Overbetting the Pot

[Lost Wages]

Warning: No limit newbie!

1) As I understand it, overbetting the pot with a non-nut hand is generally a bad idea because you will only be called when you are beaten. Is that correct?

2) What are some reasons you might want to overbet the pot?

Thanks in advance,
Lost Wages

[felson]

I rarely overbet the pot, but here are some times when it's useful.

1. When you don't have the nuts, but are pretty sure you have the best hand and want to kill pot odds. Ex: LP preflop, lots of callers, you have AK. In this case you might be happy to take down all the limps, so you could overbet the pot by a few big blinds or so. It might be better to limp or raise smaller in this case, but I think overbetting is a legitimate option.

A related example is making the same move with trash, just hoping to steal. If you get reraised, you can easily fold, but hopefully you steal often enough to make it profitable. Sklansky describes this in his tourney book (where he also says you shouldn't make the above move with AQ for fear of getting reraised and moved off your hand).

Another example of killing pot odds. Last night I held AJ on an AJTx double-suited board, heads up on turn. From the action I was pretty sure my opponent did not hold KQ or a set. The pot was big, so I overbet the pot to protect my hand and to deny him flush draw/gutshot odds. (It helped that I held a nut-flush draw also. Again, overbetting is not mandatory.)

2. You flop a big draw, like open-end straight draw + flush draw, or pair + flush draw, etc. This is probably the most common scenario. In this case you'd hate to put in a lot of money on the flop and then have to call a large bet on the turn if you miss. It's better to push it all in on the flop. You probably don't want to overbet the pot by too much on this one; I personally would be scared to do it if your stack was more than 3x pot.

In this case, you don't want to overbet the pot unless you can do it with your whole stack. The point is to avoid making unhappy drawing calls on 4th street.

I am personally fond of this move, since you're even money against an overpair or even a set (with o.e. s-f draw) and can often get made hands to fold. It has been controversial on these boards, though; check the archives.

3. In Ciaffone/Reuben's PL/NL book, they suggest overbetting when you want to represent clearly an unlikely holding such as runner-runner flush. In this case you overbet regardless of whether you're bluffing. I think you need to know your opponent well to use this move.

[1800GAMBLER]

Flop:

8 /images/graemlins/spade.gif 9 /images/graemlins/club.gif J /images/graemlins/club.gif.

.. They don't fold to overbets.

I'll do it when i have something around TPTK and figured draws will pay extra or QK KJ don't fold. Pretty much all my games.