When learning basic poker strategy, the first thing we learn is that the person with the best hand is supposed to bet it. Betting either stops opponents from drawing out by pressuring them to fold or makes them pay in case we go on to win the pot. No-limit hold'em gives us the opportunity to protect our hand by selecting the bet size, which is a good bit of the reason that it is such a popular way to play poker.
Should we bet all of our money whenever we think our hand is good? That is obviously a foolish strategy, because opponents will likely be calling us when our opinion that we have the best hand is incorrect, and folding cheaply when our opinion is accurate. And we should not bet too small, or we will be giving the opponent sufficient pot odds to play.
Good poker players have found the size of the pot to be a good guideline as an amount to bet. We do not follow this betting amount slavishly, but there is no better simple method to approximate a sensible bet size.
Understanding how much to bet in relation to the pot size is obvious, but there is a surprising number of people who do not understand how to calculate a pot-size amount when raising. You must figure in your call before the raise is made. (Naturally, you do this only in your head, because calling before raising would make your play an illegal string-raise.)
Here is a recent e-mail I got from one of my poker clients: "It's $1-$2 no-limit hold'em. The middle-position player raises to $15 and gets one caller. In the big blind, I look down at Q-Q and reraise to $50. I get one caller. The flop comes J-10-7 with two hearts. I bet $100 and the caller goes all in. I have $70 left and call. I lose to a set of jacks. I think I played this hand correctly. What is your opinion?"
I answered: "I keep preaching to learn how to calculate how much a pot-size raise would be, and make it a policy to reraise at least that much whenever you reraise (overbet the pot size when out of position). Do the math here. You call $15 and there is now $48 in the pot, so a pot-size reraise is to $63. So, you were supposed to reraise $50 more, to $65. Thus, you shorted the reraise amount by $15. That might make the opponent lay down a hand that was going to outflop you, though most people would (improperly) call with jacks."
My student answered me: "I see what you mean. When reraising, I did not calculate the $15 that I would have put in to call, so I underbet the pot."
I see this simple mistake of not figuring in the call before calculating the raise size over and over again. Since I am a pot-limit Omaha lover, I run into it all the time with dealers misjudging how much a player can legally raise. The most common mistake in no-limit is wagering an insufficient amount to protect your hand, and this particular mental error of forgetting to add in your call is often the culprit for the miscalculation when raising.
I said earlier that using the pot size is an indicator of how much to bet, but it isn't an automatic law to follow. Let's discuss this further. When you have the best hand, it is a lot more likely that you will get drawn out on when an opponent gets three new cards (the flop) than when he gets only one new card. That is why betting the full pot size is such a good guide for preflop wagering amounts, but a bet on the flop or turn is more often a smaller amount, such as half or three-quarters of the pot. You have to look at the drawing possibilities presented by the texture of the board to decide on your bet size.
There are a number of times when the full size of the pot is still smaller than the proper amount to bet. Of course, the classic time to overbet the pot size is when you have a short stack and want to go all in. But stack size aside, there are certain preflop situations in which you really want to put the hammer down. Here are the two most common conditions:
1. You are out of position. I am hardly ever unhappy when I raise or reraise a pot when out of position and everyone folds. You are in a highly dangerous situation when raising from the blind with a big pair (let alone the times when you try for a semisteal with A-K, A-Q, or even weaker holdings). A lot of the time, if you get outflopped, you will be getting all of your money in and be way behind. The usual scene is that you bet the flop, get smooth-called, bet the turn, and get raised all in. Then, you call, because it is not that much more money and you are not sure that you are beat (even though you are quite worried). You have to make your opponents pay through the nose for the privilege of taking a shot at all of your money. I suggest raising or reraising with a wager of 125 percent of the pot size when in one of the blinds.
2. You have a lot of opponents. When you have a pocket pair preflop, added opponents are a menace, exposing you to much more danger than the extra money in the pot is worth. With pocket aces, the extra opponents are not quite as great a threat, since you do not have to worry about overcards appearing. But with all other hands, including two kings, you do not want to get four or five callers when you raise preflop. (Inasmuch as you do not want to telegraph your holding, I suggest that you treat aces just like the other pocket pairs.) The first player acting after you is often the key to how the others will play. If that person calls, the pot often appears to your opponents to be their get-even or get-rich hand, and nearly any hand already partway in will take a shot at you. So, even with a good hand in position, when there is a string of limpers or an opening raise with several callers, fire a big blast that is greater than the pot size.
Learn how to quickly calculate the amount of a pot-size raise, and when you need to bet a little more or a little less than that amount. This will put you well on your way to being a competent no-limit hold'em player.
Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.
