Bet Bigger

The simplest poker advice I give is, not coincidentally, also among the most effective: bet bigger when you believe you have the best hand.

When I start working with a new student, about 80 percent of the time I end up advising him to increase the size of his value bets. This is particularly true for tournament players during the early levels, when stacks are still deep, but it’s an easy way for just about anyone to win more with his best hands. Calling too often is the single most common mistake in poker, and making larger value bets is one of the best ways of exploiting it.

People Hate to Fold

Most people call somewhat more often than they should. It’s simply more fun and exciting to play than to fold. As the saying goes, “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

Most players also tend to overestimate the frequency with which any given opponent will bluff in a certain spot. This in turn leads them to call somewhat more than they should.

I’m not going to go into too much more detail about the reasons, because you’re probably familiar with them from personal experience. Suffice it to say that, unless you have a specific reason to believe otherwise, you should assume that your opponents will call somewhat more often than they should if they knew your exact strategy, meaning the full range of hands with which you would make a given bet.

Most people’s calling ranges are also at least a little bit inelastic. In other words, the absolute strength of their hand usually has more to do with whether or not they call a bet than does the pot odds they’re getting. If you bet $120 into a $200 pot, your opponent ought to call with fewer bluff-catchers than if you bet $100, but realistically most opponents will play exactly the same.

Working It Into Your Game

The implication of all this is that you can squeeze some extra money out of your opponents by increasing the size of your value bets. This is best done when you have reason to believe your opponent’s hand is good enough to warrant a call. In other words, there’s probably no need to mess with success if you are happy with your flop continuation betting strategy; at this point in the hand, there is still a good chance that your opponent missed the flop and has nothing.

If, however, he’s called a sizeable bet on either the flop or turn, then there’s a good chance he has something with which he would at least consider calling a river bet. In all likelihood, your first guess about how much he’ll be willing to call is too conservative.

Start increasing this number by 10 percent to 20 percent and see where it gets you. Specifically, think about what hands you think would call, for example, $100 but fold to $120. Then make the $120 bet, and, if called, be sure to pay attention to what you see at showdown. If you are seeing hands that you expected to fold to the larger bet, then you are probably showing a greater profit with the larger bet than the smaller. Once this becomes your new “baseline” bet size, then rinse and repeat: increase it by another 10 to 20 percent and see what kinds of hands are calling.

When you have opponent-specific reads, those should override any of this. Your objective here is to push the limits of how much you can value bet as a default, in situations where you don’t have any specific guesses about how much an opponent will call.

Example

You are first to act in a six-handed no-limit hold ‘em game with $.50-$1 blinds. You raise to $3.50 with A K, the button calls, and everyone else folds. The flop comes A 8 5, you bet $5, and your opponent calls. The turn is the 8, and you both check. Now the river comes the 5.

Despite the risk of running into a flush or full house, I would argue that your hand is certainly worth a value bet. Your opponent will often have an ace with a worse kicker, and you want to maximize your value from those hands. The question is how much to bet.

I often use this question as part of a diagnostic when I start working with a new student, and in my experience one-half to two-thirds of pot is a common answer. That would be $9-$12. Most people blank when asked what hands would call $12 but fold to $15.

In my opinion, the answer is not many. People don’t like to fold top pair when they perceive that you could be bluffing. From your opponent’s perspective all you’ve done so far is raise preflop and made a continuation bet. If he’s holding an ace on the river, he’s probably not folding it to a reasonably sized bet.

Once you start approaching the size of the pot, you may get his attention to the point where he’ll make some big folds. I wouldn’t bet less than $15 here, though, and I might bet as much as $18 if I had any inkling that my opponent was particularly loose or suspicious.

No Matter How Thin

As I mentioned above, you aren’t guaranteed to be good in this example. As long as you’re ahead of more than 50 percent of hands that will put money into the pot (ignoring the possibility of a bluff raise, which I don’t think is too likely here), then you want to bet the largest amount you can without shrinking your opponent’s calling range.

Personally I think it’s much higher, but suppose for the sake of argument that you expect to be good only 60 percent of the time when called in the example above. Sixty percent of $15 is still more than sixty percent of $12, so this isn’t a reason to bet smaller.

Balance

What I’ve outlined here – betting larger with value bets than with bluffs – is an exploitive strategy. This means that it is designed to take advantage of an expected weakness in your opponents’ play and that it in turn opens up a weakness in your own play that could be exploited. It’s not something to be attempted against high-level opponents, but it should work well against the regulars at your local casino or the recreational players you encounter online.

Against the best players, you should still work on increasing the size of your value bets. The difference is that you should also increase the size of your bluffs in the same situations, for balance. When you believe your opponent to have a bluff-catcher sort of hand, such as a weak top pair in this article’s example, you can put more pressure on him with larger bet sizes. Even if your bluffs and value bets are in perfect proportion to the pot odds that your bet offers, you’ll have a higher expected value with a $15 bet than with a $12 bet. Essentially you are still squeezing more out of your value bets, you’re just mixing in enough bluffs to prevent your opponent from exploiting you by folding whenever you bet big.

Against less observant opponents who won’t pick up on such things, it’s even easier. The lesson is the same, though: when in doubt, value bet bigger. Do this consistently, and your bankroll will thank you. ♠

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.