Beginners strategy: Quick fixes for bet sizing

Guest post by PokerPlayer365 Magazine

Poker’s a betting game and it’s crucial to get your bet sizing right if you want to be a successful player.

There are lots of factors in play during a no-limit tournament and adapting is crucial if you want to make it to the big money consistently. It’s very hard to find hard and fast rules, but one thing you can do easily is perfect your bet sizing. Get this right and your tournament game will improve straight away.

Preflop

If you’re first into the pot then you should always make your opening bet the same size in terms of big blinds. Too many people give away tells by altering their bet sizes according to the strength of their hand.

So, you might see someone who always makes it 3x suddenly make it 5x. Unless they’re really tricky and doing it for deception with a monster, you can bet that they’re betting more because they’ve got a hand that they’re not comfortable playing streets with. By making their opening bet bigger they’re trying to discourage calls which would leave them open to some tricky decisions on the flop. By making all your opening bets the same, your hands will be disguised.

What should you make your opening raise? The general tournament rule is to start bigger and gradually get smaller as the stacks get shallower.

In the early stages of tournaments, when stacks are deep, an old-fashioned raise of 3x the big blind is fine. At this stage of a tournament people are more likely to call with speculative hands in order to flop big and bust overpairs, so be on your guard.

Remember the old adage that you can’t win a tournament in the early levels, but you can lose one. Don’t be tempted to make your raises bigger with tricky hands. If you’re not sure where you are on the flop and your opponent is showing aggression you can release your hand and wait for a better spot.

Also, bear in mind that if someone has already limped into the pot it’s important to make your opening raise slightly bigger – adding one big blind per limper is good.

When the antes kick in and the stacks are shallower you can shift your opening raise down to 2.5x. because of the shallower stacks, players are less likely to call and more likely to three-bet at this point. A 2.5x raise is just as likely to get through as a 3x raise, which means you’ll be saving chips if you have to fold.

Once stacks get even shallower – say to around 20bbs – you can reduce this even further, to a min-raise or 2.2x. At this point in the tournament you should only be opening with hands that you’re happy to call a shove with. Bet/folding preflop is going to do serious damage to your stack. if you’ve dropped to 15bbs or below you should just be shoving any hands you’re opening with.

Three-betting

What if a player has already raised in front of you? Again you should look to make standard three-bets, but you need to take into account stack sizes and your position.

If you’re going to be playing the rest of the hand in position, make your three-bet between 2.5 and 3x the original bet. So, with blinds of 50/100 and facing a raise to 300, a three-bet to 800 is good.

If you’re going to be playing the rest of the hand out of position, make your three-bet bigger. Taking the same hand, but with you facing a raise in the blinds, you should make your three-bet to around 1,050.

Having a plan is important too, and you need to take your stack size into account before three-betting. If you’ve got between 25 and 35BBs then you shouldn’t be three-bet/folding. If you’ve got less than 25BBs then it’s fine to three-bet all-in.

Postflop

If you’re going to make a continuation bet then this should be the same whether you’re betting for value or bluffing – again to disguise your intention. Your standard continuation bet size should also decrease as the tournament goes on and the stacks get shallower.

As a general rule a c-bet of around two-thirds of the pot is good, but if the board has a lot of draws then you can charge your opponent more (up to a full pot bet). When the stacks get down to around 40BBs you can reduce the size of your c-bet to around half-pot, again charging slightly more for draws.

It’s important to remember that if you bet half-pot on the flop, you’re giving your opponent 3/1 odds to call. If you bet three-quarters of the pot, you’re giving your opponent odds of 2.33/1 to call. If you bet full pot then you’re giving your opponent odds of 2/1 to call. You also need to be aware that your flop bet has a massive impact on the size of the pot if you’re planning on betting all three streets (see Bet Size Matters, right). It’s very easy to get embroiled in a huge pot without meaning to.

Turn and River

If you get to the turn then you should have a good plan for the rest of the hand, and stack sizes are very important here. Are you committing yourself to the pot if you bet again? If you’re betting for value, what do you need to make it look natural to shove on the rivet?

Charging your opponents for draws is always important but with only one card to come you don’t have to bet big in relation tothe pot. With a standard flush draw – nine outs – your opponent only has around 18% chance of winning the hand. Even if he has a huge combo draw, he’s only going to be around 30%.

Once you get to the river you’ve got all the information you’re going to get in the hand. Again, you should try and keep value bets and bluffs a similar size for deception. If you always make your value bets small and your bluffs big then you’re going to be very easy to read.

Sticking to these simple rules will make you much harder to read and will really help you formulate a plan through the whole of the hand. And that will make you a much better tournament player.

Bet size matters

If you’re not careful pots can get very big, very quickly. Always be aware of the stacks in play and try to decide what your plan is by the river as quickly as possible.

If you make a standard raise and then bet pot on all the streets of a hand, you’re going to be playing for stacks a lot of the time. In this example, the blinds are 50/100 and you raise to 300 from early position and pick up a single caller on the button.

Full pot flop, turn and river:

Preflop: 300+300+150 = 750 (7.5BBs)

Flop: 750+750+750 = 2,250 (22.5BBs)

Turn: 2,250+2,250+2,250 = 6,750 (67.5BBs)

River: 6,750+6,750+6,750 = 20,250

Total = 202.5 big blinds

Half-pot flop, turn and river:

Preflop: 300+300+150 = 750 (7.5BBs)

Flop: 750+375+375 = 1,500 (15BBs)

Turn: 1,500+750+750 = 3,000 (30BBs)

River: 3,000+1,500+1,500 = 6,000

Total = 60 big blinds

Half-pot flop, full pot turn and river

Preflop: 300+300+150 = 750 (7.5BBs)

Flop: 750+375+375 = 1,500 (15BBs)

Turn: 1,500+1,500+1,50 = 4,500 (45BBs)

River: 4,500+4,500+4,500 = 13,500

Total = 135 big blinds