Choosing Correct Bet Sizings

New Online PokerPoker Strategy

You will have noticed that the best players mix up their bet sizings between using very small sizings and large sizings on different boards, in this post, we are going to look at why this is.

flopped flush draw

How much should we bet on a board like this with our draw?

We can bet small on this type of board for a couple of reasons:

The board is not very connected, meaning there are no straight draws and only one high card.
We can profitably bluff when we bet smaller more often.

The good thing about our opponent facing a small bet here is that hands like weaker flush draws will continue as well as other weak hands we can put in a tough spot on the turn when they don’t improve, like Ace high hands, this means we will win even more chips when we double barrell.

Let’s look at a different board type…

top two pair on a wet board

Protecting Our hand on Wet Boards

This flop is much different, the board is very connected, there is a flush draw which we don’t block and any combination of hands with a Jack in them have a lot of equity as they have an open-ended straight draw and any hand with an Ace in them having a gutshot straight draw.

So how should we size our bets on this board?

This is a spot where we can size up our bets and go for a large sizing, here’s why…

Our opponent is going to have fewer light calls on this board, on a dry board player’s continue with weaker hands like small pairs that are underpairs to the board, or just hands with a high card value.
However on this board, our opponent is likely to only continue if they have a piece of the board, so we can look to charge the maximum.

How to proceed on later streets of action

When we have had our flop bet called, we are going to want to bet with larger sizings on the turn and river, this is because our opponents’ range has narrowed from their flop decision to call.

We are going to want to get value from our good hands and at the same time if we are bluffing we want to apply more pressure to their bluff catchers.

We can occasionally use smaller sizings later in pots to try and induce bluffs when we have good hands.

The same is true for using over-bets, we can use sizings of 120%-150% pot size bets to really apply the pressure with our bluffs and get max value from our good hands, these sizings are best applied to calling station type players that are likely to pay off more.

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