The Four Realms of the Overbet

[cero_z]

Hi jason,

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I was gathering some thoughts the other day on the overbet, and I think this is the best way to think about them.

First level/realm whatever:
When beginners overbet its almost always a bluff. They bet small with big hands, and big with bad hands because they don't want to get called. This is boring to talk about.

Second:
The second level of overbetting is where I'd say most typical 2p2ers are. It basically involves overbetting the nuts or close, hoping to get called by worse hands. Versus opponents who are bad or who you will never see again, this is often as far as you should take your level of thinking with overbets.

Third:
People who overbet the nuts or pure air. This can be both very tricky to do (finding the right frequencies) and hard to deal with. For me to overbet big with pure air, I generally want to reserve this for someone who I will see again. In my game (party 10-20) I'll do this move versus regulars who I feel like I may be able to exploit if they see me make a huge overbet with nothing. People tend to not forget big bets like that, and I feel like I can usually make back my money and more by losing a huge pot with jack high. I generally won't show a bluff ever, but I might consider it because generally I think my bluffing frequencies are low when I'm doing this overbet bluff and I want people to think its higher.

Fourth:
You really are not going to see this often except when two very tough players are going at it. This involves overbetting with a wide range of hands, spreading from pure air to the nuts, and everything in between. In order to do this type of bet you need to really feel like your opponent is thinking and is capable of calling a big bet with the thinking 'he can only have nuts or pure air, so I call with top pair'. It is the most beautiful thing in poker when you see something like this. My favorite hand ever that I witnessed went like this:

Bbuddy and Hallingol are playing 10-20 on stars. Hallingol opens from late position, buddy calls. Flop TT6 two tone. Hallingol bets buddy calls. Turn 6. Hallingol again bets pot, buddy calls. River 2, no flush got there. Hallingol checks, Buddy goes all in for 2.5x pot. Hallingol runs his timer down and calls with 77, Buddy shows KK and takes down the pot.

These ideas are very rough, but I'm curious what people think about this approach to thinking about the overbet.


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Nice.