[Pokey]

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can anyone explain why cbetting can be less in a 3bet flop? i thought in a larger pot you want to win it faster. (nlhtp - sklansky)

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You are correct -- winning the pot is your highest priority. However, there's a "sticker shock" effect that gives you more folding equity.

In an otherwise identical situation, a player with a good-not-great hand will VERY often call a 4 BB bet in an 8 BB pot but fold to a 40 BB bet in an 80 BB pot. Even though our poker training tells us that the size of the bet is irrelevant and that ratios and odds are all that matter, when faced with calling a half-stack bet we will often seize up and run away because we're afraid of variance. Our opponents, who are markedly LESS trained in the ways of poker, respond even more so to this stimulus.

Oh, and there's one more thing: just as our opponents are less likely to call a 4 BB bet in an 8 BB pot than a 40 BB bet in an 80 BB pot, so too are they less likely to MAKE a 40 BB bet in an 80 BB pot than a 4 BB bet in an 8 BB pot. Faced with a tiny pot our opponents will often throw in a few BBs to try to steal, but faced with a ginormous pot it's a rare enemy who has the huevos to chip up a half-pot steal attempt. As a result, we -- the trained opponents -- should be less likely to call average bets in big pots than in small pots, and we should be more likely to make average bets in big pots than in small pots.

Think of this as an extremely common leak in our opponents, and one that requires a minor adjustment to exploit. It means that we've got more folding equity when pots get bigger, so we need to make smaller bets relative to the pot in order to get paid and we can get away with making smaller bets relative to the pot when we're bluffing.