During President Bush’s office term, there were countless lobbying groups and efforts made to put forth a case for the legalization of online gambling, however, those efforts never picked up enough steam. This is despite heroic efforts of many special interest groups and lobbyists showing their support, such as the SSIGI (Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative) and IGcouncil.

There are barriers and conflict of opinion strife throughout the process though, on many fronts. For instance, there are varying opinions with the big players in the brick and mortar casino industry - some would like to see it regulated on a state level, while others on a federal level. There are others though, who fear the online competition will drain their business, so therefore they are vehemently against the regulation and legalization of their online counterparts. Giants like MGM Mirage and Harrah’s, however, are in favor.

The American Gaming Association has also proposed a bill that would launch an immediate and official study on the benefits of legalizing internet gambling and whether or not it was fit for legislation. Critics of this bill say that the American Gaming Association may be weakening it’s stance with this conservative approach, but supporters say it’s a huge step in the right direction.

At the Global Gaming Expo in early November, expert panels talked about how much more successful an attempt to focus on online poker would be then other gambling games, considering poker is widely believed to be a game of skill. The PPA or Poker Players Alliance has made a huge impact on the awarenes of online poker as a skill based game that should be legalized through their various lobbying efforts. Sports Betting is not even in the talks right now due to the US Wire Act.

As pressure grows to bring in more national tax dollars in a weakening economy, and with increased lobbying, steps in the right direction now could lead to a much brigther future. This comes in tune with people’s realization that no U.S citizen has been arrested for gambling online since new regulations in 2006. Now, a large base of US gamblers are finding their way back online to poker and casino sites welcoming them with open arms - all without a tax dollar going to the U.S government.

Sizing Your Bets in No-limit, Part I: Preflop and the Cumulative Effect
How $7 turns into $100 over the course of three streets of betting.
Sizing Your Bets in No-limit, Part Ib: An Addendum
“Big pots - big hands” - why?
Sizing Your Bets in No-limit, Part IIa: Making Decisions Easy
Avoid getting yourself in sticky situations.
Sizing Your Bets in No-limit, Part IIb: Making Decisions Easy
Keep the pot smaller preflop vs. short stacks.
Sizing Your Bets in No-limit, Part IIc: Making Decisions Easy
The river.
Sizing Your Bets in No-limit, Part III: Bluffing
Bet enough to get the job done, and avoid being committed.

Nut Flush Draw in No-Limit Hold ‘Em
Nut Flush Draw in No-Limit Hold ‘Em, Part II
Nut Flush Draw in No-Limit Hold ‘Em, Part III
Nut Flush Draw in No-Limit Hold ‘Em, Part IV
A not-so-brief look at considerations to make on the flop in NL hold ‘em

A Word of Warning: Poker Isn’t Chess
Don’t win the pots; win the money.

Limit Hold ‘em: River Raises on Scary Boards
Why scary boards are a doubled-edged sword; on river bet/folds.

Limit Hold ‘em: Pot Odds and Mistakes
Limit hold ‘em play is more about equity and less about “mistakes.”

On Hand Reading
It’s a very rare thing for him to “probably have a set.”

Just Fold
No really - just fold.

NL Lesson #2: Fold the flop (in limit)
Learning a limit lesson from NL.

Driving People Out
Look to the end, not the means.

Maniacs and Reverse Implied Odds
How to deal with the guy at the limit table who just won’t stop raising.

Bad bets
A bad habit that’s easy to break - do it now.

Offering Implied Odds
Do you pay off donks when they hit?

About Raising
Poker’s arguably most powerful move - why is that?

Learning Poker: Steps 1-4
What you learn about one street affects how you play the next.

The Profitable Calling Station
Sometimes you gain the most by not betting at all.

NL Lesson #1: I Have Fold Equity
FP learns stuff about no-limit hold ‘em. This post is about how people actually fold the flop in NL.

Close Calls II
Playing what’s marginally +EV is not good when you have no reads

Close Calls
How confident are you about your outs?

Preflop Limping with Rockets
Why this is such a bad idea

Profit vs. Skill
How skill doesn’t translate into money; on table selection.

Do You Bluff
On bluffing in limit poker.

How’s Your Position
On the cyclical learning of poker, and specifically on taking position into account when making decisions.

Volatile But Oh So Profitable
On the volcano of money that is known as “6-max”.

A Lesson Learned
Expected Value in real life; avoiding results-oriented thinking.

Bloating, Equity and Pot Odds
Don’t give yourself odds to make calls you’d rather not have to make later on.

Blind Play, Part 3
When to raise - or re-raise - from the blinds.

Blind Play, Part 2
Giving reverse implied odds, and how you can use it to your advantage.

