Head Games: Inside Info Regarding Bet Sizing and How to Read Your Opponent’s Bet in Tournament Play

Pros: Darren Elias, Jesse Sylvia, and Phillip Hui

Craig Tapscott: How important is bet sizing? Share your thoughts on how to use bet sizing as a weapon.

Darren Elias: Bet sizing can be crucial in no-limit hold’em tournaments. In my opinion, bet sizing should always be a function of effective stack sizes. At deeper stacks, I am going to be using bigger sizing to put more pressure on my opponents and win much bigger pots when I have big hands. I find that a lot of online players still like to min open or 2.2 times open at 100 big blind (BB) plus stacks, which I believe to be an inferior strategy to opening three times or bigger. However, it makes sense that they do this because most online tournaments are relatively shallow throughout, and as stacks become shallower, a smaller bet is often the better choice.

I feel that when holding a 20–to-30 BB stack, a very small bet can accomplish the same task as a bigger one for a much better price. Let’s say we min open deep in a tournament with 20 BBs in late position, and the BB defends. We create a pot of around six BBs with 18 BBs effective stacks behind. At these depths, there is no need for us to continuation bet (c-bet) more than 2-to-2.5 BBs; some players would even argue that the best sizing would be one BB. The reasoning here is that if we want to play for stacks or make a triple-barrel bluff in this spot, we can do so easily and get all-in by the river without risking much preflop or on the flop. There is no need to waste a big blind and bet three BBs on the flop when we can bet 1.5 BBs or two BBs and achieve the same goal.  

Jesse Sylvia: Bet sizing is extremely important; both in terms of sizing your own bets correctly, and reading opponent’s bet sizes and using that information to determine the strength of their hand.

Different board textures require different sizes. On draw-heavy boards, we need to bet bigger to protect the stronger hands in our range and to charge our opponent to draw against us, as well as to maximize fold equity when we have a draw. On dry boards we can bet smaller, because our equity when ahead is usually much greater, so we need to worry less about protecting our hand. This allows us to size smaller with our entire betting range, effectively getting great odds on a bluff with the portion of our range that is bluffing. 

So let’s look at an example: Suppose we raise from the cutoff, and the BB calls. The board comes J 10 7 and our opponent checks. Here I would bet J-9 plus, Q-10, K-10, A-10, and all my heart draws, K-Q, and maybe A-K and A-Q with one heart, or A-Q and A-K of clubs. On this board I will bet something between 55-to-75 percent of pot depending on my opponent and how capable I think they are in reading bet sizes. 

Now let’s say instead the flop comes A-3-3 rainbow. Here I am betting most of my range, because my opponent has so many fewer aces in his range than I do. I’m also going to bet a lot less, somewhere around 30-to-45 percent of pot. This is because: a) when I am ahead I am usually way ahead, and b) when I am bluffing them off their air I get an amazing price on the bluff. 

These concepts can be extrapolated to the turn and river as well, and can be taken to the extreme, where we are even sometimes overbetting turns and rivers on some boards.

Phillip Hui: Bet sizing is a set up for the next bet. It’s like pool or golf; you are trying to set your next shot up in the most optimal manner. The idea of every hand you play is to induce your opponent to give you all of his/her chips when you have the best hand on the river, or to deceive your opponent and make them fold the best hand to you.

Let me share an example: My image at every table is — “I’m a crazy, backwards hat wearing Asian. So I’m always bluffing!” If you have this image, this might work for you as well. The blinds are 200-600-1200. It folds to me in the small blind (SB) and we are 50 BBs effective. I raise to 3,000 with K 7, and being blind versus blind, I prefer to raise 2.5-to-3 times rather than 2 times, because I’m getting peeled out of position a lot more frequently. That happens because, subconsciously, everyone thinks you are trying to steal and their calling range is wider when the sizing is smaller.

My opponent in this hand is an elderly amateur, but had already made it clear he did not like my style (laughs). He calls and the flop is K-J-7 rainbow. I continuation bet 3,300 into 7,800 and he calls. The turn is a seven. Now I’m trying to figure out my best option to get all his chips and determine what this player has. I bet again this time around half pot, so 7,500. He calls. Now I pretty much range him on a king or maybe A-J or Q-10. The river is a trey. There is just under 30,000 in the pot, and we each have about 36,000 or just over a pot-size bet. I go for max value, as the runout of the board was fairly dry. I don’t think he is ever folding a king here, seeing how he thinks I’m crazy. Any bet would make him fold any straight draws, but in the same respect I feel since he called the turn and, if he has any showdown value, would call any bet on the river. So I shoved for value and got snap called by A-J. In this instance, I felt with my aggressive image with this opponent, over-shoving the river was the most optimal option.

