Andrew Seidman Easy Game - Bet Sizes and Thin Value Part I

Section 4: Bet sizes and thin value

After the last article on the use and cessation of aggression in different situations, here's the next dose of information from Andrew Seidman's book "Easy Game".

We now have a common understanding of when and why we need to stay aggressive - this is the correct assessment of (pot equities) and (fold equities). So how do we know what bet size we should choose in different situations? In No Limit Hold 'em, we have endless choices of bet sizes.

For a long time, poker has been dominated by bet size standards. The most acceptable ones were pot-sized on the flop, between 2/3 and 3/4 pot on the turn, and between 1/2 and 2/3 pot on the river. It can be assumed that these bet sizes were chosen because it was thought that opponents would be more likely to respond to a small but not a large bet on the river. This is classic "I don't want to scare him" thinking. It is utter stupidity.

Most players' decisions to call or not call, raise or pass are based on two main reasons:

1) Their cards. Most players don't want to fold AA on a board like JT9, which will usually favour their opponents over their hand and get a lot of action, but wait! After all, they have aces! And they just can't fold, even though the chances of them being ahead in this situation are very slim.

2) Board texture. QQ usually has a really good chance of making money as an overpair, but depreciates very quickly if an A or a K appears among the cards turned up.

In these situations, the scenario of bet sizes becomes very broad. If we were to choose a 2$ bet on the 800$ pot, it is probably obvious to everyone that none of the opponents would fold their existing hands. And if we were to choose 800$ on a 2$ pot, then certainly no one would respond to a bet with no nut combinations. But let's forget the above examples and imagine that the pot size is 50$. If the opponent has a good enough hand to call a bet of 35$, why should he not call a bet of 36$? 38? 42? 48? If you think that your opponent is slightly more likely to fold to a 48$ bet than to a 35$ bet. It usually pays to bet 45$ anyway, the extra money we make when the opponent calls the higher value bet will make up for the few extra times the opponent would have called 35$ the bet. So, when you are trying to get value, place higher value bets.

Sometimes our bets on value won't be so easy and straightforward. If we have JJ on a board like T54J5, it is very simple and easy to make a value bet in this situation. But what if in an identical situation we have AT instead of JJ? What if T9? In all three situations there is a good chance that we have the best hand and can bet for value. If we bet for value with JJ in the above situation, then we can feel confident, because all the opponents' hands that can respond to our bet are worse than our hand. Therefore, we can draw the maximum value without any fear. With AT, we must remember that some of the opponents' hands that can respond to our value bet will be ahead of ours (e.g. AJ, KJ, QJ, etc.), but we must also remember that some of them will be worse (e.g. KT, QT, T9, T8). With a hand like T9, there are very few inferior hands with which the opponents will potentially respond to our value bet, usually hands like T8, 99, 88. So if we choose a bet size that is too large with T9, such that the opponent will fold hands like 88, then the bet will gradually turn bad, we will not be able to get a response from inferior hands, and we cannot be forced to fold hands that are better than the one we have. For this reason, we must choose a bet size which ensures that the opponent will call with a worse hand. Therefore, in the situation described above, with T9, it is advisable to choose a very small bet, such as 1/5 pot. With AT, we can choose a slightly higher value bet, such as 1/2 poto. This is known as thin value.

In the second part we will discuss the concept of thin value, what it is, its importance, benefits and drawbacks. Stay tuned!

This series of articles is based on Andrew Seidman's poker book "Easy game". If you would like to purchase the original, which is available in English, you can do so balugawhale.com.

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