What is your 'standard bet' in NL Hold'em?

[CurryLover]

My 'standard bet' is usually around the size of the pot. Obviously, depending on the situation it may be bigger or smaller - but I do often make pot-sized bets. My background is Pot-Limit cash games rather than NL and maybe this has got me into the habit of 'betting the pot' a little more often than I should. However, I had always thought that many NL players start from the premise that a 'normal bet' is somewhere around the size of the pot and then adjust according to the situation.

Then today I was reading something by Mike Caro that got me thinking about this. He was saying that the practice of having your 'standard bet' being around the size of the pot is not necessarily the right way to play NL Hold'em. He discusses this a bit and then suggests that your standard bet should be between half the pot and slightly less than the pot. I know Caro is not known as a top-notch NL Hold'em player, but what he said got me thinking and it would be interesting to hear others' thoughts on this.

A few questions for discussion:

1. Do you have a 'standard bet', or is every bet based entirely on the situation.

2. If the answer to question 1 is 'yes', then what is your standard bet?

3. How often do you estimate you make your standard bet compared to how often you will bet less or more?

4. What factors do you consider when deciding how much to bet?

5. Is there a difference between your betting patterns in cash games/tourneys?

Any thoughts on this would be great.

[PokerSlut]

Bob Ciaffone has said roughly the same thing in his PL and NL book.

Generally speaking, the idea is that you want to bet enough to give your opponents incorrect odds to call your bet, but still make it tempting for them to do so. Against a flush draw this is going to be closer to the size of the pot. Against someone with middle pair + overcard vs. top pair, you can bet much smaller and still give your opponent incorrect odds.

1. Do you have a 'standard bet', or is every bet based entirely on the situation.
Yes and no. I have a standard bet, but I also adjust this based on the situation.

2. If the answer to question 1 is 'yes', then what is your standard bet?
A little under the pot in a typical hand.

3. How often do you estimate you make your standard bet compared to how often you will bet less or more?
It really is situation dependent, but generally I bet closer to the pot when there are straight or flush draws on the board, and closer to 1/2 the pot when the flop is ragged. I rarely overbet the pot except for certain situations that call for it (e.g. isolating against one player).


4. What factors do you consider when deciding how much to bet?
If I am way ahead in a multi-way pot, for example, I want a lot of callers so it is often more profitable for me to bet 1/3 to 1/2 of the pot to entice the flush or straight draws.

5. Is there a difference between your betting patterns in cash games/tourneys?
If you mean the size of my bet, well yes and no. I am more likely to go all-in when I am short-stacked on the bubble, and other similar situations.

[Rick Nebiolo]

Good post. One quibble:

[ QUOTE ]
Bob Ciaffone has said roughly the same thing in his PL and NL book.

3. How often do you estimate you make your standard bet compared to how often you will bet less or more?
It really is situation dependent, but generally I bet closer to the pot when there are straight or flush draws on the board, and closer to 1/2 the pot when the flop is ragged. I rarely overbet the pot except for certain situations that call for it (e.g. isolating against one player).

[/ QUOTE ]

I recall this was Ciaffone's general idea but wasn't it more like 2/3 the pot when it is ragged and a slight overbet when the board contains draws (even if you are semi-bluffing with a draw?).

~ Rick

[Zag]

[ QUOTE ]
I recall this was Ciaffone's general idea but wasn't it more like 2/3 the pot when it is ragged and a slight overbet when the board contains draws (even if you are semi-bluffing with a draw?).

[/ QUOTE ]
Rick makes an excellent point here in that the size of your bet should NEVER be determined by what you have. (This was also one of Ciaffone's points, I think, in the article referred to.) The size of the bet is determined by position, by the shape of the flop, by your table image, by stack sizes, and by other criteria, all of which is available to the other players, but NEVER by what you hold. Whether or not you bet or raise might be determined that way, but never how much. Otherwise you have a huge tell that can be exploited by an observant player.

I make significant variations in the size of my bets, from 1/3 pot to slightly overbetting. And I might be bluffing or betting for value within this whole range. The bottom line is that, if you are ahead, which you usually should be when you are betting, you want the opponents to be making a mistake to call. Against worse opponents (who, presumably, call too often), the bets should be larger, because they are willing to make a bigger mistake than good opponents are willing to make. This is a big source of your profits.

I do not think it is ever correct to bet less than 1/3 of the pot. These factors all call for a smaller bet:
1. You have position
2. Stacks are very high compared to the blinds and to this bet. i.e. there are at least two "tempos" left after this bet.
3. There are no good draws on the board. i.e. assuming I do have the best hand, opponents are drawing at 5 or fewer outs.

Obviously, the opposites (out of position, etc.) call for a larger bet. #2 is somewhat tricky. It is especially true on the flop. The most important here is that the opponent has two cards to hit his draw if the bet puts him all in. However, if the bet is only a small part of his stack, then he is only looking at one card to hit his draw because there will be another bet on the turn if he misses.

