I am having some difficulty figuring out some of the finer points of bet-sizing because it seems like I hear two schools of thought that conflict with each other.

On one hand, I frequently hear (typically the announcers on televised poker shows/events) "that bet will only get called by the hands that beat you and get the hands you are ahead of to fold". I understand this concept at an extreme level, i.e. you have KK and the flop comes T62 and for some reason you bet 10x pot, you are probably only getting called with AA, TT, 66, 22. So this suggests we need to bet a more reasonable amount to keep the weaker hands in the pot with us.

But on the other hand, that seems to contradict the strategy of betting enough to protecting your hand against your opponents and charge them if they are drawing. In the above example, if you only bet a small amount, you might let someone with 67 continue in the hand and possibly catch up to you.

I know there must be a middle ground to all of this, but I am really struggling with what or where that is. As a result I typically end up having the same bet as a % of the pot almost every time.

I guess my questions are:
1. Am I misinterpreting these betting strategies somehow?
2. What is the process for determining the correct amount to bet?

Thanks for any help/suggestions.

ok, well...alot of it is, what range you put your opponent on. also, if you think that your opponent may possibly be drawing, than bet an amount that would cost him a -EV price to hit. usually 2/3 of the pot is a good sized bet for him to pay a big amount for his draw, as he is getting incorrect pot odds. Also, if you feel you have the best hand at the moment, and you may have him pinned on a decent hand that will call, such as your KK against his TT-QQ hand on a 942R board..than i'd bet the pot, or an amount your fairly sure will get called. You never want to give someone correct drawing odds...for example if the pot is 50, and you have KK on a board of J106 with two clubs...you dont want to bet 10 dollars into this pot, because if they do have a QK or a flush draw, they are getting the right odds to crack your big pair.

I guess you are trying to bet an amount that allows your opponent to make a mistake. In your example you allow your opponent to play perfectly - you force him to fold if he is behind and call if he is beating you.

Suppose you reach the turn with $100 in the pot. You both have $1000 stacks. You take a look at the villains cards while he's distracted by a low flying pig and see he has a flush draw which he will need to hit on the river to beat you. Let's say 20% of the time he will hit and win.

Shove in the $1000 and he'll fold. He played correctly.
Bet $10 and he will call. He played correctly.
Bet $25 and it is neutral whether he calls or folds. He plays correctly either way.
Bet $35 and he might call just because he feels lucky. But he is investing 26% of the pot in return for 20% equity. He plays incorrectly.

In the last case you have allowed him to make a mistake. Sure you didn't protect your hand - he could hit - but that wasn't the point. The point was to optimise your profit.

So your bet size here is chosen to get your opponent to make the biggest mistake he is capable of making.

u want to bet the amount we will think worse hands call... if we could shove AA/KK everytime preflop 100bb deep and get calls from all sorts of hands then it would be the std but it doesnt work that way

It all depends on who you're playing and their tendencies. In general I like to keep all bets half the pot. You don't want to give villian a read on the strength of your hand. On a wet board, I typically bet 2/3 pot. Against unobservant fish who call too much go ahead and overbet the pot with your big hands. I've seen nits fold the flop to a min bet, go ahead and min raise them. You want to risk the lowest amount to get the job done.
That's how I bet anyway.

Thanks Fadrus and Corona. Your explanations helped a lot and they do make sense. I just need to get better at figuring all of this stuff quicker when the action is on me. Practice makes perfect.

BTW, do you happen to know of any cardrooms that have low flying pigs? It sounds like that is the easiest way to figure out bet sizing.

Dan Harrington has an excellent discussion of bet sizing. It's different in each street. If you don't own the books, try to find them in your library.

Here's something he didn't say: There's a technical name for a bet which is 20% of the pot or less -- a stupid move.

I never bet less than 35% and never more than 100%. I'm usually better around the same amount 40-60% regardless of my hand. If I ever do bet more than 100%, I am either shoving or making a play to confuse my opponent whether to call or fold... usually I will only do that on the river, but hardly ever. I can't every understand why people build a pot up so much preflop and then bet so little on the flop. If they wanted pot control they should have thought about that before the flop. My 2 cents.

Nothing is stupid by itself, only the intention behind it. Tiny bets (especially the 1bb bet into a 10bb pot on the flop that you see beginners make when they have a weak hand or draw) invite your opponent to raise to a proper amount. A tiny bet on the river might induce your opponent to shove over the top of that. If you had a weak hand and wanted him to fold, it's stupid. If you have the nuts it's brilliant.

