There something that I feel I should add to the last post, for clarification, before I move on to Part II (sizing bets to avoid being bluffed).

It’s the idea behind “big hands, big pots” which may not be obvious to everyone. If I have AK and the flop is A-9-5 and there’s one other guy in the pot with me, why does his hand suddenly get much better if we go all-in? His cards can’t change, so how can the size of the pot change how likely I am to win? This is not a terribly difficult concept, but it’s important enough to warrant a separate explanation.

To understand where this is coming from, let’s’ put you in the shoes of your opponent. Preflop, you called a raise in late position versus a decent opponent, with 100BB effective stacks. Your range, let’s say, consists of small and medium pocket pairs and suited connectors. Now the flop is A-9-4. If before this hand is over you’ve gotten all your money into the middle, what part of your range would you say is left?

Because your opponent is decent, you’d be hard pressed to call him down for your entire stack with T9s. Barring some weird meta game levelling going on between you and this opponoent, the part of your range that is left when all the money goes in is comprised of sets and bluffs, basically. If you have anything else, you’ll probably not let all the money get in.

See how it works? When the pots get big, your opponent is much more likely to have a big hand because otherwise they wouldn’t let the pots get big. If you win a pot with AK, it’s likely to be a small to medium pot, because that’s how much you can expect an opponent with a weaker hand to lose with a hand worse than TPTK.