Kinds of Bets
There are a few little tips I would like to touch on when talking about betting and raising. There are a few different terms that you should know not only what they mean but how to work them to your advantage. Granted betting and raising can be dull at best try to bear with it because it’s designed to help you learn how to bet.
The first one is called value betting. Value betting is a bet you make when you want your opponents to call you. However, this bet shouldn’t automatically be small or you will be causing an error by under betting your hand. That means if your opponents are chasing draws that you just gave them the advantage to do it at the right price. There are several things you should take into account when value betting to safeguard your stack. If you can figure out your opponents tendencies do so because than you can act accordingly. However, it is rather difficult to figure out your opponents especially if they keep switching up how they do stuff, so rather than try to figure them out, figure out what draws they could possibly be chasing. By doing this you can bet so that the pot odds are worse than his chance to hit his draw.
When a person bluffs he’s making a bet that he doesn’t want to get called. With that being said the bet should automatically not be large because you will be risking too much money for too little return. This is especially true if you have a very little chance of making a hand. (Semi-bluffing is similar to bluffing except you do have some outs but the probability isn’t as high.) There is some basic math that you can use to figure out how much you should bet. Let’s say your opponent will fold to a bet of half the pot only half of the time. Let’s also say that he will fold to a pot sized bet 55% of the time and if the bet is 150% of the pot he’ll fold 60% of the time. With that said in the first instance you are risking 50% of the pot which means your pot odds are 1 : 2 for a 50% of him folding to you. So that means that’s a pot odd of 33% (because you added 1/3 of the new pot amount) versus 50% fold rate, which gives you a 17% return rate on this bluff.
Now with the next situation you have is that you are putting in pot odds of 1 : 1 for a 55% chance that he folds. So that means the pot odds are 50% (you put in half of the new pot amount) versus a 55% fold rate. You can see your return rate is only 5% on this bluff. Meaning you’re risking 100% more money to gain 5% back on this.
Finally the last scenario you put it 150% of the pot and your odds are 1.5 : 1. So you now have a 60% pot odds versus a 60% fold rate meaning you only break even with this play.
So you can see that besides bluffing being risky it’s hardly profitable. Which is why when you want to bluff you should make sure it’s a semi bluff. A semi bluff is made when you mostly are looking not to be called. This means that even if you are called you have several outs to make a hand still. Using these techniques will help you not only become better but also allow you to read your opponents better and figure out what kind of style they are using for betting.