Bet-sizing, Part IIc: Making Decisions Easy

Finally, the third and final post on sizing your bets to avoid getting yourself in a sticky situation with your next decision. This time, we look at river play - an area where most people seem to struggle badly. The balance between value bets and avoiding checkraises is not as delicate as it may seem, if you make sure your bet is a good size for what you’re trying to achieve. Most people’s problem seem to come from not really thinking through what they want with their bet before they make it.
An example from last week: $50NL, villain raises to $2 in middle position with AK, and the aggressive button (that’d be yours truly) calls. Effective stacks are $50. The flop comes K-7-2, and he bets $3 on the flop (I called), he bet $8 on the turn (another seven) and again, I call. The river brings a J. What remains of the effective stack is $37, and the pot is about $26. He bets $24.
If his goal is to prevent me from bluffing, $24 is a big enough bet size. It’s big enough that I won’t really have any leverage to try to bluff him out; going all-in would offer him a pot of $87 with $13 to call - hardly something he’ll fold. If he wants to stop me from bluffing, it’s better for him to bet a bit smaller; a size where he doesn’t risk quite as much (if he plans on folding if I raise - because otherwise, the point of the prevention is kinda moot) but still makes the pot big enough that it’s protected. Maybe something like $17…
… But why would he want to prevent me from bluffing? He has a hand that serves as an excellent bluff catcher! Shouldn’t he be encouraging me to bluff?
So his sizing is off. The only hand he will reasonably be extracting value from at this point is KQ, and his bet is a bit big for that, at least if he wants me to call. I sometimes take a passive line with TPGK in position versus opponents who will bet two barrels, but not three, but that’s a different story. So he puts in too much money versus the hand he can beat, and he puts in too much money to give me a chance to try to bluff, and he puts in too much money to be able to fold if I raise him. He simply puts in too much money.
By making a bet that big, he’s committed. But if he’s ready to commit, he should try to get the most bang for his buck! Against an aggressive opponent, you want to call river bets (since they will often be with weak hands/bluffs) not have the other guy call them. If I’m tight and aggressive, I’m not likely to call too often, but I might bluff. And that’s what you want to take advantage of!
Checking to me would accomplish that. But I’d often check behind with KQ and definitely all pocket pairs, which might call a small value bet on the river. With a $26, I might look him up with TT if he bets $8 or so. And the other nifty thing about betting small is that it doesn’t take away my option of bluffing. If my opponent decided he’d be happy to get it all-in versus me, then it’s important that I have enough rope to hang myself with, otherwise I’d only raise when I crush him.
In short, the river bet - versus aggressive players - should be of a size that both extracts value from weak made hands but doesn’t stop us from bluffing. A bet the size that my opponent chose achieves neither of those things, since I’d (almost) never call with a worse hand and he’d be extremely hard pressed to fold if I raised - and I’d never raise with a worse hand, either, given how unlikely I’d deem him to fold.
That’s the kind of problem he’d get himself in if he bets a bigger amount. If I raise, he’s very often desperately behind, but at the same time he’s gotten himself into the mess of being committed to seeing a showdown. With just a little bit of planning - and encouraging the aggressive player to take a stab - he could ironically have had a much easier decision to make! Getting it all-in when I make a pot-sized shove on the river is a much clearer decision than when I raise the rest all-in and he’s getting 7:1 to call with a hand that’s not going to win.
As a final sidenote, the beauty of this is that the same conclusion actually applies if you’re up against a passive opponent! What you want to avoid is being forced to call a passive opponent’s river raise due to pot odds, so instead you set the price so that if he raises, you can easily fold. A small bet on the river accomplishes this (usually), and also extracts value from the same hands as it would from me. You want to be careful with checking, though, because while raising is a clear sign of strength for a passive player, betting when checked to might not be. If you check to him, he might bet ace-ten thinking that he will be ahead.
This is the last of Part II of my bet-sizing series. Next up is bet-sizing when bluffing!
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Bet-sizing, Part IIb: Making Decisions Easy

Somewhat belatedly, I give you the second of three examples on sizing bets or raises in a way to make the potential decision on whether or not to fold to a re-raise easy. The belatedness of this post has to do with planning and executing a close friend’s bachelor event (or stag , if you prefer) which took place last night. Great fun, but this post isn’t about men drinking beer and bonding in a sauna.
