Poker Bet Sizing
So you're in the middle of a hand in Poker (or even at the start of one) and you want to make a bet or raise. It's straightforward enough to decide you want to make a bet, but how much is going to be appropriate?
Bet sizing in Poker is a fine art that is perfected over time.
You always want to be betting enough to get value from your hands, but at the same time you do not want to bet so much that you are never going to get called by hands worse than yours. Hitting the "sweet spot" in terms of betting is always the goal, but it really isn't as hard as you might think.
How should you size your bets?
Whenever you decide you want to make a bet, the first thing you need to do is take a look at the size of the pot. This is going to be your guide to sizing your bets appropriately. The reason for this is that one of the main goals of bet sizing is giving your opponent bad odds to call, and this is done by making appropriate bets in relation to the size of the pot.
As a general rule of thumb, I always aim to make my bets 75% to 100% of the size of the pot. Therefore if I have top pair on the flop and the pot is $10, I am going to make a bet of between $7.50 and $10.
As you can imagine, making a bet of $1 into a $10 pot is useless. Every player and their dog has the odds to call your bet here and play on with the hand, almost regardless of how bad their hand is. Think of yourself as the guy setting the odds at one of the online betting shops, if your opponent is taking your bets and calling, you want it to be unprofitable for them over the long run.
Raising before the flop.
If you have a strong hand before the flop, it is always a good idea to raise. However, what's typically a good amount to bet to scare weaker players out of the pot without risking too much of our own money?
As a general rule, you want to make a 4BB raise +1BB for every limper before you. Therefore if the action is on you in a $1/$2 game and there have been no limpers, a $8 raise is going to work perfectly. If there have been 2 limpers, $12 raise would be the order of the day.
If you have a very strong hand like AA or KK and you want to re-raise a player that has already raised, I like to make my re-raises at least 3 times the size of my opponent's initial raise. For example, if my opponent makes it $8 in a $1/$2 game, I am going to re-raise to at least $24.
These are general rules that have finer details, but this is the bulk of the essential information for when it comes to betting before the flop. If you stick to these guidelines, you should be able to command more respect and get those weaker hands to fold before the flop.
Betting after the flop
After the flop, you want to stick with the 75% to 100% rule as already mentioned when making a bet. The sizes of these bets will tend to give your opponents bad odds to call if they are on a draw, which makes their decision on whether to play on or fold a tricky one.
When it comes to re-raising, the old 3 times the size of the initial raise works best for giving your opponents poor odds to call along with a nice and hard decision to make.
Min-raising to 2 times the size of an opponent's raise is inviting them to call, so make a stand and throw a decent raise out there, otherwise you are simply wasting your time with your bet.
Altering the size of your bets
As you can imagine, these are just rough rules for bet sizing. Whilst these guidelines are good for the majority of situations, they of course will not be optimum 100% of the time, as you will inevitably run into numerous different hands with varying factors.
Times when you will want to consider betting more will be when there are more players in the pot, or if there are players after you that are likely to call. This is because you want to ensure that your opponents will definitely be receiving unfavourable odds to chase after draws, even if a number of players decide to call your bet.
In general, you do not want to be betting less than the guidelines given above. If you do bet less, there is a good chance that you will see far more players calling and outdrawing you when you have the best hands simply because they have good odds to call and play on, even if they're behind at the time. Make sure you learn to make strong bets to avoid allowing your opponents the opportunity to take the hand from you for cheap.
