Optimum Bet Sizes

[Scarface]

What size bets should I be making on the flop/turn/river? I used to make a half to two thirds pot bet but recently I have switched to a pot size bet and seem to be have more success with this.

I think the problem with the half pot bet is that it encourages people with as low as bottom pair to draw to 2 pair or trips. Often I was losing big pots to them if they hit.

[siknd]

1. memorize what odds are being laid by a particular bet size. example, 1/2 pot lays opponent 3:1 odds to call.
2. put opponent on a hand. example, opponent has a flush draw, therefore his odds to win are 4:1, therefore i need to lay him at least 3:1 odds to force him into a mistake.

its always like this, you cant have a templated bet size for every scenario. the bet must be the right size to be profitable over time. example, bluffing in this spot will work once every four tries, then your bluff should be no larger than 1/5 of the pot to break even.

[Lodogg]

its always like this, you cant have a templated bet size for every scenario. the bet must be the right size to be profitable over time.

What about c-bets? A thinking player will be able to lock on to your betting patterns and use it to their advantage if your c-bets are different from bets you make with actual hands. I look for this all the time. I personally believe that on the flop you should bet the same every time so that your opponent can't figure out if you have a hand. I personally like 60-65% of the pot. On the turn you want to hammer it even more to give opponents really bad odds (75%-100%). You want to value bet the river.

[BankItDrew]

^^^
You should be posting what levels your percentages are referring to. The turn betting numbers you posted sound like overbet at high levels.

Or is this +EV because of the bad players ???? dun dun dunnn

[siknd]

thats not a bad point. im just saying that it is important to evaluate the MINIMUM bet required to give your opponent bad odds to call. otherwise youll be making a mistake. and as long as thats happening, then contrary to the original post, you WANT the calls.

of course its important to disguise your betting patterns, but not at the expense of making an incorrect bet.

however, if you always say, make a bet size pot regardless of the flop, you are losing a LOT of value from weak hands. you will be forcing the 5 and 6:1 draws to fold, when betting 1/3 to 1/2 the pot may intice them to stay, while still accepting poor odds.

agree?

[Lodogg]

however, if you always say, make a bet size pot regardless of the flop, you are losing a LOT of value from weak hands. you will be forcing the 5 and 6:1 draws to fold, when betting 1/3 to 1/2 the pot may intice them to stay, while still accepting poor odds.

agree?

I agree completely Don't do this.....100% of the pot on the flop is never necessary. Stick with the 60%. Good enough to create bad odds, create deception, and keep the second best hand calling.

[BankItDrew]

I think you both have it all wrong.

Nothing about Texas Hold'Em is automatic. There are dozens of factors that should be affecting your every bet, fold, call, or raise. From stack sizes, position, table image, holdings, shared cards, reads from past experiences with or without this villain.

Sure, if you bet the pot everytime on the flop you may be hiding your holdings. But you are missing value from weak hands. If you always bet 1/2 the pot on the flop, you are giving away too good of odds to the weaker hands, and are now undervaluing your own hand. There has to be a distinction between the two.

Scarface, it comes down to hands played experience. The very best way to improve your game and implement the best possible moves for your type of play, is to practice, is to mix things up. When your moves become automatic, you will become complacent and not extracting the most value possible from your opponents.

[siknd]

I think you both have it all wrong.

Nothing about Texas Hold'Em is automatic. There are dozens of factors that should be affecting your every bet, fold, call, or raise. From stack sizes, position, table image, holdings, shared cards, reads from past experiences with or without this villain.

Sure, if you bet the pot everytime on the flop you may be hiding your holdings. But you are missing value from weak hands. If you always bet 1/2 the pot on the flop, you are giving away too good of odds to the weaker hands, and are now undervaluing your own hand. There has to be a distinction between the two.

Scarface, it comes down to hands played experience. The very best way to improve your game and implement the best possible moves for your type of play, is to practice, is to mix things up. When your moves become automatic, you will become complacent and not extracting the most value possible from your opponents.

lol. i was using the pot-sized bet as an example of what not to do, but thanks.

of course there are lots of factors, but the premise they all stem from is the basic math. am i ahead or behind and by how much.

