Betting strategy in general..

Ok, first let me say I'm a patient (tight) player..I mainly play only the big hands, with a few randoms tossed in. I know the questions I'm about to ask fall back on the all too common answer for poker questions, "It depends". But I'm just looking for a general idea.

Say I get a playable hand..and I'm in position to play it. I know the strategy for betting preflop, but how about post flop through the river. All the instances would be everyone checking to me with 0 to 1 person behind me.

The betting layout I'm considering is: Min bet, Half-bet (around) the pot, bet the pot, or over bet the pot. There's too many hand options to list individually, which is why I mentioned I had a playable hand preflop.

1) Flop nothing
2) Flop nothing with a flush draw
3) Flop nothing with a open ended draw
4) Gutshot draw
5) Straight draw where only 1 card could help (not sure the actual name, but say I have KQ and the flop comes JA2, needing a 10)

6) Top pair (decent kicker)
7) Top pair (weak kicker(which technically I shouldn't play))
8) 2 Pair
9) Trips
10) Nut straight
11) Reg straight
12) Nut flush
13) Reg flush
14) etc

What about on the turn, and river? With the people that checked flat calling or folding..what about a raise?

I know "it depends" like I said, but I'm just looking for general info, and any help will be greatly appreciated. I think getting an estimate on this could really help my game. Thanks for any time given, as I know it will take some time to answer this fully.

It depends.



(sorry, couldn't resist)

Seriously it does.

The OP is just to general. Try making up a theoretical example for each situation, then use those as the examples and you should be able to get much better feedback.

I'd say you generally want to bet between 50-100% of the pot, the more draws on the board the more you bet. The only time I like to overbet is when I have a hand that's currently the worst hand but very likely a favourite like open ended straight flush draws, and on occasion the nuts, just so people can't always put me on a draw when I make a large overbet.

Also it depends whether your playing cash or tourny, who you villains are (how aggro/passive/knowledge you have with them etc). It's such a general question. Perhaps you could give us some more info to narrow it down a little.

Anyways, I play mainly cash games, 6max, so if I'm in early position I will raise it up with decent hands (88+, AQ+). The further round to the button I get this will expand to include all pp's, Axs, broadways, suited connectors. The purpose of betting pre flop is to build the pot up and to take control of the hand. If I have opened the betting, then a lot of the time I will make a continuation bet whether I hit the flop or not, again depending on villains, and board texture. This will usually get the job done, usually my standard bet here is 2/3rds to 3/4 the pot. This then doesn't give the villain appropriate odd to call for draws, so if he does then there making a mistake. After this then there are so many variables as to betting actions to be of any value here. If you need specific advice then please post up some hand histories as this would be more educational for you as your getting some relevant advice regarding your play.

This whole thread is wholly misguided:
Do NOT size your bet based on your hand strength. This "tell" in your betting pattern will be easily exploitable by any even reasonably good player.

I'm gonna give it a shot even though it's still way too general a topic, The first thing you’ll need to establish when you are developing a betting strategy is to understand the logic behind why you are betting in the first place.

One way to determine the amount of a bet is by making a direct comparison to the amount of money already in the pot. Although this is a good general rule of thumb, you will still need to base your betting on the intended actions you want your opponents to do and to achieve this you need to know your reasons for betting.

There are essentially three primary reasons for betting: (1) Betting for Value, (2) Betting for Information and (3) Betting for Protection. [Betting on a bluff is a different animal in general but even then, your bluffing bet will still be in an effort to represent one of these three reasons and as such it is in your best interest to understand the logic of these reasons in order to make a more believable bluff]

Betting for Value is the most common type of betting that we routinely see at the tables. The logic here is that we’re holding a strong hand, we want to profit from that strong hand and we bet accordingly. A value bet may range from the minimum bet (seldom), to one half/full amount of the pot (often), to more than the pot. There’s no one way to determine a minimum or maximum bet amount for value because there are too many factors, but suffice to say that you want that bet to be low enough to get a call and high enough to get the maximum pay-off.

