Man, I love underbetting! For those of you who haven't started using this regularly yet, do so! Its so much more effective than the regular check-call to the river then raise huge style of play.
For people who don't know exactly what I'm talking about, say you raise $4 preflop on the button with a pocket pair of 7s in a 6 max $1 / $2 ring game (like I just did - I'm following Fnord's advice on raising big on any callable hand when you have position, and I love it). The flop comes up 7-6-3.
Everyone checks around to me, and I now bet a whopping $2 (half the size of my preflop bet), which screams out that I have two overs and haven't hit shit. I get raised to 6 dollars by a guy, everyone else folds, and I just call, even though there's a flush draw there. 6 handed, I haven't been worrying about betting out draws too much, unless they're really blatant. As with 6 max tables, there's less people, which means less chances to give you the bad beat. Plus, as long as you keep your head on straight and pay attention to how people act, you can usually spot when you've been beaten on a draw, and you can lay your hand down. As long as you can do that, the chance to make a ton more money, instead of betting everyone out of the hand on the river, is worth it.
Anyway, the next card is an offsuit king, and this time he bets $8, and I call. Finally, the river comes, and its a 3rd heart, which is a scare card for me, but I didn't think he was raising and then betting all of this time on a flush draw. He bets $20 into a $45 dollar hand, and I realize I unfortunately can't raise, but think this is a rather easy call. He flips over a pair of 3s!
Recently, many of my big pot wins have started out with me making an undebet. If I tried to bet him out on the flop, or just kept checking, I really doubt I would've won a pot over $80. Sometimes a small bet shows more weakness to opponents than a check, especially after a preflop bet, so try it out when you flop a monster hand.
