Obsession with value bets (Warning: Long)

[Rizen]

This is cut and pasted from my blog. I don't know if it will be helpful to anyone here, and I would certainly appreciate feedback on how to make it better, but one of my pet peeves lately has been how poorly people value bet. I have about 10-12 people I regularly review hand histories with as well, and IMO the most common problem I see with their play is poor betting. Anyways, here it is:

Let's face it, we as poker players are obsessed with the 'value bet'. Several of the most popular poker texts discuss value betting in detail, and during the WSOP and even some WPT broadcasts lately there has been a lot of talk of 'great value bets' going on. I really think us online poker players, as a community, tend to go a little overboard with the idea of what a value bet is and how to apply it properly though.

I'm going to take everyone back to Poker 101 here as it applies to betting. If you hold the absolute nuts in your hand, you would want to bet the absolute most into the pot that your opponent would call, and not one penny less. Conversely, if you're on a stone cold bluff you would want to be the absolute least you have to in order for your opponent to fold, and not one penny more. Now, obviously the amount of times a poker player has the absolute nuts or is on a stone cold bluff doesn't happen all that often, but we can apply this concept broadly by saying that there are times our hands are strong enough we WANT action, and there are times our hands are weak enough (either as a bluff, or just a generally weak hand) that we'd prefer not to have action.

Now, let's say that we call this point where the maximum amount your opponent will call is 'X'. Like anything else in poker, we will never be able to know exactly what X is for any given hand. But given that poker is a game of incomplete information, we can try and fill in some of the gaps with the information we know about the player and his actions so far in the hand. Is he a loose caller? Has he represented a strong or a weak hand? Is he on tilt? Plus many other questions that may impact how the player will respond to your bet. The problem I see many players (particularly online players) making at the tables though, is they take the value bet concept too far. They assume that in order to make a value bet, they must make a bet they feel will always be called, and thus they bet far too little in an attempt to extract more out of the pot.

A common example I see of this is when someone finally makes their drawing hand (let's say a flush or a straight in this case) and it's checked to them. They have position and obviously checking is not an option since giving a free showdown when you finally hit our hand would be a poker catastrophe. They get so afraid of not getting paid off with their great hand that they make a super small bet into a large pot so they'll be called. This is awful!! We all know (or should know) that great poker players separate themselves by getting maximum value out of their winning hands and losing as little as possible on their losing hands. Clearly if you're betting some absurd amount like 600 chips into a 4000 pot when you make your hand on the river, you're leaving money on the table. I mean if you bet 1200 into that same pot, and your opponent will call half as often, you make just as much money in the long run, and certainly if he's willing to call 600 in that pot he'd be willing to call 1200 at least half as much. Take that out further, and he might call 2500 1/3 of the time!

If you do the math (and I'll spare you that here), if your opponent will call 600 every time, 1200 half the time, and 2500 1/3 of the time, 2500 is by FAR the superior bet, as over the course of many hands it will bring you the most profit. I don't know about you, but I play poker for profit. You cannot be so afraid of your opponent folding that you refuse to extract maximum value out of a hand.

This doesn't apply just to the river either. You want to be getting maximum value (either by getting a weaker hand to call or a stronger hand to fold) on every street when you're doing the betting. If you take the easy way out and bet small with your good hands and big with your bluffs, I promise you you'll be watching from the rail much sooner than you expect. Think about your bet sizes and play strong poker, and I promise you your bottom line will thank you.

-Rizen