[swiggidy]

I play low/micro buy-in SnGs, so I play off of board texture more than anything else. When players constantly display no concept of starting hands, it's hard to put them on a range.

~50% - flop with unconnected rainbow
~75% (whatever is a nice round number) - flop that is paired, straight draw, or flush draw
80-100% for a board with 2 of the above

My c-bets are the same.

[Blinky]

I'd tend to agree with most of what BankIt says. Generally a bet should be tailored to the table situation, BUT...

I'm pretty wary of info leakage when leading into a flop which I've raised preflop so my cbet sizes tend to be consistent. It works for me right now but sometimes I do feel I'm leaving money on the table with an overly aggro cbet. On the other hand, I have also found that weakening my cbet to drag along certain holdings gets me burned more often than I care.

Lodogg: there are certainly cases where overbetting the pot on the flop is a viable course of action.

Edit: to the original poster: before betbotting ANYTHING (always a dangerous practice) you should figure out the reason that you're betting and what you're trying to accomplish with your bet.

[natdang]

At the $25NL tables, I've found that a consistent bet between 2/3 and 3/4 of the pot works for me, on c-betting the flop, the turn, and the river bet.

Of course, there are special situations, such as when you have a read, when there are strange numbers of people in the pot, if there is a lot of action/reraising or raising before you, or when you're out of position. But for the most part, I've found that I make money with the 2/3 pot bet. Basically, you flop your set or TPTK, and 2/3 pot is laying bad enough odds where chasing a draw is a mistake. (Unless they have some kind of monster straight flush draw)

[harmisajedi]

Nothing about Texas Hold'Em is automatic. There are dozens of factors that should be affecting your every bet, fold, call, or raise. From stack sizes, position, table image, holdings, shared cards, reads from past experiences with or without this villain.

very very wise. ultimately, your play is dictated more than those sitting around you than anything else. play people instead of cards--isn't that how the dictum goes...?

the one great thing about consistent pot-sized bets is that you can rep hands w/ draws & get donkeys/weak/passive players to smooth call w/ something fairly marginal on a very dangerous board expecting to get "paid off" b/c they put you on tp lower kicker on underpair or something.

generally speaking, if the level of play @ your table is, not to mince any words, shit (which, generally speaking, tends to be the case @ ring tables) then i probably wouldn't get too fancy & just hunt for tp tk, overpairs, sets or ridiculously good draws & consistently bet pot-sized into them. in some ring games, people will pay up to 2x the pot to chase their 9-high flush simply b/c they think they'll get paid off by an a-i call when they hit their crap.

[siknd]

generally speaking, if the level of play @ your table is, not to mince any words, shit (which, generally speaking, tends to be the case @ ring tables) then i probably wouldn't get too fancy & just hunt for tp tk, overpairs, sets or ridiculously good draws & consistently bet pot-sized into them. in some ring games, people will pay up to 2x the pot to chase their 9-high flush simply b/c they think they'll get paid off by an a-i call when they hit their crap.

this is utterly ridiculous. the point of poker is to maximize profit, not to win pots. the general fear people have of being 'sucked out on' in any given pot is -EV. if you are playing scared to the point where you are not allowing opponents to see a turn card every time you have a hand, you are leaving a LOT of money on the table.

I think this mistake is probably the influence of the SNG/ Tourney player. a cash player would never want to drive his opponents out of a pot when he has the best of it. i just dont understand where you people are coming from. in a tourney where if you lose a pot, you might lose the tourney, fine. but in a cash game where the point is that you WILL lose some of the time when people make their draws, its really just part of the overall win.

[BankItDrew]

^^^
You're right there. 2 Pair, TPTK, or a set is usually in the lead on the flop. The goal of a cash game player is to extract as much $$ as possible when the percentages are on your side. You 64% to 36% advantage on the flop just means that you are CURRENTLY ahead. Your job now is to take as much as possible right NOW. If you are confident that he hit his flush and you think you are a 96% - 4% underdog, try not let put any more money into the pot. If you minimize the amount of $$ you put into the pot when after he hit his draw, you are tinkering with his implied odds into your favor.