The main consideration when deciding on the size of a bet is the effective stack. With very deep stacks, the preflop raise decides how big the pot will (or can) eventually become. With very small stacks, you must instead focus on avoiding the trap of being committed with a hand that you don’t want to continue with. Today’s example illustrates the importance of planning the future betting already preflop:
$25NL, 6-max. It’s folded to you on the button, and you hold ace-queen. You would (or at least should) normally open with a very wide range here, so raising with AQ is a no-brainer. But before you raise, make sure to check how big the effective stack is between you and the blinds! If you have a loose big blind with a small stack, you should usually not raise to 3-4 times the big blind (the typical standard opening raise) but instead make a smaller raise. Look:
If the effective stack between you and the big blind is, say, 30BB, and you raise to four times the BB preflop and he calls, the pot will be 8BB with 27BB left behind. If he checks to you and you make any kind of continuation bet, you’re committed with your ace-high. Even if you only bet half the pot, you are more or less forced to call if he checkraises all-in, as the pot would be laying you about 2:1. In fact, even if he doesn’t checkraise all-in but to a smaller amount, you’re still committed. He’ll have so few chips left that if you’re calling that checkraise now, you can not fold at any future point in the hand anyway.
The hand plays out very differently if you instead raise to, say, 2.5BBs preflop. Yes, close to a minraise, but let’s leave dogma at the door. Suddenly, the same postflop scenario would become a 5BB pot on the flop, into which you bet 2.5BBs. If he checkraises you now, the effective odds you’re getting are 34:22, and while the difference in required chance to win “only” goes up by a paltry 10 percentage points, that’s really all it takes to make a close call into a clear fold.
It’s perhaps strange that I suggest raising to a smaller amount with a hand like A-Q preflop, given that it seems clear that that’s where you have your edge. Why not raise a lot preflop and create what is essentially a situation where HE’s the one who’s committed. That’s actually not a terrible idea; if you can somehow make him committed with your preflop raise, you’ve created a situation in which you get your chips in with an edge. If you raise to, say, 9 or 10BBs preflop and he calls, you can go ahead and push on the flop and he will almost have to call regardless of his holding. The trouble area for you, is when the pot isn’t so small that you can easily fold or so big that you can easily shove, but just in between. And that’s what you should try to avoid.
So, action point for next session: When you’re on the button, check the effective stack size between you and the blinds. If the stacks are somewhat deep, go ahead and make a regularly sized raise. Otherwise, make sure to raise less.
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Bet-sizing, Part IIa: Making Decisions Easy

I ended the first post with the teaser of this post being about “sizing your bets and raises in a way that makes folding to a re-raise much easier.” This is only half the truth, really. I should have said, “sizing your bets and raises in a way that makes the decision of whether or not to fold to a re-raise much easier.”
No-limit, by and large, is centered around the big bluff. “Moving In.” “Pushing.” “Shoving.” “Going all-in.” It’s centered around it in the sense that the threat of the all-in bluff looms as a possibility at all times when you play no-limit. That threat, for instance, is what causes people to check behind on the river with decent hands because they fear their opponent might check/raise all-in, leaving them with a horribly difficult decision. So instead, they save (or lose?) a few bucks and just check.
It’s always there. And it’s how to take the edge of it by being smarter about bet sizing that’s the topic. And I want to do this with a couple of examples, starting today with one - potentially on my part grossly misplayed - hand, where I size my bet on the turn in such a way as to stop my opponent from bluffing me off. The example is very verbose, because I think it contains a few other interesting situations besides the actual problem of bet sizing; hopefully you will find it interesting as well. I played this hand a week or two ago:
6-max $50NL on PokerStars. I have 66 in the cut-off seat. It’s folded to me and I open to $2. This raise is half steal, half value raise. Most hands that would call that raise have me at either a coin toss or severely dominated, but I have some great fold equity to capitalize on post flop, as well as huge implied odds versus some hands when I flop a set.
Unfortunately, the button calls my raise, but at least both blinds folds. I say unfortunately, because now I’m out of position with a very marginal hand. What I know about the button so far is that he’s very loose, very aggressive and likes to bluff. He’s not “bad” necessarily, just very tricky, but he does seem to have some method to his madness. Also, his stack is a bit short.
The flop comes A-K-K. The effective stack at this time is $25, and the pot is $4.50.
Now, I could have given up on this flop, but I wasn’t too happy about that outcome. My equity wasn’t great, admittedly, but I should have had some decent fold-equity lined up here. Specifically, I thought I could get him to fold pocket pairs and overcards to my sixes, which (take my word for it, or play around with Stove yourself to find out) constitute 30% of his holdings. I think he will continue with all aces, all kings and all QJ/QT/JT combos.
You can perhaps see why giving up wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all; continuing out of position is a recipe for disaster. However, I didn’t have time to Stove these things at the table, so I went with my (incorrect) gut feeling that I had a good case for betting here, and did. I bet $3 into the $4.50 pot. He calls. He didn’t snap call, and he didn’t tank either. He just called with the normal flow of the game, for what’s worth to the timing-tells people out there.
But what does it mean? It means he’s either slowplaying or floating. It means that I can’t win this hand without getting him to fold, because if we go to showdown, I’ve lost (as he’s not going to call down with QJ). This ties in with the topic how?
