Sweetening the Pot in No-Limit

Have you ever heard someone say that he's raising in order to sweeten the pot? Do you think he's nuts? Or, is there method to his madness?

Recently, a reader asked me if his skepticism about pot-sweetening raises was justified, or if he was missing out on a valuable weapon for his arsenal:

Every once in a while, I hear someone say that he raised preflop with a drawing hand like A-10 suited to sweeten the pot. Personally, I think this is wrong, but I'd like to learn more about it and adjust if I am mistaken.

I'll give you my reasons not to raise, and I am hoping to hear good arguments for why, when, and how raising makes sense:
My definition of "sweetening the pot" is this: a [preflop] raise with the intention of getting several callers in order to build a medium to big pot preflop. This excludes steals! Usually there will be limpers already, and the raise will be between one big blind and four big blinds (added to the one big blind that you would need to just call). Also, I am talking about drawing hands only!

In general, any raise that is intended to get callers (value-raise) should have a positive expectation, meaning that my chances of winning are greater than my relative share of the money that I put in. Therefore, the only drawing hands with which I think a raise makes sense are suited connectors, because you may hit a flush or a straight.

So, does sweetening the pot make sense, or is it a bunch of hocus-pocus?

Here's how I think of sweetening the pot. Let's say we are playing with really deep stacks. A couple of players limp, and we have a hand that we think will be profitable post-flop. That is, using our position, our hand strength, and our superior post-flop skills, we think we'll be able to generate an edge after the flop. Naturally, this post-flop edge will be in proportion to the size of the bets. If we're making $1 and $5 bets, our edge will be worth X amount. If we're making $5 and $25 bets, our edge will be worth roughly five times X, due to the bigger bets. (Remember, since the stacks are really deep, with either betting size, we're not bumping up against an all-in bet.)

So, bigger post-flop betting benefits us. One way to make the post-flop betting bigger is to make the preflop pot bigger. So, let's say we have a hand preflop that is expected to win exactly its share. That is, we're basically indifferent to whether or not more money goes in before the flop. But, we have a post-flop edge. In that case, we want to make the preflop pot as large as we can, to increase the size of the post-flop betting, and therefore the size of our post-flop edge.

That's what a pot sweetener is all about. Think of it as simply increasing the stakes of the game when the situation is favorable for you. You may be increasing the stakes because you think you can get paid off big. Or, you may be increasing the stakes because you can steal a lot of pots. The sweetening raise is designed merely to increase the stakes because you have an edge. What that edge is depends on the situation.

Note that you can take somewhat the worst of it on the preflop bet and still want to sweeten the pot. All you need is for the increase in post-flop edge to outweigh the loss you take before the flop. That is, you can raise with a hand that won't win that often, but when it does win, it wins big. This raise will end up costing you a little bit of money every time the hand loses, but it will make it all back and more when you win a monster pot.

That's really all there is to it. The main caveats are:

1. Sometimes your sweetening raise will induce one or more players to fold. Often, that's not a problem, but in some situations it could be bad for you. If you don't want players to fold, make your sweetening raise a bit smaller than usual.

2. In practice, stacks aren't "very deep," as I assumed they were before. They end up all in at some point, which puts a cap on your post-flop advantage, and possibly can eliminate it entirely. When you sweeten the pot, make sure that the stack sizes will play well for you with the bigger pot.

3. Pot-sweetening raises reopen the betting, and could expose you to a reraise from a player who might never get the chance to reraise if you just called. This problem is bigger in some situations than in others.

I make pot-sweetening raises all the time. Every time I isolate a limper, my raise has a large pot-sweetening component. Let's say someone limps and I raise with 9-7 suited from the button. I'm not raising for value, and I'm not really raising to steal the pot. I'm raising to increase the stakes and hopefully get the pot heads up with position against a weak player. That gives me a post-flop advantage, and my post-flop advantage will be worth more in the bigger pot.

In live games, I sometimes make multiway pot sweeteners. If several players limp in to me on the button and I have a pocket pair, I'll sometimes put in a raise that I expect everyone to call. The point of the raise is merely to increase the stakes for the hand, because having a pocket pair on the button in a multiway pot is a very favorable situation, and I want my edge to be bigger.

Ed is a featured coach at StoxPoker.com. Also check out his online poker advice column, NotedPokerAuthority.com. He has authored four books on poker, most recently, Professional No-Limit Hold'em: Volume 1.