There is room for varying bet sizes though, of course (as you say) it doesn't depend on your hand. It'd be stupid if a player bets 100% pot if he hits and 50% if he bluffs, within two dozen hands everyone knows what he is doing and he'd lose a lot. It can vary based on the flop texture. On a dry flop (with one or two high cards and no draws) a 50% bet is appropriate, on a flop with draws an 80% bet is more appropriate for chasing away all draws.

It would be truly brilliant if a player who does this with the nuts on the river also sometimes does it with the bluffs on the river against players who he has burned with that move before.

If you only bet small to induce a bluff when you have the nuts, some people will quickly pick up on it. In fact, the very first time I see a player (who is not a total fish) do it, especially on the river, I make a note about it immediately. Because some guys only bet small with stone cold nuts to induce, but otherwise always make conventional sized bets for value (with non-nuts hands) and as a bluff.

So it's not necessarily stupid to sometimes bet something like 25% of the pot on the river as a bluff if you often do it with the nuts to induce a bluff shove. As a bonus, this bluff has to work only a very tiny percentage of the time to be profitable.

no problem OP

this is a problem i have too, i've never been sure how good my bets are/what the weaknesses of my bets are. there appears to be alot of good info in here so thanks for ur insight guys

I just ordered them last night!

Does the bet sizing change if you are facing multiple opponents vs one opponent? Does it change if you are in or out of position?

interestin point here, i'm interested in flop betting/turn betting with more than 1 limper, and how raise sizes shud be altered.

Other important considerations is to plan ahead with your bets. If the pot is $100 and you have $110-$130 left as effective stack, betting $60 or so, if called creates a pot of ~$220 with you only having an effective stack of $40, which becomes the max you can bet and you will be laying your opponent tremendous odds to call on a later street. So in that situation an all-in bet may be your best play even though it's an overbet.

My other, sort of simple answer, is to decide if you are bluffing or valuebetting and bet whatever amount you think will get your opponent to fold a better hand or call with a worse hand. Some fishy regs in my local (live) game freak out if you bet over $100, to them it's some sort of magical amount that means the nuts and only the nuts, others fold to super small bets which they think are crying for a call, so I adjust accordingly. I know it seems overly simple but many beginning players struggle because they do not plan ahead and bet without knowing what their goal is for the bet.

A few other things on betsizing.

There was an excellent post somewhere on these forums about profiting by playing exploitably against weak players. Many people apply the theory that altering your betsize based on your hand strength is an exploitable play. Obviously this is true against decent opponents if they realise for eg. that you're betting 1/2 pot with bluffs and 3/4 pot for value.

It's important to note that against weak unobservant opponents you can make piles of money by playing exploitably. Simply put if they are so bad and unobservant they don't pick up on your bet sizing tells, then giving off these tells is actually the most profitable way to play against them.

A simple example.
You open from the BTN to 3xbb with JT
The BB flats

Flop comes A72
BB checks...........

Through past play and player notes you know that BB is a super-fish and makes loose calls from the blinds and plays fit-fold poker postflop. ie. When he hits he'll likely check-raise or call, he'll call down any decent draw and when he misses he folds to pretty much any Cbet. He never really floats and you've never seen him bluff.

What should you do next?
This pot is dry and there's no big draws.
I'd Cbet bet 1/2 pot against this player.

If I'm called or raised I can shutdown and I've samed some $
When he folds, which will be the vast majority of the time I take down the pot and had to risk very little to do it.

The better players at the table may notice exactly what you're doing but as long as this pot is HeadsUp and they're nopt involved it doesn't matter. As long as you're confident that the fish wont pickup on your exploitable play keep doing it.

Small adjustments like this to villain-dependant scenarios can have a huge impact on your winrate over a large enough sample size.

RedGladiator, I was just reading through the thread, and noticed what I had said! A minraise was correct given the context you put it in. I didn’t mean anything else, and I apologize for what came out wrong.

1/2 POT OTF
3/4 POT OTT
Shove OTR

No need to apologize

That’s the kind of thing I was thinking of when I said it’s stupid. In poker, you want to keep yourself open to unusual moves, though.
Good point. I’ve seen professionals make teaser bets of about 10% on the river, and I’ve even seen pros muck when facing suck bets like that.
For the most part the teaser bet I’d make is about 20 - 25% of the pot. That gives your opponent 5:1 odds or better, and it’s tough to lay down a middling two pair with those odds.