Making a Bet for Information in No
Limit Hold'em
written by BeatTheFish.com
...Fishy says, "Extract those
little nuggets of knowledge from the gills with care."
When playing online
poker, recognizing betting patterns and trying to compare them with
the hands your opponents show down is really the only way to get a
read on a player or what he's holding in any given hand.
An important
tool in no limit hold'em for inducing betting patterns and analyzing
your position in a hand is to pay for information. Most
often, this is done with a good, but not great, hand where the right
decisions can either maximize your value bets when you have the best
hand or minimize your losses when you're beat. You are "paying" for
the information by making a bet or raise with the intention of
narrowing down your opponent's holdings by his reaction.
You can't check or
call for information. If you check out of position and your opponent
bets, this tells you very little about the strength of his hand.
Perhaps he has a monster or perhaps he just senses weakness and is
trying to take the pot away from you. If you call an opponent's bet
you haven't learned anything, either. You've merely learned that
your opponent is willing to bet and he could be doing it for a wide
range of reasons.
Once you've decided
to pay for information, you need to make sure the information will
be useful to you once you receive it. Just because you throw out a
bet doesn't mean that you can find out reliable information about
your opponent's hand. You need to size the bet properly, use it in
the right situations, and think critically about why your opponent
reacts the way he does. Let me try to explain this concept with a
couple of examples:
Example 1: Let's say that you're
playing a $1/2 game and pick up AK of hearts from the button. You've
been playing for about an hour and have about $200 in front of you.
Several other players have your stack covered. A fairly
straightforward and conservative player who has about $300 opens the
pot from early position for $10. What is the right move here?
Your three basic moves are to fold,
call, or reraise. Obviously, you aren't folding here with a premium
hand and position on the raiser, so should you call or reraise? I'm
not going to attempt to answer that definitively as it is largely
situational and there is no true "correct" answer. There is nothing
"wrong" with calling and, in fact, it is a good decision against a
conservative player. If it was a loose-passive or loose-aggressive
player raising, you should tend to isolate him and build up a pot in
position with a reraise. Against a conservative player, I will just
call with A-K suited in position about 30-40% of the time.
However, let's look at how you can pay
for more information by reraising. Let's say that you make a modest
raise to $25 or $30. You've made a strong play and defined your
hand. Assuming everyone folds back around to the raiser, he's most
likely to do one of two things if he's a conservative player: put in
a third raise (or go all-in) with Aces or Kings and call with
anything less (unless he made an uncharacteristic play with trash).
His reaction here should give you golden information about his hand.
If he puts you all-in, you can safely fold the hand. If he just
calls, you can probably deduce that he has a strong hand like Jacks,
Queens, AQ, or AK and play accordingly on the flop. Of course there
are exceptions, but this is a perfect situation for gathering extra
information with a bet.
Example 2: You're in a $1/2 game
and have KJ of diamonds on the button. Everyone, including you, has
about an average stack of $200. There are two limpers ahead of you
from middle position and you just call as well with position. The
small blinds folds and the big blinds checks. The flop brings a
9-K-2 of mixed suits. The pot is about $10 and the earliest limper
bets out $6 and the second limper folds. How can you pay for
information here?
In this situation, you might want to
raise. You don't raise because you feel like you have the best hand
because, in all likelihood with several players and a weak kicker,
you don't. However, raising here can save you money on the turn and
river. If you raise to about $15, you can pretty much decide if your
hand is good at this point. If you get reraised you certainly are
gone. If you get called you should probably fold to a decent bet on
the turn or river. It is unlikely that a hand worse than yours would
bet out on future rounds unless it is a busted straight draw. The
conclusion is that by paying $15 on the flop, you either win the pot
or save money by calling future small bets. If you call the $6 on
the flop, another say $12 on the turn, and $15 on the river praying
that you somehow win in a showdown. That adds up to $33. You can
most likely find out that same information on the flop for less than
half the price.
As you can see from these two examples,
at times it is preferable to pay for information even if it doesn't
win you the hand outright. If sized properly and made in the right
situations, betting and raising can significantly cut down on the
possible holdings of your opponents. To sum the concept up,
sometimes betting and raising now can save you money on later
streets. Instead of just calling and leaving the pot control in your
opponent's hands, take back control and try to gain information by
betting and/or raising.
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Poker Strategy
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