Betting POT or HALF POT? Doyle Vs Harrington

[omaha]

Okay, have been reading the bibles of hoh 1,2,3 and ss2 (never seen ss1)

Doyle seems to always say to bet pot, or more.

Harrington seems to almost always say bet half or so



Doyle always leads into raisers with a hand, Harrington will often check raise.

I have been following harrington, as everytime i have a hand and bet pot, everyone drops!

Obviously, if i bet pot all the time, this would change, but i dont think that cbets should be pot

Is this a cash game, bet pot and keep muscling, whereas tourneys you dont need to price people off their draws so much kind of idea?
All thoughts welcome!

[kilohoku]

Although I am still a bit of n00b, I too generally follow Harrington and bet less than the pot.

I think that pot sized bets are too scary for most people to call so you may be leaving money on the table.

Aloha,
- K

[Rollos]

I haven't read SS2, but Doyle's section in SS1 was written with high stakes in mind. The players Doyle used to play with probably called pot bets very loosely and a pot bet was probably a standard continuation bet in their games.
In online tourneys a half pot bet will usually have the same effect as a full pot bet.

[hamnegger]

i have read both you are misunderstanding brunsons concepts. 1) the books are about different beasts. tourn vs cash.
2) brunson's agressive style is based on the fact that he has more cash behind him than anyone at the tbl. he wants to put max pressure on opponents w unpredictable style. hell bet big w draw and set he wants you scared and afraid. his value is from all semi bluffs that ppl fold and if they dont he draws out and the payments from sets where ppl think hes full of it. hes the bully and he wont be bluffed off a pot. that is a crash and burn style when you cant rebuy he does not play tourn poker in this fashion. harrington likes the value bet and the ability to reevaluate if you are raised w out committing whole stack

[beenben]

I've read SS1, HOH1 HOH2 and I just started HOH3. The reson to bet half the pot is because you only have to get them to fold 1/3 of the time to make a profit. A bigger bet will still get called by better hands and you won't get enough additional people to fold to the larger bets.

I used to make pot sized bets but switched to b/t half and 3/4 sized. I bet more if the board is more coordinated.

I also noticed that in Blair Rodman's trip report regarding the WSOP ME, he says continuation bets don't work so well anymore b/c people know what you are doing. Therefore, at least in one hand, he checked the flop and raised to 3x the bettor's bet.

[slik]

I completely agree, and would like to add something.

If tournaments were deeper, harrington, too, would start betting pot. Given the structure of most tournaments, if one keeps bettign/raising pot, very soon he will be allin, which is fine if he could rebuy if he lost; but since in most tourney's once you bust, you're out, being more prudent will be more profitable in the long run. (Since you can no longer make +EV decisions once you bust). Whereas, you can simply go to the ATM if you bust in a cash game.

[nath]

Super System was written when people played no-limit with lots of money and very deep. Many of his strategies are designed to show you how to stack people when they money is deep.

Harrington's books are written for tournaments, where you can't rebuy, and you usually aren't deep, so you can often accomplish the same thing from a smaller bet that you would from a larger one, which allows you to conserve chips when you're beaten, or save them for moves on later streets.

[Ansky]

SSII is out of date and HOH is just retarded.

I have never read a poker book that is truly in touch with todays online games, and I haven't read a poker book in like 2 years because of that. The only good books are those that are very theoretical (TOP).

Sometimes you should be pot, other times you should bet half pot. Poker is not a god damn color book, there are no [censored] instructions. Sometimes you will be in a position in which a half pot bet will likely get bluff raised, other times a pot sized bet will. You have to know your opponents tendencies and know what they expect of you. Especially in tournaments, stack size is pretty crucial for deciding how much to bet in a given spot.

If you want to get better at poker start thinking about the game as a collection of unique situations which are dictated by your opponents tendencies, your tendencies, oh and sometimes your cards. Asking HOH or SSI or II isn't going to get you very far in figuring out how to bet in NL hold'em.


The best analogy I've ever come up with, is from back in my little league baseball games. I had a coach, who was a very weird guy. He thought he was a great hitting coach though, because he taught all these kids a pretty weird way of hitting. He basically completely changed everyones swing so that they had a super short rotation, choked way up on the bat, crouched very low, and just slapped ground balls the opposite way. The thing is, we were all like 10-12 years old, so most kids couldn't field for [censored]. So by just getting the ball in play like every at bat, you probably would reach base a huge % of the time versus a bunch of little kid third basemen (I'm a lefty) who couldn't even throw the ball across the diamond.

Eventually though, when I moved up to the 13-16 division or whatever it was, I couldnt hit for [censored]. Kids were throwing faster, the fielders were better, and every at bat I was grounding out. Finally I figured that this dickshit way of scraping hits by wasn't going to work anymore, I had to actually learn how to hit a baseball.

These HOH drones remind me of the 12 year old choppers I think. I mean, yeah, HOH will probably help you, so will most books. But honestly how do you really ever expect to beat good players if you can't adjust to faster pitchers, uhh, i mean, better poker players?

Start by trying to hit line drives.

[Cornell Fiji]

Ansky,
Great analogy.

Steve

[SuperUberBob]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't read SS2, but Doyle's section in SS1 was written with high stakes cash games in mind.

[/ QUOTE ]

DB's section is specifically for cash games while Harrington's is for tournament play.