Get in as much as possible when you are ahead, do the opposite when behind. However, don't forget to take into consideration position because you can win pots when you are drawing dead.

[harmisajedi]

this is utterly ridiculous. the point of poker is to maximize profit, not to win pots. the general fear people have of being 'sucked out on' in any given pot is -EV. if you are playing scared to the point where you are not allowing opponents to see a turn card every time you have a hand, you are leaving a LOT of money on the table.

I think this mistake is probably the influence of the SNG/ Tourney player.a cash player would never want to drive his opponents out of a pot when he has the best of it. i just dont understand where you people are coming from.

where i'm coming from is this: the point of my game is to consistently & reliably win. i do this by not giving people odds to draw, giving myself odds to draw, making player-based reads & repping hands that i don't have.

trying to "maximize" profit w/ relatively vulnerable hands like tptk on a dangerous board is -ev in the long term, especially @ lower (200 & below) limits where chasing is the name of the game. unless you have a dead read on what you're playing against, making dinky bets is a way to dig yourself into a large pot where you get outdrawn & you're forced to pay off on the river simply because too many chips are in the pot. i think i've typed about this before, but the biggest difference between fish & good players is that the latter don't misread the strength of their hand on dangerous boards. in certain rare instances where e.g. you're holding slick & the flop is k82 rainbow, betting a third the pot to induce re-raises w/ k/marginal kicker is the optimal play--but the point is, those instances are rare. the flop is likely to come out k98 w/ two colors. if you think that betting pot-sized into that flop w/ tptk is "leaving money behind" then you're out of your mind.

let's briefly examine a couple of instances:

hero: A K
villain #:1: 98
villain #2: 65

flop: K96

%s on the flop:

hero: 60.91
villain #1: 21.15
villain #2: 17.94

do you want to bet less than pot-sized in this instance? note that this is an ideal flop for tptk--a rainbow board w/o obvious draws, & your opponents are effective drawing to 5 outs. you're way ahead. still: do you want to bet less than pot-sized? i'm not "playing scared" when i want to take it down on the flop or on the turn--i'm playing smart so i don't build a pot where i have to pay off on the river if a 5-outer comes. is there anybody here that honestly thinks they can get away from ak on k9526 board against a pot-sized bet @ the river? in the long run, it is -ev to "sucker people in" w/ vulnerable hands like tptk due to crying calls on the river.

let's switch this up a little:

hero: AK
villain #1: 98
villain #2: 87

flop: K96

%s on the flop:

villain #1: 30.01
villain #2: 46.43
villain #3: 21.93

do you still think that betting less-than pot is optimal? technically speaking you're "ahead" on the flop, but from a statistical standpoint, w/ two cards to come, you are actually a dog in the hand.

here are my stats for a relatively small amount of hands:



note my fold %s on the turn/river--what are yours? as you can see, it's rare for me get away from hands on the turn or the river. for my style of play, making "value bets" is silly b/c i do not want to get away from a pot i've put money in on the turn or the river. that's the game i tend to play--doesn't mean it's the optimal game to play, or that has to work for you. tends to work for me, which is all i ask.

[Chicago_Kid]

I personally believe that on the flop you should bet the same every time so that your opponent can't figure out if you have a hand. I personally like 60-65% of the pot. On the turn you want to hammer it even more to give opponents really bad odds (75%-100%). You want to value bet the river.

I mix-up all my flop bets, from 50-110% the pot, depending on the texture. Mainly, I want to know where I am. I don't like to go to the turn blind, and I only hammer it if I'm sure I'm against a draw, or I'm bluffing, or both.

[SonOfAkira]

Some interesting stuff.

I wish people wouldn't get so upset, there are valuable points on both sides of this debate. The main factor is the psychological aspect, the ability to play the odds in a vacuum. If a player can't do this, all the margins in the world won't matter.
Harmisajedi, I think this is what is affecting you, and everybody can easily understand. They're not being truthful if they say they can't. However, everything Siknd posts, that i've seen, is on point, including this. There is technically, money being left, profits not being maximized.
I've found the way to look at it is to use a hypothetical example with nice round numbers and percentages, to get a good idea of what's happening.

