How to think about bets and raises post flop (nlhe cash)
Join Date: Jul 2024
Posts: 42
I'm curious how people think about bets and raises post-flop and how it changes based on the street/ whether its a SRP/3bet pot etc..
For example, when facing a bet, do we raise relative to the bet size, or how much should we consider the pot size, and does the amount of pot consideration change per street?
Join Date: Aug 2020
Posts: 1,334
There is no one size fits all answer to this. It’s going to depend on board texture, effective stack sizes, your and your opponents position, and likely several other factors. If you are raising an opponents bet on the flop, though, your range should be polarized — you either hit the flop hard or you are bluffing. If you’re raising for value, you should be planning your sizes so that if you get called you either have a comfortable (half to full pot sized) shove on the turn or a reasonable bet size on the turn to set i up p a comfortable river shove.
This is probably more clear with an example: 100bb stacks for BU and BB, fold to BU, BU raises to 3BB, SB folds, you call in BB with 55. Flop comes AK5r. This flop obviously hits BU range well, so we want to go for the check raise. We also are looking to get all the money in at some point. We check and BU bets 4BB, hero raises to X.
Pot after BU raises is now 10.5BB (IÂ’m ignoring take to make things simpler). We arenÂ’t going to be able to set up a turn shove without a massive overbet here. We can set up a reasonable turn bet though. If we raise here then bet pot on the turn we want the pot size to be about equal to our remaining stack. If BU calls our raise to X the new pot size will be 2X+6. Our stack will have 97-X remaining. A pot size turn bet would be another 2X+6 and the pot after a call would be 3x this amount or 6x+18. Our remaining stack is 91-3X. Set these equal to get a pot sized river shove and we get 6x+18 = 91-3x giving 9x=73 so x is about 8 BB.
Checking our work: hero raises to 8, BU calls. Pot is now 22. Turn is dealt, hero bets 22, BU calls. Pot is now 66. Hero and BU have 67bb remaining, so hero can shove river for about pot sized bet. In practice a raise slightly larger would likely be even better, setting up a smaller than pot sized turn bet and river shove. If hero raises to 12 instead then pot is 30 after flop and hero has 86 behind. If hero bets 2/3 pot and is called pot will be 70 with 66 behind.
Obviously this a lot of math to do at the table. For a SRP at 100bb deep, unless your opponent uses some stupid sizes, a raise to about 3x his bet is a good rule of thumb. But thatÂ’s only for SRP at 100bb deep. Different stacks, different PF action, etc will change this.
Join Date: Jul 2024
Posts: 42
Thanks that's really good info. Generally, how I've been going about it was 2.5-3x raises on flop for 100bb eff and then on turn/river considering the pot more to see how can best gii if that's what I want to do, but only playing micros so looking to build more solid fundamentals in this area as I move up. Do you make small adjustments to the 3x raise size based on their bet size (i.e if their flop bet size is between 20%-80%)?