Betting Strategy,
Poker Odds
July 9 2008
One component of playing No Limit poker that can be difficult for beginners is knowing how much to bet. When you can bet your entire stack at any time, you have to know how much of your stack is actually worth putting in the middle. Making mistakes when choosing the size of your bet can be very detrimental to your chip stack. Betting too much or betting too little can be the difference between winning a small or large pot, or not winning that pot at all. If you bet too little, a player on a bad draw might decide to hang around and luck out a win later on in the hand. However, if you bet too much you could end up picking up small pot after small pot and never get any value out of your cards.
When choosing your bet size your main objective – besides winning the pot, of course – should be to protect your hand. The easiest way to do this is by using pot odds to get your opponents to either fold their hand or at least make a mistake by calling you.
To deduce your opponent’s pot odds, you need to have a read on their cards and have an idea as to what they have and what they’re after. Here’s a quick example.
You’ve got a pocket pair and you’ve just flopped three of a kind. There’s also a possible flush draw on the board and you think there’s a good chance your opponent might be on it. To keep your opponent from drawing to the flush (which would beat you), you must bet higher than the pot odds tell them to call. If you’re playing a bad player they will likely bet anyway, giving you a shot at a large pot if you win the hand.
With the turn and river to come, your opponent has a 4.2-to-1 shot at making their flush. Let’s adjust that to 4-to-1 for easier math. If the pot were to hold $50, for example, then you must bet more than $12.50 to be over their pot odds. That works out like so: 50/12.5 = 4-to-1. If you were to bet $15 into the pot, odds would be against them making the call. By making this bet you win either way in the long run, because if your opponent folds you get the pot and if they call they’re making a mistake, which over time benefits you.
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