How to Bet in Poker Tournaments: A Guide to Sizing Your Bets

1. Preflop Poker Odds
2. Poker How Much To Raise Preflop In Minecraft
3. When To Raise In Holdem
4. Poker How Much To Raise Preflop Per

Preflop Poker Hands and Position. Position is everything in texas hold'em. It is definitely the most important aspect of the game. The importance of position in hold'em cannot be emphasized enough. You must play very tight poker in early position, but you should loosen way up as you get closer to the button. How Much Should You Re-Raise Preflop in Poker? Alright, lastly let's talk about how much you should raise preflop if you are 3-betting. This is when there is a raise preflop and then you choose to re-raise them. Now, this is another important part of your overall preflop bet sizing strategy.

Not knowing how to size your bets properly is one of the most atrocious mistakes you can ever make in a poker tournament. Make your opponents think that you don't know how to bet in a poker tournament, and they will (figuratively speaking, I hope) eat you alive.

Place a wrong bet and you will suddenly turn yourself into the easiest target at the table. That's because sizing your bets in the correct way is a crucial element of building a solid image at the table.

If you are planning to head to a casino to play your first poker event against total strangers, and you are not sure about how to size your bets either before or after the flop, have a look at this quick guide that we have prepared for you.

How to Bet in Poker Tournaments: Preflop

The 2x Bet. A 2x open preflop or a min-raise is popular among top pros for a variety of reasons, but opening for the minimum can invite problems, too, including

1. it does not put that many chips in the pot for you to win when you flop a good hand;
2. it leaves you liable to being reraised.

Min-raising preflop with marginal hands that you can't call a three-bet with is a major leak in my game, which is why I tend to stick with larger opens.

The 3x Bet. This used to be the standard opening raise size, and in fact still frequently works well during the early stages of a tournament. Often during the first few levels your stack is so large in relation to the blinds in play that it really isn't worth opening for any less.

It sometimes seems attractive to play looser in the opening stages, and to call lots of bets preflop in the hope of building a monster pot to win at the river, but playing tight and opening a decent range with at least a 3x raise guarantees that you aren't ignoring the early blind levels. As the tournament progresses, however, and you gravitate towards the 25-35 big blind level, it may not be possible to open every hand with a 3x raise, which is why poker players tend to shift down a gear.

The 2.2x-2.5x Bets. If you are trying to learn how to bet in poker like pros do in the most prestigious poker series, have a look at this. Normally these opens are between 2.2x and 2.5x, although this sizing usually depends on the player.

Towards the middle to late stages of tournaments, there will be all sorts of stack sizes seated at your table — the big stack who has enough chips to last well into the next level; the short stack looking for a double-up to get back into the game; and those in the middle who are comfortable, at least for now.

Read also: When the Minimum Raise is Maximally Wrong

The shorter stacks (those who aren't moving all-in preflop) don't have enough chips to open for 3x and fold, but they may still want to open with a raise. Similarly, larger stacks want to make it appealing for opponents to call an open without scaring them off. This bet-sizing of between 2.2 and 2.5 times the big blind is perfect for both stack sizes.

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How to Bet in Poker Tournaments: Postflop

A poker hand often falls into certain patterns, the steps from the deal to the showdown together often appearing like a familiar series poker presents time and time again. But don't be fooled — in fact, when it comes to postflop play there are an infinite number of bet sizes for you to choose from. I've tried to stick to the three main sizings, with examples for each of them.

Small bets (~1/4 pot). The small postflop bet invites the same problems min-raises before the flop do — you simply don't put enough money into the pot to give yourself a chance to fold out opponents. But that doesn't mean there aren't times to use small postflop bets effectively.

Against certain players who you are aiming to check-raise, providing they are aggressive enough and/or view a small bet as weak, you could do so to induce a slightly bigger raise out of your opponent.

Example:

It is the middle stage of a multi-table tournament. You are in the small blind on an average sized stack and a player in early position opens for 2.5x. You look down at and you elect to call. A tight-aggresive player in the big blind who has been playing a lot of hands aggressively three-bets. The initial raiser gets out of the way and you call.

