BETTING: You need to know what your bet represents. Every time you lay chips on the table in poker, you should have a good reason to do it. If you are not sure you should be betting, you need to take a moment and consider what your bet represents.
If you could see your opponents cards but not your own, your bet will tell what you need to have to beat them. So, Your bet is made to represent the image of your hand that you want them to think you have…
How strong are your hole cards? To bet before the flop says I have a strong hand, so your bet size should say enough to keep a certain amount of people in the hand and scare off people who are on drawing hands. You want to thin the field down to 1 or, at the most 2 people staying in to see the flop.
If your hand is not good enough to do this, then you should fold. If you can see a cheap or 0 cost flop then do so!
Let’s say after flop you have high pair but there are 2 cards on the flop that are suited, Something like: K♥Q♦ and flop is K♠9♠7♣
If you bet small you are giving people with drawing hands (middle pair, straights, flushes) The pot odds to stay in. If you bet too much, you are risking a lot of chips if you are already beat like Villain has 77 or 99, So your bet needs to be big enough to scare off the chasers, and small enough that if you lose the hand you are not crippled…
SO WHERE DO I BEGIN TO KNOW HOW MUCH I SHOULD BET??? I’m glad you asked, There are a two great outlines
#1 is the most important rule, This is a professional standard. and It’s worth mentioning “THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE!!”
- If you have a strong hand that you wish to bet, you should make your bets between 75% - 100% of the size of the pot.
- For every limper add 1X the big blind on top of your bet. So if blinds are 300 and your bet is 100% of pot of 1000 that means you should bet 1300 or 2 limpers is 1600.
The reason for the “Blind” increase due to limpers, Is because limpers make pots bigger, so if you do not increase by the blind for every limper, then the villain will be getting pot odds enough to stay in and possibly catch his hand. And your goal is to keep the pot odds from being a good choice for him to make…
I will add more to this later, but I know a lot of people need a helpful bump now. Hope this helps someone…
For info on pot odds, The Juicee Pot Odds
Or Hand Odds The Juicee Hand Odds