Here’s a hand that immediately after the hand I thought both players had played completely normally, but that after reflection I think I made several bet sizing mistakes on.
Pre-flop seems perfectly normal: @MansoorH makes makes a small button raise with JJ, the small blind flats, and I squeeze from the big blind with TT. The button then flats the 3 bet, and the small blind also calls.
The flop is JsTd7h, and I make a fairly large continuation bet. I’m obviously near the top of my range, and the board is reasonably coordinated, but do I have either a range equity advantage or a range nut advantage here, especially with two opponents? I think it still makes sense, given the likelihood of equities to shift on the turn, to bet with some fraction of my range on this board, but I think continuation bets this large probably won’t exist in a solve for this multi-way situation, and so my bet should be quite a bit smaller.
The button calls and the small blind folds, and the turn leaves us with a board of JsTd7hJd.
I think 98 was in range for the button, and so I was happy that I was now ahead of that holding, and also hoping that my opponent had a flush draw. But here again I think I bet a little too big, such that my bet size remaining on the river is a significantly smaller fraction of the pot than on the turn. In fact, with the way I’ve played this, I’m essentially making smaller bets on each street, where I think I’d usually want to keep them roughly equal, or to even polarize more by making a larger bet on the turn than on the flop, and then a larger bet on the river than on the turn.
On the river, JsTd7hJd3d, I’m behind to JT (two combos) and JJ (one combo), and nothing else. I don’t think I want to check call, as I think the button will just check back with too much of their range, and given the way the hand got played so far such that most of the chips are now already in the middle, the button is pretty much forced to call with QQ+, trips and 77 (a huge number of combos), so the river jam seems pretty much mandatory to me.
Would things have changed at all if I’d bet smaller on the flop and turn? Probably not; I think I still get stacked. But it is important to consider how your line performs against the full range of hands your opponents have, and your own full range, and I think smaller bets on the flop and turn likely have higher EV overall, though I’m still a bit undecided on the actual sizes that would probably be optimal.