Marc Goone Explains How To Properly Size Your Bets

If you go down the rabbit hole of poker strategy on YouTube, it won’t take long to discover enlightening poker posts from high-stakes pro and Hungry Horse Poker co-founder Marc Goone. 

After being introduced to the game, Goone was so obsessed that he would listen to poker podcasts while driving, showering, and even on the toilet. While that may be a little too much information for most, it explains Goone’s rise to the highest stakes and the respect he garners in the industry as a sought-after coach.

“It was a long journey moving up in stakes, but I was obsessed,” recalled Goone. “I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my music career but found myself spending more time on poker. I would play a session and replay the spots repeatedly in my head. If I were value betting, I’d ask myself, ‘The guy snap-called me on the river there so I could have gotten $20 more with a bigger bet.’ And if I was bluffing on the river and was called but my opponent tanked, I thought if I had bet $30 more perhaps, I could have made him fold. I just replayed these mistakes over and over in my head.”

As he climbed the highest stakes available in Los Angeles casinos, playing on streams like Live At The Bike and Hustler Casino Live, he hit a wall and had to reconsider his options. He could play higher if he played the private-game scene, but he didn’t like that option for numerous reasons, and tournaments never interested him. With his extra time, he joined forces with his friend Gethen Jacobs to start a coaching and staking business, while also putting more time into his Hungry Horse Poker YouTube channel.

Goone recently started a challenge to prove it was possible to win $100 per hour at the lower stakes, playing in a regular $5-$5, $1,000 cap game. He had heard that making $50 an hour was the maximum a player could make in those lower stakes, so he set out to prove that idea wrong.

Card Player caught up with Goone to talk poker strategy and landed on a topic that most players misunderstand, bet sizing. 

Craig Tapscott: Bet sizing is such an essential part of poker. I think most players are monkey see and monkey do and don’t understand why they choose the bets they place into the pot. Where do you want to start?

Marc Goone:  Let’s start on the topic of betting on the flop when you are in position and heads-up. This is my ridiculously simple guide to bet sizing.

I teach my students to choose a size where their opponent will raise off their strong stuff and call with their weak stuff. 

CT: That’s pretty simple. It’s almost too simple.

MG: That’s because so many people overcomplicate it. I hear people say, ‘This board is bad for me, or this board is good for me,’ and none of that crap matters in live poker.

CT: It seems that with that simple face-up approach, other players will pick up on that pretty quickly, figure out what you’re doing, and exploit it.

MG: Not at all. Here is what I did to test out my approach to bet sizing. I took six players who were live pros and solid players. They were winning at north of 8 to 9 big blinds an hour at 2$-$5 or higher. I had them play against a continuation bet versus a lojack open where they’re in the big blind on a 7 4 3 board with a flush draw.
 
This is a board where we’re not supposed to bet our range at anywhere near 100% frequency. All of these good players raised off too much of their strong stuff and called too much of their weak stuff. They didn’t check-raise enough bluffs, etc. The solver immediately started betting its range 100%. We’re not even talking about fish here, we’re talking about pros.

CT: That’s wild.

MG: I know. There’s no way to look at an opponent and say this guy’s ‘range betting,’ so I’m going to exploit him. And here’s the thing. Even if you took 100 good players and say the solver is range betting in a specific spot, how do you exploit that? I would say 99 percent of them will have no idea how to exploit a range bet.

So, no. I never worry about being exploited until proven otherwise because nobody knows how to exploit. 

CT: But will this approach work at all stakes? 

MG: A lot of people ask me that all the time. Does what I teach work at low stakes? Does it work at the games I play? I wanted to show instead of just tell. That is why I am doing a challenge on my YouTube channel where I’m playing 200+ hours and show that it’s possible to make $100 per hour at the $5-$5 games.

CT: Did you work with the solver to refine your approach to bet sizing?

MG: Of course, solvers are incredible tools. But I think too many people use solvers to “spot check” instead of digging deeper. If you start making assumptions about what your opponents are actually doing, the solver is the best exploit player in the world.

Too many people are too concerned with playing defense when there is so much room to play offense. Especially in live poker, where no one knows anything, including me.

CT: Let’s talk about playing from out of position now.

MG: I am a big fan of checking when I have raised preflop from out of position. And my approach to this spot has changed for me in the past two or three years since we started a stable of players. 

