Counting the Pot

Failure to keep track of the pot size is a common error at live poker tournaments. Because I play primarily online, where the software tells me the size of the pot down to the penny, I’ve had to make an active effort to keep a running count of what’s in the pot as I play.

This is particularly a problem in tournaments because the stakes are always changing. If you’re playing at a $5/$10 cash game table, you quickly acquire a sense of what the average pot size tends to be and when a bet is small or large. In a tournament, though, what was a large bet an hour ago could be a small bet at the current time.

Smart players are aware of this phenomenon and will attempt to take advantage of it, generally with very small bluffs. If you don’t know how large the pot is, then you won’t realize that what seems like a large bet is actually laying you 6-1, in which case you may be correct to call with some surprisingly weak hands.

Although you can compensate for this somewhat by counting what’s in the pot only when you actually need to know, this risks broadcasting information about your hand. Smart opponents may be able to deduce that you have a close decision when you take the time to count the pot, and that at other times you are acting without regard for the size of the pot. Thus, it is best to keep a running count of what’s in the pot at all times, so that you’ll have that information when you need it.

Calling Down With Ace High

A hand that I played on Day 6 of the 2011 World Series of Poker main event illustrates this point. Blinds were 15K/30K with a 5K ante. A Swiss player named Stefan raised to 60K in late position, and the two players between us folded. I was in the big blind with A-10 offsuit.

Stefan’s minimum raise offered me 5-1 odds on a call; I needed to call just 30K more into a pot of 150K. Some people might call A-10 offsuit a trouble hand, but getting such odds against a late position raise, folding it is out of the question. You could make a case for re-raising, but I chose to call.

The flop came 8-6-3, all different suits. I checked, and Stefan bet 50K. If you’ve been practicing keeping track, then you know that there was now 180K in the pot, so I was getting better than 3.5-1 on a call. As a late position raiser, Stefan could have almost anything, so again folding ace-high is really not an option.

Raising doesn’t accomplish much, either. He won’t fold many hands better than mine, maybe not even A-J, and much of what he does fold will be hands that I dominate. It would be a shame to let him fold a hand like A-9 that is drawing nearly dead. Even if he doesn’t hold a dominated ace, he may decide that an ace is a good card to bluff, so I consider A-10 to be a very good bluff-catcher in this spot.

I called, and the turn brought the J. I checked again, and now Stefan bet 169,000, a good deal more than he’d bet on the flop but barely half the pot. If he realized how small his flop bet was, which I assume he did because he was a very smart player, then he knew that I could have called with quite a wide range on the flop. Thus, he could bet almost any pair for value. For the same reason, though, he had a lot of incentive to bluff. I called again.

The river was another 6. I checked, and after a long pause, Stefan bet 252,000. I still had no pair, but relative to the huge number of hands with which he would have raised pre-flop and bet that flop, very few would actually be good enough to bet for value on both the turn and river. Either he’d just made trips, he’d paired the J on the turn, or he’d started with a big pair. If he didn’t have those hands, then he was bluffing.

Any other pair and probably even better ace-high hands would be too weak to bet for value but also too good to bluff. In all likelihood, Stefan would have been happy with those hands just to check and take a showdown.

With more than 800K in the pot, I was getting better than 3-1 and still believed that I could beat all of his bluffs with my ace-high. I called, and he showed 10-9 for a turned straight draw.

Conclusion

Although he had a lot of outs, I was a strong favorite at every point in the hand. Considering the odds I was getting on each call, folding at any point would have been a huge mistake.

The river bet represented more than 10 percent of my stack, so it certainly felt large. It was only because I kept track of the pot size that I realized just how small Stefan’s bets were and how important it was for me to call down with ace-high.

Although it may seem tedious at first, keeping count of the pot can be almost meditative, a way of keeping your mind focused on what’s going on at the table. Rather than talking, eating, wandering the room, or listening to music, you can focus on the pot and what is being bet, called, and raised. As you do so, you’ll likely start picking up on other important things such as individual players’ mannerisms, tells, and moods. ♠

Andrew Brokos is a professional poker player, writer and coach. He’s a member of Poker Stars Team Online and blogs about poker strategy on ThinkingPoker.net. Andrew is also interested in education reform and founded an after-school debate program for urban youth.