Say there are eight players, the hero and seven villains.
Each goes AI preflop for $1.
The hero is a 30% favourite to win.
Each of the villains has a 10% chance.
When it is over they all reload their dollar and do it again, with the same probabilities.
Now, the hero will never win the majority of times, THEY will win the majority of times, but the hero is still the FAVOURITE.
Hero will win 3 out of every 10 times.
Villains, 7 out of 10.
But every time hero wins, he collects eight dollars. So over the course of of ten hands he will spend 10 dollars, and win 24. Very significantly +EV. A 14 dollar profit.
Hero is getting 8 to 1 on a 1 in 3 chance (3/10). Each villain is getting 8 to 1 on only a 1 in 10 chance. Each villain is making a theoretical mistake, and is losing money in the long run, and the hero is making significant money.

A more practical example is this:
Hero has AA.
Villain has KK.
AI preflop for $1000 each.
Hero is an 81% favourite. Obviously a bet to take everytime. Hero will double up 4 out of 5 times.

But, what if:
Hero has AA.
Villain 1 has KK.
Villain 2 has QQ.
Villain 3 has JJ.
Villain 4 has TT.
AI preflop for $1000 each.
Now hero is only a 45% favourite to win.
(We'll round to 50%)
Hero will lose half the time, but the half he wins, he will quintuple his stack. Over the course of 10 hands, hero will bet 10000 and get back 25000. Compare this to the previous, when hero will bet 10000 and get back 16000. Obviously, though it doesn't seem so at first, the latter has better EV.

Here's the issue, however. Can a player's mind and stomach handle these swings? Take the very first example, where the hero has 3 to 10. He might not win the first 7. He might not win the first 14. No matter what they tell you, it is very hard to lose 14 buyins (remember the buyin was only a dollar in this first hypothetical example) and keep in mind, stay strong and tilt-free, that you will win 48 (!) in the next six hands.
I believe that to play no limit you have to.
But there is a factor, we'll call it tilt equity. Perhaps the opposite of fold equity. If a player can't keep his head together, to a reasonable degree, after a string of beats, knowing that the payoff will be significant, then the tilt equity is high with that player when it comes to pushing smaller margins. And this tilt equity is significant enough to lower the EV on these plays, probably to the point of making them -EV, due to the player not being able to play the odds in a vacuum any longer. Easier said than done to be rid of, i'll be the first to admit.
My notion would be that perhaps, in your next session Harmisajedi, play your normal style, strong-arming small pots and chasing everybody away, until you're up a decent amount. Then, switch gears slightly and start letting the callers and chasers come along, still with -EV, but reasonable enough that they still chase, and see what happens.

I apologize for being so longwinded, all, I hope this was worthwhile to somebody.

[Chicago_Kid]

tilt equity.

Good post SOA. Tilt is -EV. If you have trouble with it, give up some small edges. It can actually help your W/R through less variance and better headspace.

[Blinky]

Tilt sucks.

It's the worst when you're conscious of it but still can't step away from the table... the most I've let myself tilt off is about 1/2 a buyin at a time but I guesstimate that I'm down about 2 buyins from tilt, aside from the uh ... 4 buyin tilt/newbie period at 25 NL :/

[siknd]

Tilt sucks.

It's the worst when you're conscious of it but still can't step away from the table... the most I've let myself tilt off is about 1/2 a buyin at a time but I guesstimate that I'm down about 2 buyins from tilt, aside from the uh ... 4 buyin tilt/newbie period at 25 NL :/

wow. no offence but how much poker have you played? it seems like you manage tilt very well.

i myself have easily blown 4 buyins in an hour on tilt. its great fun. next day you get to own up to the stupidity of it on the records, then get back to it.

all part of the learning process i suppose. my biggest advancement has been curbing tilt. its a simple game to learn, the trick is to learn yourself.