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