Bet sizes on the flop should be situational

In a previous column, I explained that in regard to preflop raise sizes, I vary my play within a certain range (on a random basis) rather than using "one size fits all." My new student and I subsequently had a thorough discussion on post-flop bet sizes.

The most important part of my philosophy on bet sizes is that on the flop, the amount I select to bet does not vary depending on what I hold; it is situational. Affecting it are items like the texture of the board, my position, and the number of opponents. However, the amount I bet in that situation will be the same regardless of whether I have flopped a set, have top pair, have an underpair, have a draw, or am making a cold bluff. I do not understand why what you hold should affect your bet size. You want to conceal the nature of your hand; let me explain.

My student sent me an excerpt from the book of another poker author. This book suggested that you should vary your bet size on the flop between one-third of the pot size and the full pot size. The author suggested betting around one-third of the pot on your very good hands, two-thirds on decent hands, and the full size of the pot when bluffing or semibluffing. I believe this strategy would work well only against opponents suffering from amnesia. How long would it take a decent poker player to detect such a system and take advantage of it?

I bet the same amount of chips whether I have a set, top pair, or something worse. That amount is dependent on my position, opponents, and texture of the board; the strength of my hand is not a factor in the equation. The typical poker game for me is about one-third tough pros, one-third decent players, and one-third players with some marked flaws in their game, especially a lack of discipline. It would not take most of them a long time to figure out my hand type if my bet size were dependent on how good my hand was.

My student usually followed my advice, but sometimes he could not resist betting only about half of the pot when he flopped a biggie. He hoped that he would get raised by someone thinking he was weak. He was doing this with board types that looked innocuous to him, such as J-5-2 or A-Q-3. Then, after he flopped a set, someone picked off a gutshot on him. Naturally, he went for a sleigh ride. When we took a look at the math (his opponent had called $20 with a pot size of $40), it could be seen that drawing at the gutshot was not as bad a play as my student believed. No-limit hold'em is not a game of simply figuring the pot odds. Implied odds - future earnings if you catch a lucky card - play a large role in the game.

Implied odds also come into play in preflop hand selection. Look at a mathematical table of preflop hand rankings based on how often the hand will win. You will see that in a full game, A-10 offsuit and 7-7 are ranked about the same. However, 7-7 is a much better hand, especially in a raised pot. Either hand can of course make the nuts, but you have to look at what you are usually building. You are rarely going to play pocket sevens after the flop unless you flop a set, which is going to happen only one time out of eight. However, middle set is one of the premier hands in no-limit hold'em, one that you may well back with your whole stack. So, you will have either next to nothing or a mountainous hand. This makes your post-flop decisions easier and prevents losing money after the flop comes. An A-10 builds top pair with a decent kicker, a hand that may win a small pot or lose a big one. Your decisions will be tougher when holding a fair to middling hand. Sure, the A-10 hits something far more often, but your session result is measured by the size of your chip stack; number of pots won is a misleading statistic.

An important area that my student had a misconception about was reading opponents' hands. Card Player readers are used to seeing hands presented by world-class stars like Phil Hellmuth, in which a good read was made and a winning action was thereby selected. As a result, the impression is given that the top players do this routinely, and that you readers should be doing the same thing in your own games. I will give you some reasons why this is not the case:

1. There is a huge difference between Internet games and live games in regard to acquiring information about your opponents. On the Internet, no matter what icon a player uses, you cannot determine the sex, age, ethnicity, or anything else about that opponent. Tempo is also unreliable. If the player acts very quickly, maybe he is playing in multiple games or is trying to get free to discipline a child. If he acts slowly, maybe he is playing a big hand at another table or taking time to answer the phone or doorbell.

2. It is much easier to get a read on someone who is under a lot of pressure than someone who has little at stake. The top players write about hands in which tens of thousands of dollars, and more, are at stake on the opponent making the right decision. Do you really think the person playing in a $2-$5 blinds no-limit hold'em cash game is going to feel that kind of tension?

3. You are seldom able to narrow down a player's holding unless the pot has had multiple raises or multiple betting rounds. Furthermore, the more an opponent departs from normal, sane poker, the harder it is to tell what he has. I am a lot better at putting an opponent on a hand in a $25-$50 blinds game than in a $2-$4 blinds game. Some of the hands players show up with for their betting in these cheaper games are absolutely astounding.

The bottom line is that most of the time when I decide whether to bet or how much to bet, I am simply using good technique, rather than running down some checklist in my mind of the different hands my opponent might be holding. I know that a certain type of situation calls for a certain type of bet. It is only on the later betting rounds, or when I get raised, that I have to think about the various hands that my opponent may have.