When the spread goes to infinity

It is often argued that a correct spread limit strategy is to always bet the maximum, when you're betting. However, consider the extreme case when the spread is infinitely large, i.e. no-limit. Then you would most likely not want to always bet your entire stack whenever you decide to bet.


So the claim that you should bet the maximum must be oversimplified. Wouldn't it be reasonable to say that the amount to bet would depend on the size of the spread, the pot size, and the stack sizes?

in any spread limit game, where the limit doesnt change mid hand, it quickly becomes correct to either bet the limit or check because as soon as a couple bets go into the pot, it gets large enough that no bet not showing maximal strength is worth making. In early rounds, particularly against weak players, it can be right to bet less than the spread as long as people would still be incorrect to call the smaller bets.


theoretically, if the spread were large enough to be way out of proportion to the ante, it wouldn't be correct to always bet the maximum. But you never really see games like that, they're always pot limit or no limit.


7SFAP has a nice discussion of casino spread limit stud games, which among games of around that size can actually be pretty beatable.

Lets say its $1-5 with a $1 bring or blind. I generally would NOT bet $5 until the pot reached $8 or so unless the bone heads are going to call the full bet anyway.


But there is another situation where you should bet less than the max even when the pot is fairly large. This would be on the river when you really have the hand you are representing and want to put pause and doubt into their minds. So if you have AQ and flop an A and raise the flop, bet the turn, and want to bet the river for value against 3 opponents, you may want to only bet $4 since this will attract their attention, and make them pause, which would probably make them call more often AND raise less often, both of which are good for you.


This $4 bet also comes into play when stealing, since it doesn't LOOK like a steal bet.


- Louie