Betfair Online Poker Blog

Pot Control

One of the most important things you need to learn to become successful at deep stacked, big bet poker, is to be able to exercise pot control on a regular basis.

The reason for this is actually relatively simple - big bets nearly always mean big hands in these forms of poker, and often when you hold a strong, but not super strong hand, you want to try and put yourself in a position where you don't have to call a monster bet late in the hand.

A classic example of this is playing a strong top pair in no limit hold'em. Although top pair is a powerful hand, often it is not the sort of hand you want to get all of your chips in with, and I recently played a hand that illustrates this well. I was playing £2/£5 live with a few regulars at a local card room. I raised ace king off suit on the button to £17, and a skilled player defended from the big blind. We both had over £500 in front of us.

This player is a good player, but one who still underrates certain hands and overrates others, as well as playing a bit too fancy at times. He frequently floats and check raise bluffs - so any hand against him is always going to be a tricky ordeal - especially with a hand like ace king that only usually turns into a pair at most.

The flop came out Ac9h5d and he check called a bet of £22 from me. The turn was the 10h and he checked. Many players continue to fire here - reasoning that they have top pair top kicker and should continue to build the pot. In this particular situation I think checking behind is a much better option, as it keeps the pot at a reasonable size if my opponent decides to make a large river bet.

The main problem is that this board actually hits my opponent's range very hard. He is good enough to nearly always re-raise ace jack or better pre flop, as well as fold any pair under aces (that is not a set obviously) on the flop. He is also solid enough to fold a very weak ace to my raise. This leaves exactly the hands that are beating me - ace nine, ace ten, maybe ace eight (ace eight is definitely the bottom of his calling range here from our history) and perhaps a set of fives as possible holdings. None of these are hands that I now want to be building a big pot against except ace eight - which is by far the least likely hand.

In the end I actually won this pot after he made a big pot bet on the river which I reluctantly called. He showed ace eight and I won a nice sized pot. My opponent later said he would have folded to a turn bet, but was convinced by my turn check that I was weak. This shows an extra advantage of pot control - it often puts your opponents off guard and wins you extra bets when they start value betting too thin. Keep the pot the size you want it to be - it will save you not only money but a lot of thinking late in big pots.

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