Betting for Information is a type of betting that many novice and average players don’t quite understand. The idea here is to place a bet that will provide you with more information then you already have in order to get a better read on your opponents hand, their intent or even their playing style and thereby play your own hand more profitably. This is done with a wider range of bet sizes than just the standard half/full amount of the pot and this is something that you tend to develop over time with experience. I could provide examples, but that's just too time consuming for this thread.

Betting for Protection is one of the most important of the three reasons and it is also the basis for why we gauge the size of our bet against the size of the pot. The idea here is to make a bet large enough so that your opponents do not have the correct odds to try and out draw you. In order to calculate how much a bet needs to be you will have to assess what you believe your opponent(s) might be holding and determine the number of outs they have. Once you’ve figure out the number of outs they have it’s time to figure out what their hand odds are of outdrawing you. There’s a long drawn out formula for that, but the shortened version makes it a lot easier: Multiply the number of outs they have by 4 and you’ll get a close estimation to the percentage they have to hit that hand from the Flop. Multiply by 2 instead of 4 when you’re determining their odds from the turn. Once you’ve got their hand odds you need to make their pot odds exceed their hand odds by betting high enough so that for them to call they are outside their appropriate odds.

i.e. You are holding (on the Button), your opponent (seated in 5th position) is holding and the board reads . You have Top Two Pair and your opponent is only holding Middle Pair Middle Kicker, but he has an Open-Ended Straight Draw. After the Flop there is $250 in the pot and your opponent (with 8 outs and roughly a 32% chance of out-drawing you) checks it over to you. In order for you to put the odds against him you will need to bet better than 32% of the current pot, or $80, to keep the odds against him.

Obviously there’s a lot more that can go into it, but that should be enough for you to chew on for now. Like aliengenius said, "Do NOT size your bet based on your hand strength.."

Make that 6 a jack else no open ended straight draw.

I wasn't advocating basing the amount of your bet except in the case of when you have a premium draw (and occasionally the nuts either top set or str or flush on the flop to disguise your hand) The rest of the time betting based on primarily the strength of the board, modified by opponent's likely range and various other factors of how your opponent plays.

yes and no. Should we never (or always) raise preflop because we give away information on whether our hand is strong or weak preflop? When we raise UTG with a strong hand we give our opponent the information that we don't have 29o.


I quoted it in another thread but Sklansky advocated sizing preflop bet sizes to hand strength because making a big pot with big hands was preferable even if it meant giving a little bit more information away. He argued that getting money in the pot when ahead was the important thing, and that making the theoretially wrong play simply to increase deception was not always a good thing. Obviously it's good to mix it up and if opponents pick up that only premiums are being raised preflop, raise with some suited connectors preflop, or even with complete junk if you think it'll pick up the pot.

So yes you have a point in that we do not want to become perfectly predictable, BUT there's something to be said for making a more correct play (this goes on any street). Even if it may be picked up, especially at full ring unless you're against a very observant opponent they won't realize that a pot size bet means the nuts and a 1/5 pot size is a blocking bet etc. (numbers are just examples)

And if you become predictable, change tables every hundred or so hands. That's over an hour, so if people are starting to pick up betting patterns, online it's easy to switch to another table where the majority of the people don't know you (and even if they're using something like PAHUD, it doesn't give information on bet sizing, so they'd have to have particularly made an individual note about you.

Now I'm not advocating betting strict amounts for each hand, but you'd have to be an idiot to play all hands the same way postflop. You want to disguise your hand while still getting the maximum value out of it (whether that's picking up the pot without a showdown, or winning at showdown with the best hand, or even minimizing losses). It's an interesting discussion, but I definitely think some people go too far the other way, worrying too much about being tricky and not giving a read instead of focusing at least a little bit on getting value out of your hand.