Message Board : Bet size to take down pot now

I don’t understand the 1BB raise.  I think you want to raise 5 or 6 and scare away some of the limpers and try to get it heads up.  You’re going to end up bluffing and stealing a lot with that sort of hand in position.  That’s a lot easier to do heads up.

Now that your there, I think you either need to bet to pot or check behind.  Betting less than, say, 3/4 of the pot isn’t going to get a lot of poeple to fold who have a piece.  If you check, the board isn’t draw heavy so giving a card isn’t so bad.  With weak top pairs, I think you can keep the pot small and induce some bluffs from second pair hands with a check.

fishing said:

You are right about the wimpy 1 BB raise. It is amazing though how many will fold for a tiny bet. But a bad raise regardless. You are also right about the flop options.

How do you make the decision when to check behind and when to raise? I am making the transition from limit where protecting your hand is so import, to a game where you can spoil your opponents pot odds with a bigger bet and implied odd. My difficulty is in understanding the thought process in deciding how to choose between trying to induce a bluff or bad call and when to take down the pot with a big bet. Both work in this case, but which is better and why? What is important when you think about this?

I look at it as a balance between protecting your hand and protecting stacks.  You’re sort of short in this hand, there are three limpers, and you have top pair.  Right now, the things you are worried about are KJ and QJ.  If you fire a bet and get raised, you are generally beat on that sort of board and can give it up.  If you get called, you don’t really have enough left behind to move someone off top pair decent kicker.  I also wouldn’t be worried about AKQ.  Mostly just A’s.  KJ and QJ already beat you and most people aren’t limp/calling with K8 or Q8.  

On this board, I’d fire at the flop and likely fire again on the turn on any non-A.  You’re short enough and the pot is big enough that firing on the turn will generally be profitable, I think.  Given that you’re short, I would fire a full pot sized bet so that you can make anouther full pot sized bet on the turn and get things like JT and QJ to sometimes fold.  I would be much happier with QJ here instead of JT, though. 

As is often the case, though, the problem with this hand was preflop.  In positon with a bunch of limpers, I’m going to make it $12 or $14 to go.  If I get a caller, I’m going to stick about 3/4 of the pot in on the flop.  Limp/callers are your friends.  They fuel your poker profits.  There is nothing sweeter than the limp/raise/call-flop-check/bet/fold line.  This is even more true when they will call bigger pre-flop bets but are less likely to call big flop bets.  Loose-pre/tighter-post is a terrific profile for an opponent to have if you have position.  So let them be loose pre-flop and chip away.

Nice notes Joe.

In this kind of situation, I’ve started making my bets smaller.  A 1/2 pot should be more than sufficient.  If they have one over, or even two, they don’t have odds to call.  If they call with overcards, that’s just dandy.  Making your bet only 1/2 pot lets you get off cheaper when you get raised and have to fold.

A tricky question is whether to fire a second time on the turn.   Not sure about that.