On betting

Today, I’ve got another strategy post for you poker-playing fellows out there. More specifically, as you can read in the title, I’ll be talking about betting. Many beginning players use a very exploitable check/call strategy when they are learning poker, and it isn’t until later that they start betting their hands. However, quite a few players are stuck after this transition. They understand and experience that betting is often better than check/calling, but they often don’t know why they are betting. I’m here to fix that.

Betting comes down to two basic principles. Either you are betting for value, or you are betting as a bluff. Betting for value also includes protecting your hand, by forcing your opponent to make –EV calls due to your bet sizing. Also, betting for value doesn’t mean you can’t fold your hand once your bet is raised! But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind and start with an example.

Suppose you’ve got AKss in a six-max game and you are first to act. You open for 2.5bb (I’ll get into bet sizing in another post) and only the big blind calls you, so you get to play the hand in position. Flop comes down 4h5hAd. This is a somewhat opaque board, not particularly wet or dry. Your opponent checks to you and you bet about two thirds of the pot. This is an obvious example of betting for value. You opponent could easily have an ace himself, and expects you to c-bet a lot of flops.

The turn comes down a Ts and your opponent checks to you again. You bet out another two thirds of the pot, and you opponent flats you once more. Again, you can see this is a value bet. Maybe your opponent has QJhh and picked up a gutshot. Maybe he has a small ace and wants to get to showdown (in which case he could have played this hand a lot better). Or maybe he’s just plain bad and has something like 76.

The river is an 8h and your opponent checks to you for the last time. This is a situation in which most beginners think ‘I have been betting all streets, let’s bet here once more!’. This, however, is a terrible mistake. If we take into consideration our two basic ideas, you can see we’re no longer betting for value (since a lot of hands got there) and we aren’t betting as a bluff (because we’ve got showdown value). If your bet is neither a bluff nor a value bet, you should ask yourself ‘well, why am I betting?’. If your opponent folds, it means you were probably ahead of his range with your TPTK and could have won the pot without any risk by just checking behind the river. If you are behind, your opponents would probably check/raise you, causing you to fold (or 3-bet shove, which could work against some opponents, but I wouldn’t recommend it). Also, even if you are ahead your opponent could check/raise you!

So, as you can hopefully see now, it’s important to think about why you bet in order to not get yourself in weird spots where you get raised on your semi-good hand and don’t know what to do. It’s a situation I still occasionally get into myself when I’m not paying attention and it makes me hate myself. Please don’t hate yourself. And get better at pokers!

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