Blind Play, Part 1
Understanding how your position relative to the preflop raiser affects your play when you’re in the blinds.

I’m Terribly Sorry
On finishing what you’ve started and also making conscious decisions and reviewing hands after playing them.

This and That and Patience
I brag about my new computer, and then talk about patience when it comes to learning.

I’m the Guy You Hate
I get lucky with a crappy hand and suck out on a poor soul. On hand reading.

You, Your Bankroll, and You
On bankroll management.

Getting Checkraised on the Turn
Realizing when you’re beat.

I talked to Nick about it, and he, being the cool and (and I hope he doesn’t mind me saying so) surprisingly mature-for-his-age guy that he is, completely understood and had in fact already anticipated that I might go this way. So we’re good. And that makes me happy.

I started my personal blog over a year ago just a placeholder to link back to here. I’ve decided now to make use of it, because I still enjoy writing and don’t want to close the lid on that part of me altogether. At this point, I don’t know how often my new blog will get updated, or what kind of stuff it will contain. I used to write almost exclusively about poker; I’m going to guess that the poker-to-other-stuff ratio is going to go down a bit.

The point is that I don’t know. And I feel pretty good about not knowing and right at this very moment, not caring. I do like to have readers though, so if you read this blog, let me know about it and I’ll be happy. If you read and tell others to read my new blog - either through links or any other more traditional way of word-of-mouth - I’ll be even happier and much grateful.

In closing, a final thank you to Nick at CardsChat. Getting to write about poker, even if it was difficult to muster the motivation at times, has made me a better player and a better writer all at once. I’m very grateful for the opportunity, and for the encouragement.

I’m just now getting ready and packed up to go visit my parents. From there, we will (on Monday) take the train to Stockholm to go on a two-day cruise to Tallinn (Estonia), then back to my parents, celebrate midsummer with them, and then back home. So I’ll be out of town for a week, but hopefully connected through parts of it. Any suggestions on what one can do in Tallinn?

Bringing four books, a laptop and my golf clubs. What could go wrong?

/FP

PS. Watch Sweden draw against Spain tonight; 1-1. You heard it here first. DS.

I’m still playing poker, and I’m still winning (knock on wood). I’ve averaged another 4ptBB/100 in June, over about 5k hands, and I feel like I’m playing better than in May. A lot better. I suppose that means that I’m not running as hot.

Socially and work… eh… workly? Bah.

Socially and professionally, I’m busy busy busy. My vacation - starting Friday - is coinciding with a deadline at work, so there’s a bunch of stuff that needs to get done before that. Also, it seems there’s a wedding or stag or just random event every other night in these past few weeks. It’s hard to keep up with. I’m not complaining, though, merely explaining why I may have seemed to dropped off the face of the earth.

In closing, and I kinda hate to close on a sad note but it has to be said:

Lori had a miscarriage about six weeks ago. It was late into the pregnancy (17th week, or about halfway, basically) which is pretty rare, and it’s going to take awhile to recover from, psychologically, not the least for her. I’m doing okay, and am mostly focusing on just trying to be there for her right now, but it’s of course also the case that I was looking forward to being a dad - and that’s not going to happen this year, at least.

It’s taken me so long to post about it because, really, it’s not a happy subject matter. It’s also not something that really has anything to do with poker. But since I posted about Lori being pregnant to begin with, I realized that I was either going to have to come forward about this happening, or be faced with questions on how it’s going as October (the preliminary date) approaches. I’d really rather not spend time talking about it, so I figured it was better to just mention it here and be done with it.

And on that note, while you’re welcome to post comments and whatnot, please realize that I’m not likely to respond to them. It’s not because I’m trying to be rude or anything, it’s just that as much as I appreciate your concerns, I really do want to try to put it behind me.

Thanks,

Fredrik

Really, there’s not much more to say about how to size your bets when bluffing - except this:

Don’t go and get yourself committed.

I use “except this” kind of slyly here, because this is really a very big deal. A very easy-to-grasp example of this idea - that I’ve touched on earlier in this series of posts when dealing with “easy decisions” - is when you’re on the button and it’s folded to you. You should normally open with a very wide range, but now let’s say the big blind has a very short stack left - let’s say 10BB. If you raise to 4BB with 7-5 offsuit, and he pushes all-in, you might end up having to call because of the pot odds. See?

A slightly more complex, but really a version of the same theme, example comes fresh off the presses from this morning, when I played a little $50NL before work. In this particular example, I’m dealing with a semi-bluff:

100BB effective stacks, 6-max.

I raised to $2 under-the-gun. Only the big blind called, and he called with A-3 of hearts.

