Bet Size

[blomkvist522]

I'm running through a lot of hands to analyze and get exposure to a lot of different weird situations. i had a general question though: how do you determine your bet sizes? I understand the concept of betting relative to pot size after the fold, turn, and river in order to make the call attractive or unattractive to the opponent, but what about in very standard cases?

For instance, in a $1/$2 cash game of NL Hold 'em (6 players), say I'm in UTG. If I want to play, what's the size that I should bet relative to BB? How does this change when I'm in late position?

I would also appreciate it if people can discuss post-flop betting strategies though, for instance PE, IE, etc.

[Godson]

Since no one has answered your question yet I guess I will. I actually have some same concerns as you do about how much to bet. What I do is typically dependent of what other people do, but a bit different in order to make profit. As a standard of bet size, Raise 5 times the BB with a good hand and limp with other deceptive stuff such as 56s or 33. When raising, either raise the same amount each time or randomly raise without any correlation to hand strength. When raising with correlation to hand strength people will be able to calculate your hand range easily and you will be predictable. Raising a consistent amount hides your hand. Raising randomly can throw off your opponents. They will be confused when you raise 4X BB with 99 and raise 3X with ATs. Then later you only raise 2X BB with ATs. Your opponents will not know what you are doing. First decide whether you want to raise, call or fold. If you choose to raise then either raise consistently or raise randomly preflop.

Also, play off the people. If there are people raising 12X BB at the table and they have mediocre to premium hands then when you have a premium hand raise to 12X and the people will be accepting to call you with better hands or worse hands that aren't shit. Say you raise 12X BB preflop on the button with JJ. 5 people call you each with QQ, A6s, 87s, K8o, Q9o. Notice that QQ is a better hand then yours. However JJ is still better than the other 4 hands. As long as your hand is considerably better than a majority of the hands at the table your still in good shoes. Preflop hands fluctuate a lot after the flop so don't feel like your throwing your money away when you raise that big at a table like that. Just make sure your hands you raise with are slightly better than the hands your opponents are raising with.

These are just my thoughts on the issue. I don't know if it is the right play, but I've been doing it for awhile and it seems to work for me. I would be curious to know what your strategy is blomkvist522 on preflop raising too, as I think it would be insightful and I might learn something.

Hope this helped