Bet sizing is especially important in live poker because you’ll have an excellent opportunity to exploit players who aren’t
very good. If you might have gotten a half pot sized bet out of
a good player on the internet, there’s a legitimate chance that
you could squeeze a three quarters pot sized bet out of a bad
player in live poker.
Bet on the greatest sports events around the world, with more than 90 sports available. Live the action in football, basketball, tennis, formula 1 and darts, with a huge selection of markets. Online Betting and Gambling at BET SENSATION. You can enjoy online sportsbook, slots, bingo, poker and casino games. Register today & get a welcome bonus.
Picking your spots is the name of the game
when it comes to bet sizing. You need to know why you are
betting and who you are betting against. If you know both of
these things, you’ll have a much easier time making the most
money from your big hands and losing the least with your weaker
hands.
Live dealer poker has been gaining momentum for quite a while now. You can choose between Casino Hold'em, 3 Card Poker, Caribbean Stud, Ultimate Texas Hold'em and Russian Poker to name a few. Discover different game types and find casinos that offer them on this page. Bet on Poker is a game that runs on a fixed schedule. Each round of play takes about a minute to work through, including another minute between hands for players.
Bet sizing isn’t applicable only to pre-flop or flop play;
it’s used throughout the entirety of a hand. While it’s
certainly true that bet sizing will be relevant for the duration
of a hand, how you size your bets will often times change from
street to street. You might open raise pre-flop to 5x the blind,
but you aren’t going to be using this same metric when you bet
the turn or river. Adjusting based on the dynamics of any given
hand is absolutely crucial. You might bet a set for a certain
amount on one board and another amount on another board. As
mentioned previously, knowing why you are betting and who you
are betting against is the most important thing to understand.
Why You Are Betting
The reason why you are betting should be obvious, but you
might be surprised how often you can catch yourself betting
without much rhyme or reason. It’s very easy to fire out blind
bets without thinking too hard about it. There’s a certain
degree of natural instinct that tends to take over, but you need
to be sure that you are carefully considering each move before
you actually make it. Even the best of players have fired out
bets, set the money in the middle, and then realized that they
made a big mistake. Your intent is directly related to how you
should size your bets.
Now, let’s change this hand and pretend that an overcard came
on the flop. You still have a decent pair, but now there’s an
increased chance that you are behind. Given this, a bet like 60
into the 100 would be more logical. If you get called you’ll
know that you could definitely be behind, if you get raised you’ll have saved a little, and it’s still enough to procure
folds. You adjusted downwards because you have a good hand, but
it isn’t as good as an overpair.
These two examples were incredibly simplistic while also
illustrative of why bet sizing is so important in live poker.
With online poker sites, a good opponent would be able to pick apart this
bet sizing and use it as a tell. In live poker, most players
just aren’t thinking that hard.
Big hands and hands that are defending against draws is where
most players find themselves in trouble. With a big hand, you
should be betting out very hard. If you have drawn up a slow
play, this is one thing, but you shouldn’t be finding some
ground in the middle. Either slow play or bet hard, but you
can’t try to do both at one time. Raise your bets in correlation
with the strength of your hands. While this is a telegraph of
hand strength, most live players won’t pick up on it.
The worst thing you can do with a big hand is to make bets that get calls
but achieve nowhere near the maximum in terms of profitability.
In the long run, there’s a big difference between betting “6”
and getting calls vs. betting “8” with the same results. Value
betting is an easy way to make a lot of money from live poker
players.
Hands that are defending against draws should be played in a very similar way.
Whatever you do, don’t start to play passively. Not only is this playing into
your opponent’s favor, but you are going to make it harder on
yourself later on. You can bet way too much and still get calls
from live players because they like to chase draws. Online you’ll find that players know when they aren’t getting the right
price to call, but live players don’t really care.
Often times it will make sense to bet against draws even harder than with
your made hands because you will be able to balance out the
times where you lose with all of the times that you win big pots
uncontested when your opponent misses.
If anything got confusing
in this section, just remember that betting big is going to be
the correct play more often than not as live players tend to be
calling stations.
Who You Are Betting Against
Who you are betting into is going to have just as much to do
with your bet sizing as your hand itself. You would be more
likely to bet hard with a middle pair against a calling station
than you would be against the tightest player at the table. One
of the biggest advantages of live poker is that you’ll be able
to create and utilize some very strong reads on your opponents.
If you aren’t using this to profit, you are probably not paying
as much attention as you should be.
Bet Online Poker Download
Top Tip
Calling stations are the worst
types of players to bluff against. Knowing this, it should be
apparent that these same players are prime targets for big value bets.
Bet On Poker Live
If they aren’t folding to your bluffs, they aren’t likely to fold to your value bets
either. As a result, you should bet both more frequently and
with more size when you are up against a player who isn’t prone
to laying down a hand.
The opposite end of the spectrum is where you’ll find the
players who fold to just about everything except when they have
very big hands. These are the players who you should be scoping
out vs. going straight after. What is meant by this is that you
can toss out some smaller bets to get a feel for where you
stand. If a player seems apprehensive about calling a bet, you
can feel safer about continuing on the next street. If you feel
like your tight opponent is confident in their hand, you’ll
know to make a smaller bet or maybe to not bet at all. Use your
opponents tendencies to decide whether you should be going for
value or simply to see whether you are likely to be ahead or
behind in a hand.
