Nobody else called, so the two of them took the flop of Q J 6. Jake was first to act and bet $125 into the $195 pot. His opponent then moved all in for his remaining $250, making a raise of $125. Jake realized he had to call only $125 to have a chance to win a pot of $570, and correctly believed he was getting the right price to continue. So, he called the $125. His opponent showed the A 5 and made a flush, so Jake lost the hand.

Eliminating false hope: Jake should have taken the time to understand that because his bet of $125 was half of his opponent's stack, he would either fold or go all in. If he went all in, Jake would have to call, as indeed he did. Therefore, it was a clear mistake to bet the $125.

What Jake's $125 bet did was provide his opponent a false hope. When you make a bet in no-limit hold'em, you have two ways to win. First, the opponent might fold (this is termed the "folding equity" of your bet). If he calls, you still have a chance to win either because you have the best hand or because you draw out. When Jake's opponent pushed all in, he had the hope that Jake might fold, or that he might make his flush. However, Jake (a) knew that he was not going to fold, and (b) did not want his opponent to go all in. Jake wanted to win the pot right then and there.

If he understood the situation, Jake should have gone all in himself. His opponent would now be certain that the only way to win the pot would be to call and draw out, since there would be no folding equity. By eliminating the false hope that he might fold, Jake would have clarified the situation for his opponent to Jake's advantage.

In arithmetic terms, his opponent would have been faced with a $250 call to win the $195 already in the pot and the $250 from Jake. This is less than the 2-1 odds to hit the flush, so his opponent might have folded. (Of course, being a weak player in the first place, his opponent also might have called, but that call would have been incorrect, and therefore better for Jake.)

Creating false hope: Conversely, if Jake had a very big hand (say, a set) and did want his opponent to push all in, he would have been correct to underbet with $125, or even $100. This bet would have provided exactly the effect that Jake incorrectly created earlier. Here, he would have hoped his opponent did get all of his money in when he was a very big underdog.

Ironically, and somewhat counterintuitively, Jake could make the same bet when he had absolutely nothing and was not planning to call an all-in bet at all. Let's assume Jake was goofing around in early position with the 5 4, and put in the big raise. He got called, but did not want to give up on the pot. He would make a small bet here, hoping to pick up the pot, or hoping to mimic the play he would have made with a very big hand. If he got raised, he would simply fold.

So, we see an interesting sort of pattern. Jake should make a small bet with a bad hand or with a very good hand. With an OK hand, he should have pushed in all of his chips.

Conclusion: When making a bet in no-limit hold'em, there are many factors you must consider in addition to how many chips you have, and how big the pot is. Three key additional factors are:

• the number of chips your opponent has,

• what you would like him to do in response to your bet, and

• what message your different bet sizes send.

You want to make sure you are not sending a message of hope when you don't want him to have any.