The flop is . You've flopped the nuts. You know your opponent's three-betting range is going to include a lot of overpairs to the board, other pocket pairs, and high Broadway cards. Therefore, instead of donk-betting or check-raising, put out a small bet of around 20% of the pot.

If your poker brain was correct, the aggressive player should raise and you can move on with the hand from there.

Against aggressive players who like to continuation bet and raise players out of pots, try and get the maximum out of them when you flop strong-to-nutted hands like this one. Be careful of your own table image, however. If you appear to be a competent player, a small bet such as this could appear suspicious to your opponent.

Medium bets (~1/2 pot to 3/4 pot). I like to refer to this bet-sizing as the Goldilocks sizing — not too big, not too small, jusssst right. Your holdings and the board texture will dictate exactly how strongly you want to bet, but a bet of this sizing should do enough to dissuade drawing hands from calling given they are not getting the right pot odds, and also reap rewards from weaker hands who would still call.

Example:

This advice about bet sizing applies whether you are playing in some of the biggest series, games, tournaments, or other formats, although you always want to be aware the exact situation you are in when making decisions about how much to bet.

Let's say it is the early stages of a tournament and everyone still has around the starting stack. A player opens from early position and you look down at on the button. Because you have such a large chip stack relative to the blinds at this early stage you decide to call.

The flop comes and your opponent checks. You continuation bet for around half the pot and your opponent calls. The is dealt on the turn and again your opponent checks. Again, you slide out a half-pot sized bet and your opponent calls once more.

The river is the and your opponent checks for a third time. At this stage, you are behind both and , but surely would four-bet preflop. A straight is possible as well, although that would require your opponent raising preflop from early position with either or , also unlikely.

You bet 2/3 pot, trying to get a call from top pair. Your opponent obliges, calling and turning over for top pair, and you win with your set.

Overbets (pot-sized bets or larger). It can often be profitable to bet the pot or even more than the pot, especially on turns and rivers. However, be warned that most players know that an overbet is extremely polarizing, suggesting you either have the nuts or nothing.

Use this to your advantage against players you have identified as weak and who perhaps tend towards the cautious side of things when facing a decision for a large quantity of their chips.

Example:

A weaker player opens from the button and you call in the big blind with in the big blind. The flop comes . You check and your opponent continuation bets for slightly less than half-pot. You decide to call. Your opponent's range includes , club flush draws, and perhaps some smaller pocket pairs.

Preflop Poker Odds

The turn is the and it goes check-check. The river then brings the . At this point, you could slide out a bet slightly over the size of the pot. The weaker player goes into the tank for a while before calling with .

Facing a bet of this sizing, a weaker player is going to know that it is immensely polarising, and might even find a call like this with some hands, or equally try and hero call with ace-high.

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Being out of position in any hand of poker is not going to be make your decisions easy. However, this does not mean that we can’t use a few tricks to make it work to our advantage when we hit our strong hands.

This article will discuss how you can work around the fact that you are out of position to your opponent and use it to your advantage to maximize your wins with a strong hand on the flop. Here's my quick guide to betting into the preflop raiser.

Betting into preflop raiser example.

Lets say we are heads up in a Holdem game and out of position to an opponent after we called their preflop raise.

Ideally, this isn't a situation that you would want to find yourself in, because it means that you would have called a raise preflop knowing that you would be out of position for the rest of the hand. So to be in this position in the first place, we probably have a relatively strong hand with big cards, or a hand with a lot of potential like a small pocket pair.

On the flop.

Poker How Much To Raise Preflop In Minecraft

When we get to the flop, it is standard play for most players to check to the raiser regardless of whether we made a strong hand or not. Similarly, it is the standard play for our opponent to make a continuation bet to take down the pot, regardless if they have a strong hand or not.

This is because players in our sort of position will want to see how our opponent will react after our check, and the majority of the time our opponent will make a standard continuation bet in an attempt to capitalise on the weakness we have shown from our check. If you play at a high enough level for long enough, you will see this take place time after time.

