Most players know about the different types of bets you can make in poker, whether they know what they are called or just what their purpose is. Every time you place a bet you should be doing it with a particular purpose in mind, the timing of the game, your position and chip stack as well as the purpose of your bet all combine to give you a sense of the amount to bet.
Sometimes the purpose is to sweeten a pot you are very confident you are going to win, in this case you probably bet low, intentionally giving your opponents the odds they need to put more money in “your” pot.
There’s the “information” or “feeler” bet where you think your hand might be good so you bet to get some information from your opponent. A smallish bet is often enough to get the information you are looking for.
There’s the continuation bet, where you raised before the flop and bet after the flop regardless of whether or not the flop helped you. This bet is similar in a lot of ways to the information or feeler bet and is a standard play. If you don’t overuse it, the continuation bet can be very effective. Remember that the continuation bet is a standard play. Good players often know it's coming before you have a chance to toss your chips in the pot, so it’s not uncommon for someone to check raise a great hand when they are anticipating a continuation bet, so proceed with caution.
There are numerous other types of bets which all have their place including the trap, hammer and flat out bluff among others. The purpose of this blog however is not to describe all of them so much as one particular bet I like to use and think is underutilized, I call it the “control” or “slow down” bet. Fairly self explanatory but I’ll illustrate it with an example.
You’re in a 6 person tournament with 4 players remaining, blinds are 50/100 and you pick up 10D JD in the big blind. The player under the gun has 1,500 chips and folds. The player on the button (who you have classified as loose and mildly aggressive but not a bad player) min raises to 200, the small blind (who you have classified as tight and has folded to raises when he was a blind) calls and you call as well. All 3 of the players in the hand have roughly the same number of chips, 2,500. You definitely want to see a flop with this hand but don’t want to put in a big raise because the small blind who has been super tight showed strength when he called the first raise, and of course a re-raise can be an invitation for the player who started the action to shove them all in.
The flop reveals 2C 8D 9D giving you an open ended straight flush draw. Remember that “people who chase straights and flushes arrive on planes and go home on buses”. The small blind checks. What you REALLY want in this situation is to see a free or at least a cheap card but you are confident that if you check the player who started the action will put in a big bet and possibly go all in. The way I recommend playing this is to put in a bet of the amount you are comfortable paying to see the next card in an attempt to control the size of the pot and slow down your opponent. Sometimes (though rarely) this bet will take down the pot right then and there which you definitely don’t mind, but that is not the purpose of this bet, all you want to do is slow down your opponent so that you can see the next card at a price you don’t mind paying. This tactic will NOT always succeed in slowing down your opponent but I think it’s a useful tactic worth employing when you really want to see the next card and have reason to believe your opponent might shove if you check.
PS If he goes all in here, I recommend folding and waiting for a hand you are willing and able to take control of from the beginning.
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2 comments:
I have to disagree with immediately folding if the original raiser goes all-in. 1st off, this re-raise probably means an over pair to the board (at worst trips) and he is trying to not give odds for someone to catch their flush/straight. The problem is that you are getting really good odds to call. Say you put in a 300 bet (half the pot) to 'slow' him down and he pushes his remaining 2.3k. Now the pot has 3200 and you have 2k left. Your pot odds are approximately 1.6:1 but your odds of hitting your cards are about 2:1 (9 flush, 8 OESD, which should only be counted as 7 since he could have QQ, AQ or KQ for a total of 16 with 47 cards in the deck) and 1:1 to the river (which you would be getting as one or both of you are all-in). I really don't put the guy on high 2 diamonds as he would be getting good odds to peel another card cheaply and possibly score big if it hits. The other thing to consider is that if he has 77 then you lose 2 outs on your OESD but gain 6 outs if you hit your J or 10 as you now have an overpair to his. The biggest thing to consider before folding is that do you think that his min bet on the button was a steal or a legitimate raise? Even then, if you can put him on a range of hands that are in your favour (namely the ones listed above), a call here could be very profitable as you become chip leader with only a few to go until the money.
Good point. I can't disagree.
I guess what I was thinking is that calling his all in goes against the point of the blog, ie. a bet to slow down your opponent.
Perhaps a slightly different scenario would have illustrated the point better ... (one that left us with less outs) but where we still REALLY wanted to peel another card cheaply. What if the draw was to the flush and a gut shot draw? Would that change anything?
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