Craig Tapscott: What are a few keys to reading an opponent’s bet sizing so you can understand and develop a plan of how to proceed in a hand?

Darren Elias: Most winning professionals do a good job of not giving away too much information via their bet sizing. They will open to the same amount at each level regardless of hand strength, and generally standardize their continuation bets (c-bets) or base them on flop texture. Recreational players, however, do not always adhere to these guidelines. Often times weaker players will open to much bigger sizes with stronger holdings, and smaller sizing with more speculative holdings. In their heads, they are raising bigger to protect their hands and try to avoid a multiway situation where they may be outdrawn. This is one reason why it’s very important to watch your opponents even in hands you’re not involved in. If you can spot a player opening four times or bigger and showing down a premium hand, than you can infer that when they open smaller they have weaker holdings. This allows you to three-bet with impunity versus their smaller opens as you are going against a much weaker range that will most likely be folding or calling.
 
Some players will also give away information on the flop in a similar fashion. They will bet bigger when they connect with a flop and smaller when they are trying to steal it. For example, let’s say I know a player is using bigger bet sizing when he likes his hand and I defend a hand out of position like 8 7. On a flop of A 5 2, if he uses his bigger sizing I will almost always be check/calling, as I know I need to make my hand to win and want to avoid being three-bet on the flop with my naked flush draw. However, when he uses smaller sizing, I will be often be check-raising as I expect him to fold very often, armed with the information that he doesn’t love his hand and would be betting bigger if he had something stronger. None of this is possible without observing your opponents though.
Without collecting the necessary data, it is impossible to make these inferences.  

Jesse Sylvia: Reading bet sizes is a crucial skill in determining hand strength. Sometimes opponents take a line where their sizes are consistent to the strength of their hand, and we give them more credit. Sometimes they take a big strong line, but their bet sizes are inconsistent, and we should be calling a ton.

The first thing I do when I sit at a table is follow the other players’ bet sizes, basically trying to get an idea of how they approach different board textures. Then I look for inconsistencies in their bet sizes in pots we play together. This allows me to gather a lot of information that other people might miss.

Phillip Hui: For the majority of the time, a thinking player can make an educated assumption on the talent level of an opponent solely based on their sizing. For example: You are at a new table with 500-1,000 blinds and 100 ante and someone’s standard open is five times (5,000). You can consider them an amateur. You are only picking up SB plus BB plus antes (about 2.5 BBs) when everyone folds, but risking five BBs. In this case, you would need to open twice as much and risk double the amount to accomplish the same thing, as if you were to open 2-to-2.5 times (2,000-2,500).

The idea of sizing is to figure out which sizing is most optimal to assist you in accumulating chips. The standard for majority of professionals is 2-to-2.5 times BB preflop. Your sizing also influences the amount of the next raise. If a player opens to 5,000 at 500-1000 blinds, instead of 2,000 with 100,000 effective stacks (the most you can win or lose in the hand), they are cutting the value of the opponent’s stack by 80 percent in the hand and narrowing the range and increasing the variance. So the three-bet from an opponent would be somewhere around 2.5-to-3 times your raise. Let’s say 15,000 in this scenario, and if they had opened to 2,000 the three-bet would have been 6,000.

Preflop sizing in my opinion should be more balanced to disguise hands. That means raising near the same amount in relation to the blinds every time you decide to raise an unopened pot. This way, the opponents have a harder time ranging you. I prefer a 2-to-2.2 times raise; in my experience, it seems to be more optimal and lower variance to accomplish similar goals as the five times raises would. ♠

Darren Elias is a very successful cash game and tournament professional. He lives in Cherry Hill, N.J. and is recently married. Elias has more than $4 million in combined online and live tournament cashes.

Jesse Sylvia placed second in the 2012 WSOP main event. He appeared on the MTV series “True Life” for a segment called “I’m a New Millionaire.” Sylvia hails from the town of West Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha’s Vineyard.

Phillip Hui, 26 years old, has been playing poker full time since November 2012. He played golf professionally prior to poker. Hui has won three WSOP Circuit rings, and has more than 25 cashes.