Flop comes Q-T-3, two spades, one heart. He checks, I bet $4, and he calls with bottom pair, top kicker. The pot is now $12.

The turn is the king of hearts, giving him bottom pair, top kicker and the nut flush draw. Again, he checks and I bet $8. Here, he decides to fire a semibluff, which is actually a fairly decent time to try it. I often bet two barrels and will fold a lot of my range here, and if he can get me off any hand at all, it’s a great victory for him. But here is where he went wrong: He raised to $25, leaving him committed to calling when I pushed all-in, because by then, the pot was $81 and it was only $19 more for him to call with a pair and a flushdraw. A better move on his part would have been to checkraise to a smaller amount - maybe even close to a min-raise - in order to give himself the option of folding. Instead, he was forced to put in $36 on the turn with what realistically was only about a 20% chance to win.

And at this point, I want to kill a potential misunderstanding before it spreads: Giving yourself future odds to call a bet is not a good thing. I believe this faulty logic is common enough to warrant a reminder in this post, despite me having talked about it before. Him raising to an amount where he’s forced to call a push isn’t, as some people have put it, “two +EV decisions in a row, and as long as I make +EV decisions, I’m OK!”

And that’s really at the heart of it. Bluffing an amount that will make you committed is to be avoided.

If I look at how I’ve changed my game this month, it’s primarily become more aggressive and I’ve loosened up quite a lot in position. The last week of May, I played a 22/18/2 style, and the first week of May it was 18/13/2.7. That’s actually a fairly significant difference. And almost that entire difference comes from this stat: Attempt to steal blinds on button = 70%.

I’ve also started 3-betting light a little bit here and there. And just to top the month off, I’ve now occasionally started four-betting light. It’s fun.

I still make some really stupid mistakes here and there, but I’m trying to make them fewer. Specifically, I think playing 8-9 tables is more than I can handle without starting to play mechanically. Some decisions I need to think about, and it’s important that I get a chance to do that.

Anyway, a decent month. The results aren’t stellar in any way (3.5BB/100) but they’re clearly in the black and I think I have plenty of room for improvement. With the same hands, next month, I think I could probably double my win-rate. That’s how many mistakes I’ve made, that I now recognize. It’s important here to point out that I’ve been running somewhat well. Not like a rocket or anything, but I’ve had a few fortunate spots where my hands held up.

It’s pretty common among poker players to think of themselves as the greatest player in the world. I’ve been doing this for long enough now that I can pretty easily recognize how much I don’t know, and humility has perhaps also come with age. Getting completely owned in the second half of last year at the limit tables probably got me mature enough to stop thinking of myself as a poker prodigy. So, with honest introspect: I think I’ve been playing just slightly better than break-even poker this month. I’ve had some luck and some bad luck, but I haven’t been running “poorly” at any point for more than a few hands here and there. If I had been catching worse-than-average cards, I don’t think I could have turned it around to be a winning month, perhaps not even break-even. I think I can learn how to, though, and I believe I’m well on my way to becoming a more solid no-limit player.

I look forward to June. I’m not moving up to 100NL yet for quite awhile, though; at least one more month of 50NL for me. Stuff to learn, still.

/FP

An example from last week: $50NL, villain raises to $2 in middle position with AK, and the aggressive button (that’d be yours truly) calls. Effective stacks are $50. The flop comes K-7-2, and he bets $3 on the flop (I called), he bet $8 on the turn (another seven) and again, I call. The river brings a J. What remains of the effective stack is $37, and the pot is about $26. He bets $24.

If his goal is to prevent me from bluffing, $24 is a big enough bet size. It’s big enough that I won’t really have any leverage to try to bluff him out; going all-in would offer him a pot of $87 with $13 to call - hardly something he’ll fold. If he wants to stop me from bluffing, it’s better for him to bet a bit smaller; a size where he doesn’t risk quite as much (if he plans on folding if I raise - because otherwise, the point of the prevention is kinda moot) but still makes the pot big enough that it’s protected. Maybe something like $17…

… But why would he want to prevent me from bluffing? He has a hand that serves as an excellent bluff catcher! Shouldn’t he be encouraging me to bluff?

So his sizing is off. The only hand he will reasonably be extracting value from at this point is KQ, and his bet is a bit big for that, at least if he wants me to call. I sometimes take a passive line with TPGK in position versus opponents who will bet two barrels, but not three, but that’s a different story. So he puts in too much money versus the hand he can beat, and he puts in too much money to give me a chance to try to bluff, and he puts in too much money to be able to fold if I raise him. He simply puts in too much money.

