Why protect your hand so much?

[DoomSlice]

I see people suggesting making bigger bets in certain spots that are almost certainly not going to be called by a non-made hand for the reason that you want to "get the draws to fold". When I play, I want my opponents to call with their draws so that I well... can get more money off of them if they don't hit. As long as you give them bad pot odds to call, there is no reason to blow them out of the pot with a gigantic bet.

Am I wrong here?

[Unarmed]

Yes you are wrong. You want them to fold so they don't suck out on you.

[Wayfare]

[ QUOTE ]
When I play, I want my opponents to call with their draws so that I well... can get more money off of them if they don't hit.


[/ QUOTE ]

How does one propose to extract money from a missed draw?

Obviously, one wants to charge a draw as much as possible to make it as mathematically incorrect for him to call as possible, but not "so" incorrect that he folds. If the latter happens, he is making a zero-EV decision and thus you are left with a zero-EV result.

So find the inflection point between calling and folding. Bet that much. Again, it might be a disagreement as to where that point is.

[MyMindIsGoing]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes you are wrong. You want them to fold so they don't suck out on you.

[/ QUOTE ]

wow

[craigruby]

I have been thinking about this situation a lot as I feel I tend to overbet big hands at times to prevent being sucked out on. This is more of the case when I flop a set and there are two to the flush out there. With two cards to come the last thing I want is that third suit to beat me, so I tend to make a bigger bet than I should, and I usually take down the pot then. A minute later I am asking myself why I did not make a smaller bet to build the pot more. I guess the answer is to make the bet large enough that the opponent is getting worse odds and if he calls and hits you still forced the mistake. Is this the case?

[zaxx19]

Ok lets just establish right now 1 pair isnt a huge hand usually.

[KowCiller]

[ QUOTE ]
So find the inflection point between calling and folding. Bet that much. Again, it might be a disagreement as to where that point is

[/ QUOTE ]

Being somewhat new to NL, I would like to hear some debates about why this inflection point always seems to be a pot sized bet (or I'm guessing that's where most people here think it is, since that's nearly always the suggested bet amount).

Although I do not have any data to back this up, it seems intuition would say the more people in the hand, the inflection point becomes a greater percentage of the pot. With 3 players in the hand, the first to act bets 100% of the pot. Each caller is getting progressively better odds on their money. The next to call is given 2:1 on their money, the next caller then gets 3:1. It's pretty easy to see how the bigger the bet, the more each caller is "charged". This is nothing new.

However in a heads up situation, most of your typical 4 to 9 out draws are still getting improper odds with a much smaller bet than 100%. Even 50%, a much more attractive amount to call, isn't giving proper odds for the said draws. Additionally, with a smaller bet, less is lost when you're already against a made hand that leaves you drawing thin.

So it begs the question, if a 50% bet doesn't "charge draws enough" giving them 3:1 odds on a 4:1 shot, then why does 2.5:1 or 2:1 "charge" enough?

Similar situation happened in a reply I made in this thread.

KoW

[blingice]

Here's a compromise. When you bet big, you can have people call and miss, and that will make up for what you lose when you bet small and they hit. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[SeattleJake]

Yes. Wow.

You give them incorrect pot odds, so that you have a +ev situation when they do call. The crime is not raising enough to give them incorrect odds, then when they "suck out on you" it's your fault. The original point was, you don't have to bet everything to give them such bad pot odds that they'll fold, just enough that they might still call with incorrect odds.

[Wayfare]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So find the inflection point between calling and folding. Bet that much. Again, it might be a disagreement as to where that point is

[/ QUOTE ]

Being somewhat new to NL, I would like to hear some debates about why this inflection point always seems to be a pot sized bet (or I'm guessing that's where most people here think it is, since that's nearly always the suggested bet amount).

Although I do not have any data to back this up, it seems intuition would say the more people in the hand, the inflection point becomes a greater percentage of the pot. With 3 players in the hand, the first to act bets 100% of the pot. Each caller is getting progressively better odds on their money. The next to call is given 2:1 on their money, the next caller then gets 3:1. It's pretty easy to see how the bigger the bet, the more each caller is "charged". This is nothing new.

However in a heads up situation, most of your typical 4 to 9 out draws are still getting improper odds with a much smaller bet than 100%. Even 50%, a much more attractive amount to call, isn't giving proper odds for the said draws. Additionally, with a smaller bet, less is lost when you're already against a made hand that leaves you drawing thin.

So it begs the question, if a 50% bet doesn't "charge draws enough" giving them 3:1 odds on a 4:1 shot, then why does 2.5:1 or 2:1 "charge" enough?

Similar situation happened in a reply I made in this thread.

KoW

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a couple points:

1: It's a tradeoff between protecting your made hands and worrying about committing yourself to defending a hand that may not be best (against a better made hand). If you bet the pot with TPTK (let's say 1) and get three callers in between before getting raised the pot (6) and it is now 6 to back to you, you are probably going to be approaching the point where you are making too big of a decision with too little of a hand. If you call, you give the people in the middle better odds to draw you, but if you raise, you give the oppertunity for a set to stack you off. This is why in multiway pots, check raising allows you to make stronger moves for far less money, as well as denying the advantages of position to the middle players.

2: In a heads up situation, when you bet the pot you are giving 2:1 odds to someone to draw to a straight (eight outs out of forty-seven), a 17% chance to improve. While it is tempting to think that a straight draw is 33% to improve, you can charge for two streets 2:1 or more at 17% each to improve. That being said, you obviously don't have your opponent's cards turned over, so the possibility of running into a made hand almost always exists. Additionally, this danger must be balanced with the depth of money (implied odds), and the chance you will be bluffed off your hand a certain % of the time by an observant opponent that wants to represent bigger than he has.

There is also the much more likely possbility that your opponent is not drawing to eight outs, but is instead "drawing" to only his sidecard. These factors should be taken into account when betting. Players that are determined to call down TP despite kicker are dangerous when they hit their sidecard, but usually players at low stakes are not so unpredictable to game-theory you out of many pots.

I am going to include a big discussion of this in an upcoming work. I think this is an extremely important concept to master in order to play optimal NL.