In poker, players can make money at the table by doing one of three things: bluffing (mainly used to balance our value bets), calling, or value betting. It should be obvious that we make most of our money by getting called when we have a good hand and we value-bet, but players often miss to value-bet in certain spots or use the wrong sizing, so they miss capturing all the possible value.
In this article we will explore what sizing we should use with our value bets and how thin we should go for value.
Choosing the Right Value Sizing
Our value-bet sizing depends on the type of opponent we are facing, as every opponent will have a different range and will be more or less of a calling-station.
For example, suppose our opponent has a strong range. In that case, it will be harder to get significant value from him as there are not as many middle-ish hands that can call us, but he will just have a few strong hands (that can beat us) and give-ups since, in theory, he should choose his calls starting from the strongest part of his range and fold weakest parts of his range. So, to get called more often in situations where our opponent has a significant range advantage, we need to adjust and reduce our sizing.
If we were in a situation where we had a significant nuts advantage, and our opponent shoved into us, we should find it very suspicious. We can make big folds as this is not a natural thing he should do with weaker hands but only with nuts. (Bluffing into a player who has a range and nut advantage is a strategy that will put money on fire.)
If our opponent checks in the same situation, we will bet often enough, as we have a range or nut advantage, so he can get more value by check-shoving and then lead-shoving and making us fold as his hand is face-up.
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Toy Game Example
If we use a toy game where we and our opponent (BB vs BTN) have hands from pocket aces to pocket fours on 2♣2♥2♠2♦3♣ board, we (BB) would have hands like pocket fours that never win at showdown, so the EV of betting is higher than the EV of checking.
Hands from pocket fives to pocket tens sometimes win at showdown, so we want to check these hands and use some of them as bluff catchers. This would invite our opponent to over-bluff, and we would win more EV than if we bet.
Then we get to pocket jacks, which involve beating enough hands that will bluff catch against smaller sizings so we can get more EV by betting small rather than checking.
Then we have a hand like pocket queens that is beating plenty of hands and want to go for value and bet.
We also have hands like pocket aces and pocket kings, which we want to check most of the time, though sometimes we should bet them. If we always bet these strong hands, our opponent would not have enough hands to call with, and we would stop them from bluffing with hands like pocket fours. Also, checking with our strongest hands protects our middling part of the range, which we always want to check.
Exploitative Adjustments
When we face opponents that are not defending the correct frequencies, we can extract more value by adjusting the following:
- Against opponents who are overcalling, we use bigger sizing and go for thin value more often.
- Against opponents who are overfolding, we start bluffing more often and don’t go for as thin for value
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How to Get Maximum Value With Nuts
Let’s say that absolute nuts hands will represent the number 100, so our goal with our “100” nuts hand is to get maximum value from hands that are ranked below 100 (99-80).
This means that with our strongest hands, we should target our opponent’s strong hands and not reduce sizing to get some small value from his mid and weak hands. This is where players make mistakes and miss big chunks of EV.
The number of times we have to get called for smaller sizing can never compensate for the value we miss in situations where we overbet 3x pot on the river and get called.
Common Mistakes
- Missing the value by lead-betting when we should be check-calling or check-shoving
- Value-betting too thin and using small sizing when we are in position, as checking has more EV in position than out of position
- Not value-betting thin and small enough out of position
- Trying to get value from the wrong group of hands (our 100 hand should look to get value from the 99-80 hands category and not the 60-50 category)
- Thinking about your hand and not about your nut and range advantages
- Trying to exploit with sizings without enough data can make us being counter exploited by giving tells
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