Betting the right amount

The size of your bets in no-limit poker is a critical aspect of your strategy. When you are betting, you should think about the objective in the bet.

Consider the situation, including your hand, the board, your opponent's hand, how the hand has played out so far, your opponent's playing style, the size of the pot, and bet with a specific purpose in mind.

It doesn't matter if you have a big hand or are bluffing, you are trying to accomplish a purpose and extract information about your opponent's hand, your bet should have a purpose.

NOTE: This article is intended to help you primarily in cash games. Tournament betting strategy is very different, as the stacks are usually smaller and your goal in tournaments is to survive, whereas in ring games your mission is to make money in the long run.

Betting preflop

The goal of playing no-limit games is to win big pots. You should always be looking for an opportunity to win a big pot instead of risking chips trying to win small pots, such as stealing the blinds.

In deep-stacked cash games (a large amount of chips relative to the size of the blinds), stealing the blinds only makes a small profit if you are successful. More importantly, stealing too much can get you into trouble if you get caught a few times.

Tournament players are used to stealing blinds in order to chip up (slowly accumulate chips) and stay ahead of the rising blinds. In cash games, the blinds never go up and the amount of chips you have relative to the size of the blinds allows you to play a more conservative preflop game and wait for opportunities to win big pots.

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Making a raise

When raising in no-limit games, keep your bet sizes consistent so as not to give away the strength of your hand through the size of your bet.

Your bet sizes should be based on the number of hands you will be playing and your skill level compared to the other players at the table. Determine a range of hands that you will feel comfortable playing pre-flop.

If you think you are a superior player and play well with a loose player image, you can play a lot of hands and be profitable. Otherwise, a tight-aggressive style of play will be to your advantage, which means playing fewer hands.

If your starting hand range is wide, adjust your preflop raise to something like 2.5BB. If your starting hand range is small, you can increase it to around 4.5BB. The more hands you play, the smaller your raise should be so that you don't lose too much when you find a big hand, which can happen quite often.

Making smaller raises will get you into action against lesser hands, and if you are truly a superior player, you can win more in the long run.

If you are new to no-limit games or prefer a tight player image at the table, consider using a larger preflop raise and playing fewer hands than in a limit game. Start with strong hands and force your opponents to pay big for draws.

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Recap

The reason you should consider keeping your betting size the same with every hand you play is to avoid showing off the strength of your hand. There are a few adjustments you can make to gain more value from your plays:

-In pots where there are limpers, you should increase your raise to give your opponents less chance of calling. In a hand with two limpers, instead of raising 3BB you could raise to 5BB.

-The worse your position after the flop, the more you will want to bet preflop. When you are in early position, you may want to add 1 or 2 big blinds to your bet, thus getting fewer calls from opponents in position against you. Position is crucial in a hand and you don't want your opponents calling cheap with a positional advantage against you.

The key to all of this is that you should only change your bet size based on position, number of players in the hand, and style of opponents. Don't change your raise sizes based on the quality of your cards.

Article translated and adapted from the original: Betting the Right Amount