… because on the turn, the pot is $10.50, and remaining in his stack (the smaller one) is $20. If I check, I expect him to bet almost every time. And I can’t call if he does, because his equity is better than mine, after all. So I have to bet myself, but how much do I bet? “As little as possible” is really the key phrase, here. For all intents and purposes, my bet is a bluff - I want him to fold! I should bet the smallest amount that gets the job done. But, and this is important, there are two factors to take into account for the minimum size of the bet as well, and they are:
1. When he’s drawing, I should prevent him from drawing profitably (he will have 10 outs when that happens).
2. Don’t bet so little that he will be enticed to move all-in as a bluff.
… and it’s really #2 that’s the key problem here, and what this topic is all about. I want to bet enough on the turn that he will realize that there’s no point in bluffing, while simultaneously not so much that folding makes no sense if he re-raises. Let’s look at some different bet sizes:
$3: He will be getting about 4:1 on calling here, or about break-even for his 10-out draw, but it’s not calling that I’m worried about. He will also have another $17 left behind, for a pot-sized all-in raise, laying me about 1.7:1 - not good for me.
$6: Offering him a little less than 3:1 is better for when he draws. He still has a little power left in moving in because in doing so he’d lay me odds of about 2:1.
$10: Betting the pot. He’d only have $15 behind, and if he raises me, it will be another $15 in a $30 pot. This will discourage most thinking opponents from trying to bluff with air. He’d be laying me about 3:1.
Differently put, because it’d be so easy for me to call a re-raise, I don’t have to call the re-raise. If he pushes now, he expects me to call. Therefore I don’t have to. As you can see, I’m thinking on the second level here (what does my opponent think I have/will do) and that of course requires an opponent who thinks on the first level. But still.
If it’s not clear enough, let me just restate that I probably botched the 66-hand. Continuing past the flop (I think bet/folding the flop is fine) is probably a mistake. Letting him have it on the turn is probably better than bluffing. But what matters isn’t whether I played it perfectly or not on the turn, it’s the thought process: Trying to size my bet in a way as to stop him from bluffing. And I think my thinking around that was fine, in my defense.
More examples on simplifying your upcoming decision will be coming throughout this week - but I need to keep the posts to some kind of sane length to not risk losing everyone halfway through.
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Bet-sizing, Part III: Bluffing

The lesson about sizing bluffs learned from No-limit Hold’em - Theory and Practise is that we should bet enough to “get the job done” but not much more. In theory, I could end this post on sizing bluffs on that note, because there really isn’t that much more to say. If you decide to bluff, make a bet that’s big enough, but not too big. For instance, if I want to bet into an opponent who will fold everything but the nuts to a bet that’s at least half the pot, then clearly betting more than just a little over half the pot is just wasting money. Every dollar that goes in over that ideal amount is a loss, of varying degrees.
Really, there’s not much more to say about how to size your bets when bluffing - except this:
Don’t go and get yourself committed.
I use “except this” kind of slyly here, because this is really a very big deal. A very easy-to-grasp example of this idea - that I’ve touched on earlier in this series of posts when dealing with “easy decisions” - is when you’re on the button and it’s folded to you. You should normally open with a very wide range, but now let’s say the big blind has a very short stack left - let’s say 10BB. If you raise to 4BB with 7-5 offsuit, and he pushes all-in, you might end up having to call because of the pot odds. See?
A slightly more complex, but really a version of the same theme, example comes fresh off the presses from this morning, when I played a little $50NL before work. In this particular example, I’m dealing with a semi-bluff:
100BB effective stacks, 6-max.
I raised to $2 under-the-gun. Only the big blind called, and he called with A-3 of hearts.
Flop comes Q-T-3, two spades, one heart. He checks, I bet $4, and he calls with bottom pair, top kicker. The pot is now $12.
The turn is the king of hearts, giving him bottom pair, top kicker and the nut flush draw. Again, he checks and I bet $8. Here, he decides to fire a semibluff, which is actually a fairly decent time to try it. I often bet two barrels and will fold a lot of my range here, and if he can get me off any hand at all, it’s a great victory for him. But here is where he went wrong: He raised to $25, leaving him committed to calling when I pushed all-in, because by then, the pot was $81 and it was only $19 more for him to call with a pair and a flushdraw. A better move on his part would have been to checkraise to a smaller amount - maybe even close to a min-raise - in order to give himself the option of folding. Instead, he was forced to put in $36 on the turn with what realistically was only about a 20% chance to win.
And at this point, I want to kill a potential misunderstanding before it spreads: Giving yourself future odds to call a bet is not a good thing. I believe this faulty logic is common enough to warrant a reminder in this post, despite me having talked about it before. Him raising to an amount where he’s forced to call a push isn’t, as some people have put it, “two +EV decisions in a row, and as long as I make +EV decisions, I’m OK!”
And that’s really at the heart of it. Bluffing an amount that will make you committed is to be avoided.
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