Over Betting

[Insidestr8]

Jellybean, first off thanks for posting in this area. I’ve decided to use your term over betting and want to give some thoughts on bigger bets and times when I think you almost have to make that bet.

One of the worse plays that I find is when someone has a hand like pockets Jacks and then plays them passively. Then sometimes when they get sucked out on later in the hand they complain about how they never win with great hands like that and I just shake my head.

The way I look at it, you really can’t over bet pocket Jacks preflop. With a premium hand like this, I want to win more then just the big and small blinds so if I’m betting early I’ll likely do a 3x or 4x raise with the hope that one person will call me. If I’m betting late in the hand and say we’ve had about 4 limpers, then I’d likely make a very strong raise and try to take the pot down right there. Sure some will consider this to be a bully move, but I really don’t want to be holding jacks with 5 or 6 players seeing the flop.

I know that many players like to keep the size of their raises consistent so as not to give any clue as to what type of hand they have, but I usually try and raise to a level that I think will keep only how many players I want in the hand pre-flop. So if I’m raising first with my Jacks I don’t want to scare off everyone with too big of a raise, but I certainly don’t want many callers. To me, its better to err on the side of betting too high with this hand and taking down the pot early then risk having too many players calling you.

I know this kind of move upsets some people, but to me the big raise here is the “conservative” play. It’s the limping with the pocket Jacks that is the aggressive play since no matter what the flop is, there are many limping hands that may have been helped. Also, you have no idea what type of hand they might have if you let limpers see the flop.

If the flop comes and there are no over cards to the Jacks, then you know you’re likely ahead at this point if you’ve made that pre-flop raise. At this point I want to take the pot down and I’m likely to make an aggressive raise. Checking here to me is a terrible risk. If you check and your opponent(s) check, then what do you do if an A, K or Q hit on the turn? If they bet then you’re almost forced to fold your Jacks. Sure you can call, but isn’t it likely that they had an over card in their hand? If you call and then the turn or river come with another over card what do you do then? Again, you’ve just put yourself into a position where the passive play which you may have considered to be the safe play at the start has just put you into a position where you have no idea what hand you are up against and where you stand.

Three other things I look at when I’d deciding on how much to raise are:
1. Who else is left to act and how tight, loose, or good of a player are they?
2. What is my chip stack in relation to the other players that have yet to act?
3. What type of player do the other players in this hand think I am?

I'll likely comment more on these last points later, but any comments and thoughts from anyone are appreciated.

Str8

[mekaputra]

What you just described is exactly how i played in my last tourney - but there was this guy that kept taunting me: "mekap is trying to get rich early" and other stuff like that making me feel so little. It bruised my ego and my play got sloppy - how do you deal w/ people like that?

Thanks

Hadi

[Insidestr8]

Well the first thing is to try and not let the person get to you. Sometimes people make comments like that to throw you off your game, or sometimes they do that just because they don't understand proper aggressive betting. If you have confidence in what you're doing, keep playing your game and just smile to yourself knowing that you are getting to that person.

One of the things you can do though is try and use that to your advantage. With a comment like that being made to you, that person likely thinks that you are trying to "buy" pots without having that great of a hand. At some point that person will likely make a bad call on you and you can take advantage of that. If they call you and you hit the nuts, then it might be an idea to check and see if they try a move on you thinking that you're weak. That might give you a chance to rake in a big pot.

Str8

[Stumilty]

over betting is so much more important early in a tourney as opposed to late.
When the big blind is 15 or 30, a pot sized bet of say 100 to peoples stacks of 1500 or so doesnt seem to deter the calling stations. If you read the books, or talk to people, everyone says 3 or 4 bb is the bet for aces preflop. But .... if you are in early position, a bet of 45 into 7 people to follow with their starting stacks doesnt seem like enuff. If I want action, I will bet smaller, but I fi I want to play my hand with as little calls as posssible, I will likely bet out 150 or more early, as its a little more for some to call just to see. the size of the bet, to me, is directly relational to the stack sizes at the table.

As far as someone comments as to buying the pot... lol, let em think what they want, but once you get the comments, expect a few more calls, and make sure you have a real good starter to build that table image, if it gets to a show down.

[jellybean21]

thanks ,for your advice.
you have answer some of my questions on how to bet on the blind.i am still learning.i know i have to be more aggressive
on my play, having j's, or queens. or any good pairs. will try to. it some time a little scarey ha,ha. need to put my fears away and play pokers as best i can.. thanks again for being a good poker friend and teaching me ...
jellybean

[Insidestr8]

Hi JB, Stu already made some good points about looking at the stack size of others at the table when trying to determine the size of your bet so I'll talk about some of the other things that I look at like what stage of the tournament are we at, what the pot size is, and what my stack size is.

Early in the tournament I'm not too aggressive pre-flop. With small blinds I don't think its worth risking much of my stack to win 45-90 chips. I believe that I have a tight table image, so I'd likely bet 3x or 4x the blind with my pocket Jacks and hopefully that will let me take the pot down without risking too much. If I'm re-raised I'll likely fold my Jacks since I don't want to commit too many chips early in the tournament. If I'm called by one person, then I'll likely make a fair size bet after the flop no matter what it is because I want to see where I am in the hand. If I just check and someone else bets first I really have no idea where I am in the hand and I do not want to get into a scenario where I'm just calling someone elses bets all the way to the river. To me that's a sucker play and even if I'm not behind after the flop I'm giving my opponent too many chance to catch a better hand.

Later in the tournament when the blinds are bigger and someone else has limped in I'm more likely to try and take the pot down pre-flop by going all in if I have a smallish stack. At that point its worth it to me to either take the pot down tright there or try and double up, and a pair of Jacks is not a bad hand to try and do that with. The key to me late in the tournament is to try and make your move while your chip size is still big enough to be able to take down a pot pre-flop with a big raise. If you just wait for the monster hand and let the blinds eat you away, your stack eventually gets too small to be relevant and your all in raise no longer has power. At that point you might go all in with that monster you finally catch, but since your stack is so small you might be called by several players and at that point no matter what your hand is you have less than a 50% chance to win the pot.