My one exception to this rule is if the opponents misplay against a particular style of bet. There was a thread yesterday that included opponents misplaying against someone who makes minimum raises, by attacking always (assuming the min raise means weakness). Given that they will misplay this way, I might make a minimum raise when I have the nuts, but I will also do it very infrequently as a bluff, as well, so that they don't lose their prediliction for the mistake.

[CurryLover]

[ QUOTE ]
Rick makes an excellent point here in that the size of your bet should NEVER be determined by what you have. The size of the bet is determined by position, by the shape of the flop, by your table image, by stack sizes, and by other criteria, all of which is available to the other players, but NEVER by what you hold.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with this point. But check this out from the same section in the book by Mike Caro (the book is 'Mike Caro's Guide to Doyle Brunson's Super/System', by the way):

'In general, your bets should be varied in such a way that the stronger your hand for a given situation, the bigger your bet on average.
You might think that this will give your opponents clues as to what you hold, but that's OK. The winning theory here is that by randomising your decisions enough, you can tend to bet the strength of your hand on average without your opponents being able to take advantage of it...'

I guess it is impossible to disagree with his comment about the need for deception by randomising your decisions. However, what are people's thoughts on Caro's premise that on average your bet size should reflect the strength of your hand? Sounds pretty dubious to me - or have I missed something?

[Zag]

I need to be a much more successful player than I am before I start disagreeing with Mike Caro. On the other hand, I might claim that his comment is intended for a different context than the one to which we are applying it.

I know that a lot of his commentary is based on massive computer simulations, especially where he has pitted one strategy against another, and strategies pitted against themselves. I know that he was trying to find ideal strategies, including randomization percentages, for playing opponents who are also trying to reach the optimum strategy.

I AM sure that he means that you keep the same range of your bets for a certain external situation. (By "external," I mean things like position and board -- all the things your opponents can see as well as you do.) It's just that you alter the wieght of the range, the fat part of the bell curve, according to your hand strength. I think that he is responding directly to the people who adjust the other way, they bet less when they have a huge hand, in order to "keep the customers calling" and he has found, through simulations, that the extra customers do not make up for the lost bet size.

If he, in fact, were to adjust significantly this way, then he would have a significant tell that the Doyle Brunson's of the world could exploit. (That is, the people with great card reading skills and superb memory.)

If I could say, with great reliability, that a large bet by my opponent is either a big hand or a bluff (with game-theory appropriate frequency) and a medium to small bet is either a medium hand or a bluff (again, with appropriate frequency) then I could exploit this. Assuming I could beat a bluff, I would call the large bets with a game-theory-appropriate calling frequency, and I would never (almost never) bluff-raise them. This would lose money at the slowest possible rate against his big hands. For the middle-sized bets, I would raise for value and raise-bluff both more than would be appropriate, because I can be assured I am not running into a monster.

I am betting that Caro does not have this leak. If he makes the adjustment his book says, I'll bet that it is a fairly small amount, something that is swamped by the other variations, including one for pure randomization.

[PokerSlut]

[ QUOTE ]
...However, what are people's thoughts on Caro's premise that on average your bet size should reflect the strength of your hand? Sounds pretty dubious to me - or have I missed something?

[/ QUOTE ]
It depends how big the random variations are and to which hands each size range would apply. There are some players I play against regularly whose hand I can often pin down preflop based purely on the size of their bet (and of course other table conditions), even though they try to vary it a bit.

I'm sure Mike Caro is much more gifted at avoiding this kind of tell than the folks I play against in the LA cardrooms, but it is one thing to preach this kind of strategy, and another to properly apply it.

[PokerSlut]

[ QUOTE ]
Good post. One quibble:
(snip)
I recall this was Ciaffone's general idea but wasn't it more like 2/3 the pot when it is ragged and a slight overbet when the board contains draws (even if you are semi-bluffing with a draw?).

~ Rick

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, this is what he recommends. However since I also play PL regularly I tend to bet closer to pot-sized or a little under rather than pot-sized or a little over against drawing boards. Against raggedy flops in my recent games where there are a lot of loose callers, I have recently been betting a bit smaller than 2/3 on the flop to get an extra caller or two, then larger on the turn (when there are almost always more potential draws) which tends to generate a bigger total pot on average.

[bones]

I'm still relatively new to NL, but I've been toying around with a few bet sizes. If it's heads up or 3 players, I've been betting in relation to what I perceive as their threshold. Of course this only works with predictable bad players, but hey, that's the only kind I wanna sit with.

[GimmeDaWatch]

I've wondered about this as well. I know alot of players tend to bet the size of the pot, but what about your decent but not great hands when you're out of position (e.g. top pair w/KQ or KJ). If you happen to be beat, this makes you very susceptible to being trapped and losing a good portion of your stack on the turn or river. In the smaller NL games as well, it seems like alot players wouldnt call pot sized bets with hands you beat that you still want calling for an incorrect price (say, half the pot or so). Also, in a raised pot with several callers betting the pot on the flop alone can pot commit you in 50BB buy-in games. If I feel strongly that someone is on a draw heads up, Im much more inclined to bet closer to the size of the pot, or if I put them on a hand that wont fold but that I beat. Otherwise, I tend to play it more cautiously, perhaps this is wrong.