Just a general question about bet sizing

[crunny]

Is there ever a situation where it is profitable to bet more than you usually would so that you can then call a shove from villain.

For example in the hand below i cant call villains shove because im getting 2.4:1 ( I need 3:1).

However if i cbet pot i will be able to call villains shove. Is there ever a situation you can think of where this is better than the smaller bet?

Poker Stars - No Limit Hold'em Cash Game - $0.50/$1 Blinds - 9 Players - (LegoPoker HH Converter)

SB: $114.40
Hero (BB): $93.35
UTG: $119.25
UTG+1: $112.90
MP1: $20.00
MP2: $34.00
MP3: $100.00
CO: $54.90
BTN: $153.65

Preflop: Hero is dealt K[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (9 Players)
5 folds, <font color="red">CO raises to $3.00</font>, 2 folds, <font color="red">Hero raises to $10.00</font>, CO calls $7.00

Flop: ($20.50) 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 3[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] (2 Players)
<font color="red">Hero bets $12.00</font>, <font color="red">CO raises all-in to $44.90</font>, Hero folds

Pot Size: $77.40 ($2.15 Rake)

[billzfan86]

first make ur preflop 3 bet to 12-14 and then ur c bet would be like 20 he shoves u call hit ace on river and tell the villian this is my table lol

as played preflop make it 17-18 with the intention of calling a shove or c/f but i think thats way too weak also in general makin it 10 preflop against that raise is only 7, ur pricing in set miners there so ide suggest makin it 9-12 bbs more when 3 betting

[jessyj07]

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ur pricing in set miners there so ide suggest makin it 9-12 bbs more when 3 betting

[/ QUOTE ]no, he's not. there are no other players in the pot when action is on hero the first time except for the short stack that raised.

[crunny]

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as played preflop make it 17-18 with the intention of calling a shove or c/f but i think thats way too weak also in general makin it 10 preflop against that raise is only 7, ur pricing in set miners there so ide suggest makin it 9-12 bbs more when 3 betting

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, but WHY do i want to price myself in to call a shove? WHY don't i want to price myself?

These are the answers im looking for. When im at the table in this situation i really dont know what factors to think about when determining my bet size. Do i want to call a shove or not?

Also, hes not getting odds on his sets.

[billzfan86]

depends on what type of image u wanna show and what types of oppenents are at the table if its a bunch of donks who dont care about meta game then check fold is prolly best but should wanna show good players that you wont get blown off of hands that you show agression in very easily, also ull get looked up lighter by good players in pots that you 3 bet which cant be a bad thing

i understand that opponent isnt getting odds but most big stacks are, just wanted u to be aware of that

[BigPoppa]

1) Reraise more preflop or don't reraise at all. With his weird stack size you either want him to to pot-commit himself or fold

2) If I cbet this flop, which I probably won't with his stack; I will likely shove and force him to make the decision.

3) C-betting unimproved AK is a mistake if you know he won't fold, so c-betting more to give yourself odds to call is even more of a mistake.

[mack848]

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Is there ever a situation where it is profitable to bet more than you usually would so that you can then call a shove from villain.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sounds like your question is "Is it ever correct to make a very large mistake on one street, so that you avoid making a smaller mistake on a later street"?

In your example, Villain is nearly always going to have a hand which is going to push, or a hand that is going to fold to a CB - due to his short stack. If you think you have fold equity, then it may be an open push on the flop. Otherwise, I like a CB to $14 and fold to a push. If he pushes AQ, so be it.

Preflop, I like a bigger 3bet, especially as you are OOP. You really prefer a fold to a call with AKo OOP IMO.

[jhill3535]

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as played preflop make it 17-18 with the intention of calling a shove or c/f but i think thats way too weak also in general makin it 10 preflop against that raise is only 7, ur pricing in set miners there so ide suggest makin it 9-12 bbs more when 3 betting

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, but WHY do i want to price myself in to call a shove? WHY don't i want to price myself?

These are the answers im looking for. When im at the table in this situation i really dont know what factors to think about when determining my bet size. Do i want to call a shove or not?

Also, he’s not getting odds on his sets.

[/ QUOTE ]

The only reason that you would want to size your bet so that you are priced into drawing is if the extra amount you bet makes it more likely that he will fold.

Example:

There is 100 in the pot, Villain has $250 left and we cover

Let say he will fold to a half pot bet 50% of the time, and he will push and you will have to fold the other 50% of the time because you won't be getting the correct odds to draw (getting only 2:1, $100 to start + our $50 + villain’s shove of $250 =$400 in pot and $200 for us to call). So we win $100 50% and lose $50 50%. Our EV of this bet is 100*.5-50*.5 = $25

Now let’s say he will fold to a pot sized bet 75% of the time and push 25% of which we will be getting 3:1 on the call and will have exactly this amount of equity in the pot (25%). So 75% of the time we win $100 and 25% of the time we are 25% in a pot of $600 ($100 in pot + our $100 + Villain’s $250 + $150 more of our money).

