General Advice on Big Bet Hold'em

[ArtVandelay]

When replying to other posts I often find myself saying the same things over and over, so I thought I'd combine some of my thoughts on big bet Hold'em into one coherent post. Comments welcome.

1. If you are new to big bet always bet/raise exactly the pot.

The two main advantages of this are first, that it makes your decisions much simpler, because like in limit you only have 2 or 3 possible choices for each decision. The second advantage is that you will never give anything away with the size of your bet because you always bet the same amount. There are many other reasons to do this as well, but as I've discussed them in many other threads I won't go into the details here.

2. Unless the stacks are short, pre-flop doesn't matter.

Unless the money is short (as it often is online, because of the ridiculously low max buy-ins), it is almost never the case that even 10% of your stack goes in pre-flop. A large part of your net P/L from big bet comes from the all-in hands, and all that matters then is what you hold when the money goes in the middle, not what you had before the flop. Of course this is massively oversimplifying, but the point is that you should play hands which can flop big (pairs, suited aces, and suited connectors) and avoid trouble hands like AQo and other unsuited high card hands. Furthermore, if you never raise pre-flop, it's probably not that far from wrong (I say this because a lot of people get into trouble raising big cards pre-flop and missing, and if you only call with them you also need to smooth call the big pairs for deception).

3. A call is a scary play.

Assuming you follow point one of my advice, the way big bet should be played is with lots of betting and raising and almost no calling. When I'm playing 5/5 pot limit Hold'em and I bet the flop, if anyone calls me the first thing I worry about is them having the nuts. Because I'm usually betting the pot, my opponents only ever get 2-1 on a call, which in Hold'em in almost never proper odds (except with a big draw, like flush and open-ender or flush and pair). So if they don't have odds to draw, what are they calling with? An important example of this is when someone bets the pot and someone else calls, if the caller is a decent player you should be extremely tight when acting behind.

4. Be patient.

The following is not an unreasonable description of the experience of playing big bet Hold'em: hours of boredom followed by a full minute of pure fear. You simply cannot get impatient, or you will lose every chip. Big bet Hold'em is a game of the nuts, and anything else is a bluff. Again, this applies more when the stacks are deeper, but it is true that you generally need to wait for a big hand before committing all your chips. Most importantly, this isn't like limit where waiting for a hand means waiting until you are dealt a big ace or big pair pre-flop, in big bet waiting for a hand is waiting to flop a big hand (remember point 2).

5. Know your opponents.

You've probably heard this before, but in big bet far more than in limit it's so important to know your opponents, how they play, etc. Who I am up against is often the number one thing I consider when making a decision, and without knowledge of your opponents you're not playing poker, you're gambling.

6. Be objective and not results oriented when analyzing past hands.

So often I'll see posts in this forum that say, here's a hand that I lost, so what did I do wrong? Even worse is when people think they played the hand wrong because they got the money in as a favorite and lost anyway ("I should have bet more to push him off his hand"). The worst trap though is selective results orientation. There are enough levels of results orientation that you are always winning at one of them, and you tend to focus in on it ("he didn't have the implied to call my pre-flop raise," or "he didn't have odds to draw to the flush on the turn") while ignoring that you put in your whole stack as a huge dog or wherever else you made a mistake. I'm not saying you should beat yourself up, just try to be objective and fair.

7. Don't play with money that matters to you.

Once again, I'm repeating the advice of about 1000 different authors, but the thing to realize is that in big bet your whole stack is at risk every single hand (unless you have the big stack of course). Furthermore, no matter how good you are, you'll almost never get the money in as a lock (if you wait for the mortal nuts you definitely won't win), and you have to be emotionally and financially prepared for bad beats. The real problem is that scared money is easily taken, while irrelevant money is scary to play against.

8. Consider the depth of the money when making the play.

Almost as important as your opponents is how deep the stacks are. Think carefully about things like who will put in the last bet, how tough a spot will you be in if raised, whether you will be able to get away from your hand if a scare card comes, etc. One principle along these lines is that when you have a draw and are semi-bluffing make sure it's you who makes the committing raise, while when you have a big made hand it's okay either way.

9. Know the odds.

There are so few probabilities in Hold'em that it's pretty important to know them. Some you can calculate at the table, but it really is quite helpful to know things like odds of pair over pair, odds to flop a set, odds to make a particular draw on the very next card, etc.

10. Keep yourself out a tough spots.

Finally, I think this a great principle to apply to your play. Always try to arrange the betting so that your opponent can't give you a difficult decision. If you really hate getting raised then don't bet, but if you have an easy laydown when your opponent pushes back all-in go ahead and come over the top of his bet with thin values. Try to force your opponents to make hard decisions well keeping the easy ones for yourself, and you'll be much more successful.

I hope this has been helpful to some of you, and good luck in the future.