I know this primarily depends on the elasticity & tightness of callers to bet-sizes but I'm interested in people's opinions.

As an example, I played in several 10NL 6-max games where stacks were similar in size for the 1st hour (100-150 BB where everyone tops-up), and the largest stack was ~250 BB after an hour.

What would you typically bet on the turn or river with the nuts (top-set, ace-high flush) OR near-nuts (bottom-set, king-high flush)?
- 2/3 to 3/4 Pot
- Pot
- 2 x Pot
- Shove

With the nuts or near nuts, I noticed some people always shoved, whereas I bet only 2/3 pot to induce calls from worse hands and my fear of everyone folding to a shove.

But the shovers 'seemed' to get almost as many calls as my measly 2/3 pot bets! (I expected a huge number of folds from shoves, but some callers are much more inelastic than I ever expected - I can't explain it, other than the allure of doubling-up affecting their emotional state).

After many hours the nut shovers not surprisingly had by far the largest stacks. But this could just be a random aberration as callers could be more elastic in general than my few observations indicate.

Still, I'm curious of people's preferred bet sizes under these conditions, as I don't see much discussion on this issue (if I had to guess, I would say 'Pot' is the most common answer).

That's entirely correct. My answer would be "as much as I think the opponent will call"

It takes fewer callers to make it big in value when you shove, then callers to your 2/3 pot bet size. It takes only one or two callers to make your money. Even if they fear you have the nuts, if they feel you might not have it, they will find a reason that to you try to bluff him out of the pot, and will call lighter 'just to find out'.

That is why, I noticed, shoving the turn with the nuts, when less than a half-size bet would be remaining on the River if called, is more likely to get calls with one card left to draw. It is easier for V to put you on you trying to get him to fold, with a card to an out. I was told to try it out, and I was amazingly surprised.

It depends what the ranges look like (i.e. how much of a range advantage you have, since you also want to be able to make big bluffs occasionally), but I usually overbet about 3.50 times pot (depends on stack depth). If you polarize correctly, bigger is better, and you should generally be setting yourself up to jam the river with big hands. Noone minbets their way to nosebleeds.

Example hand (not played by me).

Flop checks through. SinKarma overbets turn and jams 2.4x pot on the river. It gets max value from the few hands that call, and also allows him to bluff with the nut flush blocker. He likely would have taken the same line if he'd whiffed the river, because the shove generates a huge amount of fold equity.


Betting smaller in this instance would have induced a jam that he calls, but being the player that goes all in first is advantageous, as you can't get bluffed by a re-raise.

Replay: http://replayer.runitup.com/hands/b636990cdf

While I know that HOC is now considered worthless, but he does go through the math of why shoving is the optimal solution in isolation. Let's just say the stacks on the river are 3 times the pot. In order for a 2/3 PSB to be better, the villain has to be calling more than 4.5 times often. If the villain will call a shove 20% of the time, he has to call almost his entire range 100% of the time with a 2/3 PSB. And if you have a villain folding 80% of the time, it would be profitable to shove your entire range.

OP here.

Wow, you guys are great - amazing answers. Thanks.
I will have another "naive question" in a few days (another good one).

Arty, you reply to all my questions - greatly appreciated.