Bet sizing can tell you a lot in live poker. In general, the
level of play in a live format is going to be lesser than what
you would normally find in the equivalent stakes online. Because
of this, you are going to have a much easier time reading into
exactly what a certain size bet might mean. Most of the time you’ll need to use context clues in order to effectively try to
piece together the puzzle that bet sizing is presenting you
with.
You can’t take an over bet, for example, out of context
and say that they usually mean someone is either exceptionally
strong or weak. Instead, you need to see what the action was
before, after, and at that exact moment. When you compile all of
the information readily available to you, it will be that much
easier to assess what bet sizing likely means.
The inherent issue with using bet sizing to determining hand
strength is that it requires just the right set of variables.
You aren’t going to be able to tell a whole lot from most
standard open raises. Likewise, without any sort of history in
regards to betting tendencies of any given player, you’ll have
a tough time deciphering what any individual bet could mean.
Again this all comes back to using several pieces of information
to paint one solidified picture. With all of this said, there
are still plenty of ways in which experienced, thinking players
can look at bet sizing in order to determine where they are
likely to stand in any given hand. This article aims to outline
some of the more common situations and what they most frequently
mean.
Pre-Flop Bet Sizing
Pre-flop is arguably the toughest time to accurately
determine what a specific bet size is likely to mean. The most
obvious sort of bet sizing tell in pre-flop situations is the
over bet. Players who raise 10x the big blind or
re-raise to an astronomical amount are usually in a position
of extreme strength. If not extreme strength, the other typical
pre-flop over betting hands include TT-QQ and sometimes AK.
These are the types of hands that are most definitely strong in
and of themselves, but a lot of players don’t understand how to
play them correctly.
Rather than try to learn proper strategy
for these sorts of hands, many live players will instead bomb
the pot. They figure that a big bet should earn them a win right
then and there. Needless to say, this is very flawed logic, but
you can use their missteps to save you money. Where one player
is sacrificing potential winnings, in this case the over bettor,
there’s usually someone who is saving on losses.
Bet Online Poker App
One of the more curious yet surprisingly common pre-flop bet
sizes is the min raise. A lot of players will make this move
with hands in which they want to build the pot just a little
bit. Another reason players use to justify this raise is that
they want to fend off unwelcome open raises that might put them
in an awkward position. Usually a min raise will be indicative
of either a suited connector type hand or a small pocket pair.
It isn’t impossible for min raises to be monster hands either.
You should be leery of a min raise, but don’t let it scare you
away from making a three bet should you be holding a hand that
calls for more aggression.
Post-Flop Bet Sizing
Bet Online Poker Site
Post-flop is when the action and bet sizing will generally
provide you with a lot more accurate and complete reads. Where
in pre-flop play you had little to work with other than history
with opponents, post-flop play has a framework in place that can
be used to help more effectively pin down hand strength. If
someone has raised or re-raised pre-flop, you are going to learn
a lot from how they react to the flop. Maybe it’s likely that
they bricked, maybe you think they are still strong. Whether you
know or not, the one thing that is for sure is that flop action
will push you in one direction or the other.
Imagine that you are in middle or late position and make a
raise. For the sake of example, just assume that your hand is of
decent strength but not aces or kings. It folds around to a
player in the blinds who makes a moderate sized 3-bet. Now, this
isn’t enough to immediately cause you to muck your hand, but it
does give some pause for concern. Considering your position, you
decide to make the call and see a flop.
Bet On Poker Live Free
Remember, your actual hand strength is largely irrelevant because the main goal is to
find out where your opponent stands. The flop comes with all low
cards. If the other player had a hand like AQ or AK, they missed
completely. If they had a big pocket pair, they are in great
shape. The pot size right now is around $160 and the game is
$2/$5 NLHE.
Best Bet Poker Live Stream
Since you are in position, the 3-bettor is first to
act. After little thought, he leads out for $50. Now, this is a
very small bet. What is it likely to mean? In this case, it
probably means that he missed. Think about what most players
would do in this spot if they actually had a big pocket pair.
Most anyone would fire out a much more sizable bet given the
action, the size of the pot, and the board. If the player is
sucking you in, they are making a mistake, even if it happens to
work this time. Small bets into large pots tend to mean that a
player has become very apprehensive for one reason or another.
Over bets in post-flop play are entirely different stories
than small bets. These types of moves can mean literally
anything. If you had to pick one most likely answer, it would be
that an over bet means absolute strength. This is the very
reason, though, that over bets also work so well as bluffs. You’ll need to have a lot of courage to make these types of bets,
but they do work fairly often. In the end, you are frequently
going to be in positions where all you beat is a total bluff
regardless.
Bet Online Poker Down
Knowing this, you are going to be able to polarize
your opponent’s range to one of two things: way ahead and way
behind. It’s unlikely that you will be facing very many over
bets where you both have middle sets or mid-range flushes, for
example. Use the action throughout the hand to try and determine
what an over bet means. Always be careful, because it could
cost you big time if you are wrong. Though it stings when you
are wrong, it will sure feel good when you manage to pick off an
over bet bluff. The key is to pick off the bluffs just a bit
more often than you pay someone off.