We are obviously going to be folding our hand if we have not connected with the flop after the continuation bet from our opponent. However, if we have made a strong hand, then many players will be tempted check their hand to their opponent in anticipation that they will bet out, and then we can come over the top with a check-raise and trap them. This all sounds well and good, but when you think about it logically, you are missing out on a prime opportunity to extract a nice amount of money from your opponent.

If we make a check-raise play with our strong hand in this situation, one of two things are likely to happen.

1. Our opponent will fold any weak or mediocre holding
2. Our opponent will call and become very wary about our hand

Because the check-raise is such a powerful play, we are basically telling our opponents that we have the best hand. Therefore they are going to fold any weak or decent hand, and possibly call with their second best strong hand but be wary of continuing with the hand.

The check raise gives away too much information about the strength of your hand, whereas a bet from first position doesn't give much away.

Sure we could be bluffing, but it would be a dangerous play, and so our opponent would not want to take the risk to find out if we are by calling or re-raising with a mediocre or even a strong hand. So the majority of the time we are going to be cutting off our action at the flop when we have a strong hand, and not giving ourselves the opportunity to extract more money on future betting rounds.

Playing strong hands against the preflop raiser.

In my opinion, a great way to play a strong hand in this situation on the flop is to simply bet out.

By betting out straight away on the flop, we are making it look as though we have a mediocre hand and that we are trying to stand our ground and take the pot.

You will often find that any intermediate player that comes out with a bet on the flop is making a feeble attempt to win the pot with their half decent hand, and so a simple raise on our part when in position is often going to be enough to get them out of the pot. So if we are betting out with our strong hand, we are making it look as though we are that feeble player hoping to sneak the pot away.

Now most intermediate to advanced players are aware of the fact that players make this kind of bet to try and win the pot, and so it is pretty likely that they are going to raise with any high pair, over-pair, draw or even on a bluff. So at the end of the day, the likelihood that we are going to get raised is pretty high.

Therefore we will have already increased the amount we can expect to win from the hand, because we now have our opponent putting 3 or 4 times the amount into the pot than they would have done if we attempted a check raise. On top of this, our hand is still disguised from our opponent and so we have the potential to win more money on future betting rounds.

Example (and advantages) of betting out first.

If we make a call to see a flop with a hand like 6 6 and the flop comes 2 6 J, we are in a great position to make a killing.

By betting out, our opponent is likely to assume we have a mediocre hand like a pair of jacks or sixes, and so they will re-raise us with any overpair or hand like KJ or AJ because they will feel that they still have the best hand. If we check-raise however, our opponent will be wary of the strength of our hand and reconsider the strength of their jack, and slow down with any overpair. So betting out will set us up for that bigger win each time.

There are far more advantages to betting out first as opposed to check raising, so there is no need to try and play tricky poker.

From here on out we have to make the decision on whether or not to call or re-raise this raise from our opponent. In general, we should look to call if the board looks safe and look to raise if the board appears to be dangerous with potential draws.

It is likely that we can win more money on the turn and river if we call, because as far as our opponent knows we could well be holding onto our mediocre hand hoping for the best. But then we don’t want to give them the opportunity to draw out on us by calling. So you have to weigh up whether it is going to be more profitable in the long run to call and try and win more, or raise and take down the pot.

But who knows; if you raise, you may still get a call and win a pretty sizeable pot.

Betting into the preflop raiser evaluation.

This kind of play assumes that we are out of position and heads up to an opponent that knows a bit about the game of poker. This is because we will be relying on the fact that they will see our bet out as a sign of weakness, and raise us in an attempt to stop the action and win the pot.

Sure, sometimes our opponent will fold when we bet out, but a lot of the time we will be raised and be in a prime position to win a much bigger pot than if we had attempted a check raise. So we will be winning more money in the long run by betting out and winning a huge pot every now and then, rather than trying to be sneaky and frequently win small pots. So try betting out when you hit a monster flop. You will be surprised at how much more you will be winning overall.

When To Raise In Holdem

Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.

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Poker How Much To Raise Preflop Per

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