The Whats, Whens, and Hows of Pot Control

The first time I heard the term “pot control,” I didn’t understand the concept, but I knew it had to be important. Who wouldn’t want to control the pot? Turns out it is a pretty important concept, though an often misunderstood and misapplied one.

What is Pot Control?

Pot control refers specifically to controlling the size of the pot, tailoring it to suit your hand and/or to deny your opponents the pot that best suits their hands.

When you have a big hand, you’d prefer to play a big pot. This usually entails betting or raising, though there are a few exceptions. If it seems like an opponent is going to build the pot for you, you might choose to let him go ahead and do that. Or if it seems like none of your opponents has anything, you might choose to keep the pot small, temporarily, in hopes that they’ll be willing to play a bigger pot later.

When you have a weak hand, you’d usually prefer to play a small pot. This might mean checking and folding to any bet, or, if you think you could improve on the next street, it might mean calling a bet (though you’d still prefer that that bet be small) in the hopes of making a hand worthy of a bigger pot.

Occasionally, though, you might pretend that you want to play a large pot in the hopes of scaring out your opponent. This, of course, is known as bluffing, and it’s the best example of foiling your opponent’s attempts to control the size of the pot for his own purposes.

Hands that lie somewhere in the middle are the trickiest. Depending on the situation, a “medium-strength” hand could be anything from ace-high to an overpair to a small flush or full house. It’s a hand with which you expect to be ahead quite often when some money goes into the pot, but not a hand you consider worth your entire stack.

As the name implies, you’d ordinarily prefer to play a medium pot with these hands. Ideally, you’d grow the pot up to the point where you think your opponent would still be willing to stick around with weaker hands than yours, then you’d check it down from there. The tricky bit is figuring out where exactly that point is and how to grow the pot to there but no larger. This job is further complicated by the fact that you’re aiming at a moving target: on each street, the strength of your hand relative to your opponent’s range changes, so it’s possible to build a big pot early and then regret it later, or vice versa.

Most of the time when you hear people talk about pot control, they’re referring to efforts to keep the pot from getting too large when they have one of these medium-strength hands. The rest of this article will focus on when and how to do that.

When to Pot Control

The kind of pot control we’re talking about from here on involves a hand that will be good as long as the pot doesn’t get too big. So the first step is to assess, based on your opponents and your positions and the board and the table dynamics and whatever else you think is important, just what your hand is worth.

Stay flexible! You’ll have to revisit this decision every time you get new information, whether that means seeing another card or seeing your opponent do something unexpected. Just make a preliminary judgment of how large you’d like the pot to get to the river if nothing changes.

The first mistake people make is underestimating the strength of a hand. Remember that you only have to be good more than 50 percent of the time that a bet goes into the pot to warrant betting. Often I see people pot control a strong hand like an overpair simply because they could be beat. Their fear of putting money in bad occasionally costs them the opportunity to put money in good much more often. So be sure to think it through before you decide that your hand isn’t worth betting on three streets.

If you’re sure that it isn’t, then you have another decision to make. Do you want to keep the pot small now and then grow it later? Or is it better to build the pot up to the size that you want, then check it down from there? Three factors influence this decision: the hand you have, the hands you’re trying to get value from, and the texture of the board.

If many draws are possible on the board, but you don’t have a draw, then it’s usually better to bet now and check later. This way you can get called by draws that might not put money into the pot on the river unless they get there, in which case you’ll be behind. Or, if the draws fold, at least you didn’t let them draw for free. As an added bonus, your opponent might put you on a draw and call you down lighter on an earlier street than he would on the river, especially if one or more draws get there.

If you do have a draw, for example A K on a K 10 8 7 board, you might be better off checking the turn. You’re not so worried about the river card, since there’s a fair chance it could give you a very strong hand. Plus, you’d hate to get raised when you have such a good draw. If you held A K, I’d say go ahead and bet, expect to get called by plenty of worse hands, and fold if your opponent raises. Probably you’d be drawing slim or dead, so you wouldn’t be folding away a lot of equity. With the nut-flush draw, though, you do have a lot to lose by getting raised, so better not to give your opponent the chance.

One last point: you should be less inclined to pot control against loose opponents, because by definition they’ll play large pots with relatively weak hands. Basically you should lower your standards for what counts as a big hand against such players; if you don’t, you’re missing out on a lot of value.

How to Pot Control

It’s almost impossible to control the size of the pot from out of position. If your opponent wants a bet to go into the pot, either because he has a big hand or because he’s bluffing, it’s going to go into the pot. Of course, if you don’t bet he can’t raise, so you can prevent two bets from going into the pot, but that’s a situation that comes up a lot less often (though it might be relevant in the A K example discussed above).

Being in position gives you the final say on whether another bet goes in. If your opponent checks, you can guarantee yourself a free card or a free showdown by checking behind, which simply isn’t true if you check from out of position. Thus, you should be more inclined to check for pot control when you have position, and more inclined to bet/fold medium-strength hands from out of position.

Realize, too, that your decision on, for example, the turn is bigger than simply whether or not to bet. Are you going to bet and then check behind most rivers? Check and then call or value bet most rivers? Check planning to fold to a river bet? Of course a particularly good or bad river card or a strange play from your opponent could change your plan, but having at least a default plan in mind is the best way to stay in control of the pot. ♠

Andrew Brokos is a professional poker player, writer and coach. He blogs about poker strategy on ThinkingPoker.net and is co-host of the Thinking Poker Podcast. Andrew is also interested in education reform and founded an after-school debate program for urban youth.