How & When to Bet

There are a few different ways of betting that you need to be aware of before you can start playing Texas holdem properly. You need to know how to execute & identify them, so that you know what your opponents are up to when they use them on you. We’re only going to cover the basics here and we’ll get into some more advanced betting strategies in the medium skill level videos.

Don’t become a calling station
A lot of amateurs will simply sit there all night and just call any bet they face – these players are known as “calling stations”. This is most definitely the wrong way to play poker. Poker is a game of information and the best way to get this information is by betting. Don’t simply call someone’s bets to the river – it’s a fast way to lose all your money.

How much do I bet?
In most online games of no limit holdem, the minimum bet is the size of the big blind. First off – you never want to just bet the minimum – EVER – it’s either a sign of weakness or of a bad player with monster hand – you will be neither.

The standard opening raise is set by the players at the table and changes from table to table - a pattern is sure to emerge after you observe a few hands. A standard opening raise on a novice table may be double the big blind, while in a more advanced game it may be 6 or 7 times the big blind.
The standard opening raise I want you to use is 3 to 4 times the big blind.

Change up your bets
Another very important part of betting is to make sure that you don’t keep making the same bet every time you’re in the same situation. If you predictably raise 4 times the big blind EVERY TIME you get a high pocket pair - your opponents will figure out this pattern very quickly and play accordingly. Mix up your bets and keep your opponents guessing.

Probe bets
You place bets in poker to accomplish one of a few different tasks - Get money in the pot, make someone fold, etc. You need to start to bet to find out where you are in a hand. We bet to find out information that we can’t get any other way – we call these “probe bets”.

The way people react to your probe bet will give you a lot of information as to the actual strength of their hand. Information we wouldn’t have if we had just checked.

A probe bet is usually around half to three quarters the size of the pot.
You can only make a probe bet if no one else has made a bet in that round of betting, otherwise you are re-raising and not probing.

Continuations bets
One of the most important bets in poker is the continuation bet. If you are the very first person to bet with a pre flop raise, no matter what the flop is, it’s usually correct to bet again after the flop has been dealt flop.

After you have made your initial raise and the flop has been dealt, the action at the table will usually check around to you, the original bettor. Even if the flop has completely missed you, put down a bet – somewhere around half to three quarters of the pot. You will be surprised how often this wins the hand.

Whether or not to continuation bet depends on a lot of things – position, number of opponents, what the flop was, etc. If you are first to act and raise with a pair of 9’s and get four callers and the flop comes Q,K,A – these are the kinds of cards people like to call raises with – it completely missed you and there’s a very good chance that someone else hit the flop – this is a classic situation where you shouldn’t most definitely not continuation bet. As you make your way through this course, you will gain a better understanding for the game of poker and be able to identify the right and wrong situations to continuation bet.

The Re-raise
The re-raise works similarly to a probe bet. You may choose to re-raise to gain information, get more money into the pot or to force someone to fold.

At this stage in your poker career, I want you to re-raise for only 1 main reason – to gain information (we’ll cover some more advanced uses for the re-raise in another video). If you have a strong hand and someone raises the pot, you should re-raise them to find out just how strong their hand is – once again your re-raise should be about 2 to 4 times their raise.

If they call or re-re-raise you, you can be pretty sure that they have a very strong hand, and can use that information to save yourself losing any more chips.

This will save you a lot of money in the long run - You’re making your opponent confirm the strength of their hand – if you re-raise someone and they fold, then you caught them bluffing. If you re-raise someone and they re-re-raise back you or push all in, they’re saying that they have a very strong hand and you’re also going to need a very strong hand (think a high pocket pair) to play this hand with them.

Conclusion
There are many other kinds of bets that you need to be aware of that we will cover in the medium strategy videos. I have only covered the basics here and you will need to learn them and actually use them in a poker game before you are ready to learn the more advanced bets. For now, move onto the next video in the series.

Slow Playing
The slow playing can be a great move, if used sparingly. If I’m playing against really tough opponents, I won’t slow play anything except real monsters, like quads. This usually works better against novice opponents who will blindly bet into any situation, but can still have devastating results against anyone if played properly and sparingly.

The most common use of a slow play that you’ll see is when someone is playing a small pocket pair and manages to flop a set. They’ll calmly check to the rest of the table and let them do all the betting for them. Slow playing can be dangerous because you’re giving free cards to your opponents. I will only slow play depending on the texture of the board – if the flop comes and I hit a monster hand that I know is definitely going to win, I will only slow play if there is no chance of a flush or a straight or any other monster hands. If the flop does look like someone might out draw me on the turn or the river, I bet heavily into the pot, looking to take it down right there. If I have already slow played a hand that was shown, or if my opponents are particularly tough, I might opt to not slow play at all and instead come out with a standard three quarter pot raise on the flop. This will do a better job of disguising my hand and may give me a better opportunity to make more money off of it. Never play a hand the same way twice against the same opponents – someone who is playing attention will take you apart once they’ve figured out your playing style.