We were just having them bet their entire range out of position, and people in position don’t fast play nearly as much as they do out of position. So, they kept running into brick walls on rivers when they were bluffing, and we thought there has to be a better way. We started experimenting more and more with checking out of position, even with strong hands, and a light bulb went off.

CT: This is very valuable data from the players you’re working with.

MG: With over 50,000 hours of our horses playing live at $2-$5, $5-$5, and $5-$10, recreational players generally over stabbed to a check way too much. They telegraphed their hand strength with their bet sizing. They don’t protect their check-back range, which means they never check back very strong, nutted hands nearly enough.

CT: Can you share an example?

MG: If you think about a board… I always use J 9 2 because it’s so wet and dynamic with the flush draw. People almost never check back top pair. People almost never check back a set or two pair. When you check to them, recreational players tell you what they have with the size they use. 

When they check back, you know they never have a very good hand. And if the nuts don’t change on the turn, you can just bluff with impunity because you’ll never run into a strong hand. So, your bluffs print when the flop goes check, check. 

CT: And what about checking your value hands out of position on the flop?

MG: It doesn’t matter when you’re checking your value because they stab so much with their good hands, with their medium hands, with their draws, that you can just get value anyway. You don’t have to run into a brick wall with bluffs, because when they check back, you just bet the turn and bomb the river, and they fold everything. 

They mostly don’t have top-of-range if they bet small on the J 9 2 board. I’m not saying they never have a good hand. It’s just they don’t have good hands enough of the time. Since they don’t have good hands enough, you can check-raise anything with any shred of equity with impunity and not be punished because your opponent does not have a range that can withstand heat.

CT: So, you always check the flop as the opener out of position?

MG: What I am saying is take advantage of whatever mistakes our opponent is making. I’m not saying we should always check our range. I’m not saying we should always bet our range. I’m just saying, in general, in live poker, opponents often make more mistakes versus a check than a bet when we are out of position.

CT: Got it. 

MG: When we are in position, I’m almost always betting heads up. When I’m out of position and heads up, I’m almost always checking. Not because that’s something that we are supposed to do in equilibrium.

Equilibrium is a delicate balance. Who gives a crap about equilibrium? If you’re playing against Joe Blow in seat eight who’s on his fourth beer, it doesn’t matter. He can’t even spell equilibrium. I’m just saying that’s where people make the most mistakes.

I’m a big fan of pushing people into situations where they will make mistakes. I’m quite comfortable playing out of those nodes because that’s where we will win the most money.

CT: Good stuff. How do you define equilibrium?

MG: When people say GTO, they mean game theory optimal at equilibrium. Which means if two players are attempting to play perfectly where they cannot be exploited, they eventually come to a point where both players are playing a strategy, where neither player is giving up an inch. That’s how I define what equilibrium is.

Think of it as a seesaw, and it’s just perfectly balanced, where neither player cedes any ground. But the thing about live poker is that people attempting to play equilibrium against recreational players, fish, or even live pros are lighting money on fire. There is just so much more room to make money. And optimal strategy against a player who’s not playing equilibrium looks nothing like equilibrium.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t think equilibrium is useful. I believe equilibrium is useful as an anchor point. If I know where that anchor point is now, I know how to deviate to exploit an opponent. I use equilibrium as a baseline for how far my opponent plays from a certain point, so I know how far I can exploit them.

There are three ways you can look at a hand. My business partner Gethen Jacobs came up with these three lenses of poker. We say number one is a theory lens. This is in the equilibrium lens, where you try to play baseline at equilibrium.

Number two is an exploitative lens. An exploit line just means you’re generally exploiting the mistakes the population is making.

And number three is the player incentive. What does my hand want to do against this big dummy across from me? That’s how we should be playing most live poker games. But I’ve only used the theory lens against two players in six years of playing live poker.

That’s it!

CT: Great advice. Many players think their opponents can read their souls. It’s simply not true.

MG: Not at all. It’s better to underestimate people than overestimate. Just start from the place of, ‘Hey, this guy doesn’t really know what I’m doing’ and then pull it back from there if he proves he does. It’s way more profitable than starting from a point of, ‘Oh my God, everybody can see my strategy!’  

Because they don’t, I promise you. I talk about strategy on my YouTube channel. I openly share what I’m doing in every single hand against every single player. I play against these same guys every week. No one is adjusting. People aren’t exploiting you, so don’t worry about it. 

Follow Goone on Twitter/Instagram @marcgoone and check out his YouTube channel Hungry Horse Poker. ♠