By
lefty2432 |
Published
Jul 30 2007, 07:47 AM
Every poker player dreams about raking in a huge pot. They want to drag in a monstrous pile of chips towards them and have a big stack in front of them. In no limit, there are plenty of big pots to be won seeing that a player's entire stack can be bet at any time, but there are times when a player should look to keep the size of the pot relatively small.
Controlling pot size in a strategy that is rarely talked about in most poker strategy books ans is a key element in being a consistent winner in a no limit cash game.
There are certain hands in hold 'em that are considered very strong hands but are hands taht you may want to keep the pot small with if you don't hit the flop hard. I've seen too many players play a hand like pocket aces hard all the way to the river, failing to realize that if they don't improve they only have one pair.
Let's take a look at a hypothetical example of how controlling pot size can work in your favor. We will say that we are playing a $500 max buy in no limit game where the blinds are 2-5.
You are in the cutoff and hold A
K
and have worked our stack up to $800. There are two middle position limpers who you have very little information about and both have you covered. You decide to make a raise to $30 and the limpers are the only callers, making the pot $97.
The flop is A
3
9
.
This seems like you hit a huge flop for your hand as you have top pair top kicker and a backdoor club draw. Both blinds check and you lead out for a little less than pot sized bet of $80 and one of the limpers call making the pot $257. Here is where controlling the pot size comes into play.
The turn card is the 7
, which appears to be a complete brick.
You have $790 left in your stack. The limper checks to you again and at this point you can start to narrow down his range of hands. He could have a weaker ace which is very likely since he limped and then called a raise or he could have limped with a pocket pair, flopped a set and is now trying to trap you.
If you decided to bet the turn, it would have to be a bet that would define your hand, which would be a bet of at least half the pot, and a good sized turn bet would be about $150, which may make a weaker ace fold and if we are raised there is the likelihood of being up against a set or two pair. After the bet of $150, the pot has now climbed to $407 and we have $640 in our stack. If raised the bare minimum the pot will be laying approximately 4.5/1 into a pot that is now $707 to make sure that AK is good. You are also likely to face a river bet of around $300 if not more. You are making the assumption that if our opponent was going to check raise the turn, he is going to bet the river.
If you were just to call the min raise on the turn, you would be leaving $490 in you stack for the river and the pot has now grown to $857. This means that we are problably going to be faced with a decision for almost your entire stack on the river hoping that just one pair is good.
Instead of betting the turn which appeared to be a brick, checking the turn in order to control pot size might be a wiser option. Keeping the pot samll since you only have one pair will allow us to keep hands in the pot that you still have beat. If we check the trun, there will only be $257 going to the river and if you were already beat on the turn, we will lose the minimum when we just call the river bet and if we were ahead, we may have eanred some extra money by keeping a weaker hand in there on the turn.
Sometimes players get caught up in protecting their hand, but they forget to protect their stacks of chips in front of them.