One area where my NL game is lacking is the overbet. I practically never use pot and pot+ sized bets, and I think I'm missing value in some situations. I have some ideas where I might be able to use them, but I want input from the peanut gallery.

I play with a pretty typical mix of home/low stakes casino players: mostly loose-passive to loose-monkey-aggressive, an occasional nit, and a few good thinking players. Keeping that in mind, here are a few questions:

1. What types of players do you use them against?
2. What situations are they most effective?
3. How (if at all) do you balance pot+ bluffs and value bets?
4. When someone overbets into you, how do you react? How will an overbet affect your view of a new/unknown player?

I know that players skills at this level can vary, but mostly I think large pot and pot + bets mostly signify true strength , or perceived strong hands by the player. I think that big bet bluffs are uncommon. So unless I am very strong myself I give the guy/gal credit for a hand and fold. Also If I want 1 or 2 players to stay I seldom make a big bet like that because they will likely not stay unless they have a monster. I just think that stone bluffs are both not common or well done by most players at our levels, and "big bets" mean what they say a huge % of the time.

Now at higher stakes with better/stronger players, this view loses some value, I understand!

I have a general distaste for betting pot sized or larger, it typically means I'll be winning the minimum and losing the maximum. Every hand I can beat will fold and every hand that has me crushed will call. Now with that said, there are certain types of opponents where over betting can be very profitable - especially if they are inclined to call off with a medium strength hand.

When I'm facing frequent over bets from an opponent, I get very excited because I know they are afraid of me and want to "protect" their hand or they think I'm terrible and will stack off with mediocre holdings. Either way - it's just a matter of being patient and inevitably I can get lots of chippies from someone who doesn't know how to bet for value.

My most common use for an over-sized bet is when the pot is small, often preflop or on the flop but sometimes on the river too. I find players will often call a $20 bet into a $12 pot just about as easily as a $10 bet. (and oddly enough will fold to a $20 river bet when then would have called $10) So the early streets over bets are for value and the river bet is bluffing.

I also like to overbet with nutish hands or monster drawing hands depending on position and the villains involved. One of my primary plays with a 10+ out draw in position is to over bet, getting lots of money in the pot when my equity is high and often earning the option of taking a free card on the turn if desired.

I am reluctant to make generalizations about the other player's intentions when overbetting. Reads are essential, could be bluffing, could be medium strength could be near nuts.

People generally bet too small. (best reason why pot limit games play bigger than most NL games) Look for your spots and bet bigger, it should boost your win rate.

DrStrange

My preflop raises in NLHE are generally larger than pot-sized, though it varies with the crowd and stack depths.

After the flop, my open-bets will generally be between half the pot and the full pot size. If I overbet after the flop, it's usually a raise rather than an open-bet, e.g., opponent bets $15 into a $20 pot, and I raise to $80 total rather than the $65 pot bet or less. I am especially likely to do this if I sense that I'm facing a semi-bluff and want to lay lousy odds for my opponent.

Stack sizes factor into it as well. In a game that's not particularly deep, I'll shove for more than the pot size if the alternative options would make for bets that are too small. I'll seldom overbet in that spot for more than 1.5 times the pot size, give or take.

Also, against opponents who are oblivious to pot/bet ratios, all bets are off. Even if there's only $50 in the pot, I might make a bet in the hundreds if I have the nuts and I know my proportional-reasoning-challenged opponent has a very strong hand with which he will pay me off.

You'll almost never catch me making an overbet bluff outside of a tournament, though. It's seldom if ever worth risking the additional chips to try to buy the pot. You may even make your opponent more suspicious and likely to call by overbetting.

Good stuff so far, and obviously there is some disagreement on the utility of these bets.

I've tried this a few times, but my experience so far has been that overbetting preflop usually just gets folds. It might be image - in casino games I often play a lot tighter than the rest of the table. But in the same type of game, I will get multiple callers if I bet 3/4 pot. I always have a hard time finding that magic amount that will get 1-2 callers rather than zero or everyone.

Not a bad idea to try, especially in no-foldem games.

I think you're right. But absent a read, my experience with overbets agrees with Bene Gesserit - they are almost always value bets. Sometimes the bettor has a pretty wide value range, though.

That's what I'm trying to do, look for spots where I can make bigger value bets without generating more folds.

I've been working on bigger preflop 2bets and 3bets, especially when stacks are deeper. It's still very uncommon for me to bet more than pot even here, though.

This is probably 95% of my overbetting at this point. If my stack size doesn't allow at least a 1/2 pot bet on the next street, I'm generally just shoving even if it's larger than the pot.

More to think about, thanks.

For me it's totally villain/situation dependent.

Obviously, against some rec player or gambooler who don't think about pot sizes, I'd bet as much as I think they'd call for value. When I have history with certain players, I'll overbet for value or for bluff. But I don't think I've ever done it against someone who's an ABC player I have no history with.

If you're looking for the theoretical side of things you could do much worse than reading this:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...tting-1421114/

Very interesting and enlightening read, thanks.

Because of the types of games I play in, an exploitative strategy is almost always more profitable than GTO. So regarding overbets, I'm mostly thinking about exploitative situations where they can be used profitably.

First, we play pot limit, partially to protect the recreational players we want to keep in our game. Pot limit changes the game in many ways, but overbetting is one key change. Before, we had some players who loved to overbet huge when there were a lot of limpers. After we went to pot limit, most of those players dropped out of the game. It was a good tradeoff in a more social game, but makes the game less challenging as well.

In our game, pot sized bets (PSBs) tend to be from players who think they have the best hand at the moment, and want to protect it or even better take the pot right there. Some players do it preflop with small to medium pairs OOP when there are a lot of limpers, so the bet can be relatively large. More use PSBs on the flop or turn when they hit a big hand.

I fall into the latter category. In a multiway pot, if for example I make the nut straight on the flop, and there are several other players in the hand, I'll bet pot and hope I get called by a flush draw or a set. I will also hope they don't improve.

I rarely but occasionally use it as a bluff against players who can fold a made hand when a better hand is possible on the turn or river. I want to make it look like I was drawing and hit it.

These two situations balance each other well, but the approaches are against different types of players. Only the better players will notice this, but they are the ones I am most worried about, so I have to balance between player types, as well.

That is, with the nuts I will sometimes pot against someone who will likely fold (unless he thinks it is a bluff), and bluff the calling station (but I will usually have a good draw as a back up, and if I miss, hey, they'll keep calling in the future).

The most common overbet I see in small stakes games, which many home games are, is after a PFR, an opponent betting 2-3x pot on the flop with a top pair type hand trying to fold out all the draws (most common on a flop with 2 of a suit). Much smaller chance, but also possible, it is the draw that is trying to buy the pot. I'd say it is probably 75-80% top pair going for folds and 10-15% the draw trying to buy the pot (remainder bring any other wacky situation).

This will be very player dependent, but these players will often fold to any aggression after a scare card hits (either the obvious draw coming in, board pairing one of the bottom two flop cards, overcard to the top card on the flop) so I like to float and fire when any scare card hits.

You might be thinking "why would the board pairing a low card be a scare card?" Against a competent player it wouldn't be, but against the kinda guys I'm talking about it absolutely is. You have no idea how many bluffs I've run successfully with my opponent muttering "****ing donkey hits his 4 EVERY time" as he folds.

As for overbetting myself, I like to do it in situations where a typical (bad) player would slowplay. There was one guy in the home game I play who called massive overbet all-ins when I hit quads 4 times in a row (not in one night, of course). And he ALWAYS says "Why would you move all-in there??" and I respond "Because you ALWAYS call me!!" Same conversation every time. It's hilarious.