A Discussion on Bet Sizing
When I’ve had some free time, which these days is not often, I’ve been watching some coverage of the WSOP. Final tables are great, but I also enjoy watching the early stages of deep stacked tournaments such as the WSOP Main Event as well. I’ve spent most of my working life in sales and in poker, like in sales, you need to know your customer or as is in the case of poker, you need to know your opponent. Of course, the feature TV tables on Day 1 of the WSOP Main Event always have some big name pros on them in order to draw more viewers. I appreciate how many of the pros continually vary their bet sizes in order to manipulate their opponents into doing what they want them to do. This is such a seldom discussed skill that I decided to write a blog post about it.
In my early poker days, I would always try to make my bet sizes the same in similar situations so that no one could figure out if I was strong or weak. That is good logic, but as I eventually learned, many players are looking at bet sizes and often think that they should only call big bets with big hands. Against those players, you should adjust your bet size in order to manipulate them into folding when you have a bluff and calling when you have a hand. Figuring out where they are in a hand, or how strong they are, will also allow you to get paid off in many situations. You may have a monster, but put your opponent on a marginal hand. You may not want to bomb the pot with your big hand if you feel that your opponent has a very marginal hand. You want to put a bet out there they will get paid off. It’s hard to do and it is not an exact science, but in those cases you want to come up with what you feel is the biggest bet that you will get called. Against players that are creative enough, you may even induce them to raise you when you bet small. That’s a bonus!
On the flip side, when you have those bluffs and want to get them through, you may need to increase the size of your bet if you feel that is what it would take to get your opponent to fold. Remember though that you don’t ALWAYS have to bluff when you end up with nothing on the river. It is important to have a good understanding of where your opponent(s) are in the hand and also have a feel for their game. That’s the beauty of poker! There are so many variables that you need to take into consideration when making a decision and the more variables that you are correctly able to accurately gauge, the better the chance that you have at making correct decisions and that is what your job in poker is, to make correct decisions.
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