Q&A #101: Sweetening The Pot In No Limit

Good question and made me think about what I do. Here’s my unsophisticated 2 cents:

I raise from late position to sweeten if I know the blinds or UTG are passive and ususally call with Ax or any 2 face cards. When the flop comes with mid or low cards, I’m pretty sure that I can take the sweetened pot with a post-flop bet because I’m percieved to already have a pocket pair because of my pre-flop bet. If face cards come, and I’m checked to, I’ll represent a big flop pair or possible set and I’m likely to reraise a 1/2 pot bet from an early position player to cement the perception. Sometimes I lose a pot, but the gain from the times I win outright is worth it. Plus I’ve gained some info on a player of what their likely range of holdings are to push.

It sounds to me like you are evaluating the hand pre-flop in terms of the average player playing it when IMO you should always be thinking about it in terms of its value to you (which includes both pre and post flop play).

Hand values are difficult to calculate in NL, but in Limit there are plenty of stats available.

When I look at those stats, I always add some value to the hand because I assume I will play it better than my opponents both preflop and after the flop (otherwise I am in the wrong game).

I think this is a simple example of pot control. And with a potentially big hand, we want the potential for a big pot.

Headsup, with a pot sized bet, the amount of money added to the pot is 50% yours, therefore the size of your second bet can be 3 times larger and still be potsized.
So your added risk will be 1 potsized bet, but your potential reward is 4 times bigger if you hit your hand. This is true without a direct equity edge as the example below demonstrates.
Multiway, ofcourse, your reward gets even bigger compared to the risk.

I’ve thought of a small simplified game to demonstrate:
* two players: hero & villain, hero has position
* two streets
* starting pot = $1
* hero is drawing with 2:1 odds and always loses without hitting (so he doesn’t gain or lose directly on a pot sized bet, no equity edge).
* villain can’t fold the first street so there’s no semibluffing
* bets are potsized (infinite stacks)
* villain calls the second street a fraction C of the time when hero’s card comes and folds otherwise (no risk of being raised).

If hero wins, he wins $4 from villain spread over both streets and the $1 that was in the pot already for a total of $5.
If hero loses he loses his $1 bet.

EV (both streets combined) = (C*$5 + [1-C]*$1) / 3 - $2/3 = $1.33C - $0.33

Now if hero checks the first street and only bets the second when he hits his hand (we ingore bluffing) his expected value would be:

EV = ($1 + $C)/3 = $0.33C + $0.33

For C = 0.66 the first equition becomes bigger than the second.
So if our opponent calls more than 2/3 of the time we will have a higher EV betting here to be able to make a bigger bet on the second street if we hit.

There is a simple math reason for pot sweeteners. Here’s an example. If we bet pot on one street we can make a pot sized bet that is three times as big on the next street. We need 2:1 odds on our draw to have no equity edge. Still at these odds we have higher EV betting if our opponent will likely call when we hit compared to checking here have him call a smaller (still pot) bet when we hit.

In a two street game:
- our opponent won’t raise
- he will always call the first bet
- bets will be pot sized
- we have 2:1 odds (no equity edge)

He needs to call the second bet 2/3 of the time to make it more profitable to bet the first street as a sweetener (first as a pot sweetener) given we have 2:1 odds of hitting our card.

In practise, headsup, it will not be very realistic that our opponent calls enough, but for the same reason (over more streets) our preflop bet helps a lot controlling the pot postflop.