By making a bet that big, he’s committed. But if he’s ready to commit, he should try to get the most bang for his buck! Against an aggressive opponent, you want to call river bets (since they will often be with weak hands/bluffs) not have the other guy call them. If I’m tight and aggressive, I’m not likely to call too often, but I might bluff. And that’s what you want to take advantage of!

Checking to me would accomplish that. But I’d often check behind with KQ and definitely all pocket pairs, which might call a small value bet on the river. With a $26, I might look him up with TT if he bets $8 or so. And the other nifty thing about betting small is that it doesn’t take away my option of bluffing. If my opponent decided he’d be happy to get it all-in versus me, then it’s important that I have enough rope to hang myself with, otherwise I’d only raise when I crush him.

In short, the river bet - versus aggressive players - should be of a size that both extracts value from weak made hands but doesn’t stop us from bluffing. A bet the size that my opponent chose achieves neither of those things, since I’d (almost) never call with a worse hand and he’d be extremely hard pressed to fold if I raised - and I’d never raise with a worse hand, either, given how unlikely I’d deem him to fold.

That’s the kind of problem he’d get himself in if he bets a bigger amount. If I raise, he’s very often desperately behind, but at the same time he’s gotten himself into the mess of being committed to seeing a showdown. With just a little bit of planning - and encouraging the aggressive player to take a stab - he could ironically have had a much easier decision to make! Getting it all-in when I make a pot-sized shove on the river is a much clearer decision than when I raise the rest all-in and he’s getting 7:1 to call with a hand that’s not going to win.

As a final sidenote, the beauty of this is that the same conclusion actually applies if you’re up against a passive opponent! What you want to avoid is being forced to call a passive opponent’s river raise due to pot odds, so instead you set the price so that if he raises, you can easily fold. A small bet on the river accomplishes this (usually), and also extracts value from the same hands as it would from me. You want to be careful with checking, though, because while raising is a clear sign of strength for a passive player, betting when checked to might not be. If you check to him, he might bet ace-ten thinking that he will be ahead.

This is the last of Part II of my bet-sizing series. Next up is bet-sizing when bluffing!

The main consideration when deciding on the size of a bet is the effective stack. With very deep stacks, the preflop raise decides how big the pot will (or can) eventually become. With very small stacks, you must instead focus on avoiding the trap of being committed with a hand that you don’t want to continue with. Today’s example illustrates the importance of planning the future betting already preflop:

$25NL, 6-max. It’s folded to you on the button, and you hold ace-queen. You would (or at least should) normally open with a very wide range here, so raising with AQ is a no-brainer. But before you raise, make sure to check how big the effective stack is between you and the blinds! If you have a loose big blind with a small stack, you should usually not raise to 3-4 times the big blind (the typical standard opening raise) but instead make a smaller raise. Look:

If the effective stack between you and the big blind is, say, 30BB, and you raise to four times the BB preflop and he calls, the pot will be 8BB with 27BB left behind. If he checks to you and you make any kind of continuation bet, you’re committed with your ace-high. Even if you only bet half the pot, you are more or less forced to call if he checkraises all-in, as the pot would be laying you about 2:1. In fact, even if he doesn’t checkraise all-in but to a smaller amount, you’re still committed. He’ll have so few chips left that if you’re calling that checkraise now, you can not fold at any future point in the hand anyway.

The hand plays out very differently if you instead raise to, say, 2.5BBs preflop. Yes, close to a minraise, but let’s leave dogma at the door. Suddenly, the same postflop scenario would become a 5BB pot on the flop, into which you bet 2.5BBs. If he checkraises you now, the effective odds you’re getting are 34:22, and while the difference in required chance to win “only” goes up by a paltry 10 percentage points, that’s really all it takes to make a close call into a clear fold.

It’s perhaps strange that I suggest raising to a smaller amount with a hand like A-Q preflop, given that it seems clear that that’s where you have your edge. Why not raise a lot preflop and create what is essentially a situation where HE’s the one who’s committed. That’s actually not a terrible idea; if you can somehow make him committed with your preflop raise, you’ve created a situation in which you get your chips in with an edge. If you raise to, say, 9 or 10BBs preflop and he calls, you can go ahead and push on the flop and he will almost have to call regardless of his holding. The trouble area for you, is when the pot isn’t so small that you can easily fold or so big that you can easily shove, but just in between. And that’s what you should try to avoid.

So, action point for next session: When you’re on the button, check the effective stack size between you and the blinds. If the stacks are somewhat deep, go ahead and make a regularly sized raise. Otherwise, make sure to raise less.