If we folded here to the shove we would win $100 75% of the time and lose $100 25% of the time - 100*.75-100*.25 = $50 so you can see that betting the larger amount given the increase in the number of hands that he folds is better for us. When we bet 50% of the pot and he folded 50% of the time we profited $25, but when we bet the larger amount (100% of the pot) we profited $50 on the bet.

Now when we bet the larger amount and it is up to us to call the push, there is $450 in the pot and it is $150 for us to call so we are getting 3:1. When we call the final pot will be $600 and we will have 25% equity or $150 of equity, so the call of the push is breakeven.

[soah]

being priced into call something correctly doesn't mean you're making a profit, it just means that you lose less money overall in the hand than you would by folding. putting lots of money in while behind in order to generate the pot odds needed to call off the rest of your money while behind is massively -EV... you can tell yourself that your final call is +EV, but it's only because of the hugely -EV bet that you already made. the bigger your initial bet, the more money you "make" by correctly calling the final push... but you're only stealing EV from your initial bet, it doesn't just appear out of thin air.

[myheadhurts]

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as played preflop make it 17-18 with the intention of calling a shove or c/f but i think thats way too weak also in general makin it 10 preflop against that raise is only 7, ur pricing in set miners there so ide suggest makin it 9-12 bbs more when 3 betting

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, but WHY do i want to price myself in to call a shove? WHY don't i want to price myself?



[/ QUOTE ]

These are not unreasonable questions. Given that the emphisis given to pot odds and individual decisions, why wouldn't we want to ensure we are priced in? The answer is also reasonably simple, if we go back to first principles. For now, ignore pot odds, ignore bluffing, ignore metagame. The basic stategy of poker is this:

[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] If you are ahead, you want to get as many chips in the middle as possible.

A corollary of this, since we don't want our opponent to succeed, is:

[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] If you are behind, you ideally want no more chips to go in the middle. At most, however, we are willing to put in amount that is equal to our fold equity plus our suck-out equity.

It's reasonably obvious that if you are behind, the absolutely worst thing that can happen is all of your money getting in the middle of the table. If you plan to let that happen, you damn well better have something in compensation that more than makes up for it (whether it be fold equity, image or whatever).




To the hand. With AK, I think we have two choices on the flop:

(a) Try to check it down and hope he has a weaker ace
(b) Bluff, which will fold out all of the hands we beat and some that beat us.

We have chosen (b), which I think is pretty standard, but it's outside of our scope to discuss whether (a) or (b) is better. Going forward, we can assume we are behind (as nothing we beat is calling or raising). Our aim, therefore, is to put the minimum number of chips in the middle.

To emphisise, we don't want all the money in the middle. We are losing, so having all the chips in the middle is the worst possible scenario. The only reason to put any money in at all is to get your fold equity and suckout equity.


I think we have 3 basic possible bet sizes:

(1) The standard ~3/4 pot bet
(2) The pot bet
(3) Push.

Let's first compare (1) and (2). Does betting pot make it more likely he will fold than if we bet $12? I'd say no. Calling $12 basically pot commits him as he's a half stack, so you have no additional fold equity.

What of calling his push? As you note, if we bet $12 we should not call the push, whereas if we bet pot we should. Does this change anything?

The answer is no. Once all the money is in the middle, it makes no difference at all how it got there - we have identical expectation in either case. To illustrate, lets compare bet $12/call to bet $20/call. We stated above that there is no difference in fold equity, and once the money is in the middle there is no difference in suck out equity either. Hence these two strategies are identical in expectation.

Now this may sound strange if you think about pot odds too much - how can you make a correct decision in one case and a wrong one in another and end up at the same expectation? But if you just look at the big picture, it's a trivial result.

It's obvious that bet $12/fold is clearly better than bet $12/call, and hence bet $12/fold is better than bet $20/call as well.


The decision is therefore between bet $12/fold and pushing. This is entirely down to how much fold equity you have against the villian. Given how deep you are, I would imagine bet $12/fold is the best line as pushing risks a lot and looks suspect so won't fold out many more hands.



Incidentally, you need to consider this before your preflop 3-bet. Getting 20% of your chips in preflop with AK vs a raiser OOP puts you in a very difficult spot everytime.

Finally, I think you should probably read up on the theory of c-bets to ensure you understand why they work, when to use them etc.