Most players now know to size up their bets to get an all in by the river for maximum value, however, this isn’t the best way of playing. Lets say that you bet half pot on the turn card to set up an all in that is below pot-sized by the river, well opponents can still make an easier fold to a full size pot bet on the river as they could if we had sized our bets to say 3/4 pot the whole way rather than half pot and then a huge bet.
So today we are going to look at a fairly advanced idea in Poker…
Betting Geometrically
Using pot geometry will help us get the most value in our hands on each street by betting as close to the same size of the pot on each street in order to get max value and all of our stack in the middle by the end of the hand.
We will do this when we are polarised in the hand, so when we have either a very strong hand and want maximum value or a bluff and want to apply maximum pressure.
Let’s take a look at this example where we flop a flush draw:
HERO: Raises $3
CO: Calls $3
BTN: Folds
SB: Folds
BB: Folds
Flop: J♣ 7♥ 2♣
So now we have some options on how much to bet… some players might go for a half pot sized bet to kick things off here, allowing worse hands to stay in and not going too large with just a draw.
However, with our new way of thinking, we want to be playing for max value or max pressure if we miss… so we want to play for all the chips, so let’s look at how the hand unfolds with pot-sized betting on all streets of action…
How Much Should We Bet
If $7.50 goes in from both players on the flop…
On the Turn, the pot is $22.50 and we have $92.50 behind so we bet pot-sized again, betting $22.50, leaving us with $70 for the river…
The pot on the River is $67.50 so we can move all-in for a pot-sized bet and get max value for when we hit our draw and apply the most pressure when we miss.
What we did here was size our bets equally or geometrically betting the same sizing on each street, this way we will get more calls by the river than if say we bet half pot on the flop and turn and then have only $30 in the pot on the river, our only option then would be a huge overbet to get value or force our opponent of the pot.
Overbets
We can do the same thing and bet over pot-sized on every street too! There are no rules other than making our bets like a cube and equal on all sides. Another neat trick is when we are playing against players that are calling a lot preflop we can size up our initial open raise size, this small difference between say a 3x open and a 5x open will make the pot much larger by the river!
We aren’t always going to get these sizings spot on, however, you will find yourself getting more used to this new style in time and if you bet a little off then it won’t matter, it’s not an exact science… getting as close as you can to equal sizings on all streets is good enough!
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