No-limit, by and large, is centered around the big bluff. “Moving In.” “Pushing.” “Shoving.” “Going all-in.” It’s centered around it in the sense that the threat of the all-in bluff looms as a possibility at all times when you play no-limit. That threat, for instance, is what causes people to check behind on the river with decent hands because they fear their opponent might check/raise all-in, leaving them with a horribly difficult decision. So instead, they save (or lose?) a few bucks and just check.

It’s always there. And it’s how to take the edge of it by being smarter about bet sizing that’s the topic. And I want to do this with a couple of examples, starting today with one - potentially on my part grossly misplayed - hand, where I size my bet on the turn in such a way as to stop my opponent from bluffing me off. The example is very verbose, because I think it contains a few other interesting situations besides the actual problem of bet sizing; hopefully you will find it interesting as well. I played this hand a week or two ago:

6-max $50NL on PokerStars. I have 66 in the cut-off seat. It’s folded to me and I open to $2. This raise is half steal, half value raise. Most hands that would call that raise have me at either a coin toss or severely dominated, but I have some great fold equity to capitalize on post flop, as well as huge implied odds versus some hands when I flop a set.

Unfortunately, the button calls my raise, but at least both blinds folds. I say unfortunately, because now I’m out of position with a very marginal hand. What I know about the button so far is that he’s very loose, very aggressive and likes to bluff. He’s not “bad” necessarily, just very tricky, but he does seem to have some method to his madness. Also, his stack is a bit short.

The flop comes A-K-K. The effective stack at this time is $25, and the pot is $4.50.

Now, I could have given up on this flop, but I wasn’t too happy about that outcome. My equity wasn’t great, admittedly, but I should have had some decent fold-equity lined up here. Specifically, I thought I could get him to fold pocket pairs and overcards to my sixes, which (take my word for it, or play around with Stove yourself to find out) constitute 30% of his holdings. I think he will continue with all aces, all kings and all QJ/QT/JT combos.

You can perhaps see why giving up wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all; continuing out of position is a recipe for disaster. However, I didn’t have time to Stove these things at the table, so I went with my (incorrect) gut feeling that I had a good case for betting here, and did. I bet $3 into the $4.50 pot. He calls. He didn’t snap call, and he didn’t tank either. He just called with the normal flow of the game, for what’s worth to the timing-tells people out there.

But what does it mean? It means he’s either slowplaying or floating. It means that I can’t win this hand without getting him to fold, because if we go to showdown, I’ve lost (as he’s not going to call down with QJ). This ties in with the topic how?

… because on the turn, the pot is $10.50, and remaining in his stack (the smaller one) is $20. If I check, I expect him to bet almost every time. And I can’t call if he does, because his equity is better than mine, after all. So I have to bet myself, but how much do I bet? “As little as possible” is really the key phrase, here. For all intents and purposes, my bet is a bluff - I want him to fold! I should bet the smallest amount that gets the job done. But, and this is important, there are two factors to take into account for the minimum size of the bet as well, and they are:

1. When he’s drawing, I should prevent him from drawing profitably (he will have 10 outs when that happens).
2. Don’t bet so little that he will be enticed to move all-in as a bluff.

… and it’s really #2 that’s the key problem here, and what this topic is all about. I want to bet enough on the turn that he will realize that there’s no point in bluffing, while simultaneously not so much that folding makes no sense if he re-raises. Let’s look at some different bet sizes:

$3: He will be getting about 4:1 on calling here, or about break-even for his 10-out draw, but it’s not calling that I’m worried about. He will also have another $17 left behind, for a pot-sized all-in raise, laying me about 1.7:1 - not good for me.

$6: Offering him a little less than 3:1 is better for when he draws. He still has a little power left in moving in because in doing so he’d lay me odds of about 2:1.

$10: Betting the pot. He’d only have $15 behind, and if he raises me, it will be another $15 in a $30 pot. This will discourage most thinking opponents from trying to bluff with air. He’d be laying me about 3:1.

Differently put, because it’d be so easy for me to call a re-raise, I don’t have to call the re-raise. If he pushes now, he expects me to call. Therefore I don’t have to. As you can see, I’m thinking on the second level here (what does my opponent think I have/will do) and that of course requires an opponent who thinks on the first level. But still.

If it’s not clear enough, let me just restate that I probably botched the 66-hand. Continuing past the flop (I think bet/folding the flop is fine) is probably a mistake. Letting him have it on the turn is probably better than bluffing. But what matters isn’t whether I played it perfectly or not on the turn, it’s the thought process: Trying to size my bet in a way as to stop him from bluffing. And I think my thinking around that was fine, in my defense.

More examples on simplifying your upcoming decision will be coming throughout this week - but I need to keep the posts to some kind of sane length to not risk losing everyone halfway through.